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Twitter restores Sen. Steve Daines' account after Musk weighs in

Twitter restored Sen. Steve Daines’ (R-Mont.) account on Tuesday afternoon after it was suspended earlier in the day for what the company said was a violation of its “media policy.”

“I’m free! Thanks, @elonmusk,” Daines tweeted. 

The account was restored shortly after Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the suspension was “being fixed.”

The suspension apparently happened after Daines’ account displayed an image of him and his wife hunting as the profile picture, prompting an outcry from Republicans. 

On Tuesday morning the account for the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman did not show his profile avatar or background picture. In addition, a number of posts going back days were unavailable and slew of posts going back as far as last Friday showed a statement that read, “@SteveDaines’s account is temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.”

“This is being fixed,” Musk said in a tweet. “Policy against showing blood in profile pic is being amended to ‘clearly showing blood without clicking on the profile pic’. The intent is to avoid people being forced to see gruesome profile pics.”

“Going forward, Twitter will be broadly accepting of different values, rather than trying to impose its own specific values on the world,” Musk added. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Manchin keeps 2024 presidential speculation alive: 'I don’t like the direction we’re going' 

Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) kept speculation alive about him running for president in 2024 as a third-party candidate, telling reporters Tuesday “I don’t like the direction we’re going” and declining to rule out a bid for higher office. 

Manchin has criticized Democratic leaders for refusing to negotiate with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over a package of fiscal reforms to attach to legislation raising the debt limit and has repeatedly voiced frustration over the lack of progress in Washington on energy permitting reform and addressing the nation’s $31 trillion debt.  

“I don’t know what the next chapter will be, I don’t know [where] the future lies, I really don’t,” Manchin said when asked if he would run for president next year during a question-and-answer session hosted by Semafor’s Steve Clemons.  

“I can tell you one thing: I feel, like most Americans, we’ve got to come together. Americans want to be united, they want to be together and right now we’re going further apart,” he said.  

He predicted that voters are going to be looking for “somebody” to bring the country together but didn’t say whether he would be the politician to do that as the next president.  

“I’m not saying I have any aspirations” to run for the White House, he said, adding a caveat: “I’ve been [in Washington] 12 years. I don’t like what I see; I don’t the direction we’re going and I’m going to work and commit myself to try to get people who want to do the right thing to find the pathway forward, bringing the country back together.” 

Manchin’s comments seem to indicate that he doesn’t think President Biden has delivered on his 2020 campaign promise to bring the nation together after four divisive years under former President Trump supercharged partisanship in American politics.  

Biden promised to unify the country in his 2020 campaign victory speech, declaring “it’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature” and “to stop treating our opponents as enemies.” 

Biden is expected to again call for national unity at his second State of the Union address on Tuesday.  

Manchin recently said Biden was making a “mistake” by refusing to negotiate with House Republicans on fiscal reforms to attach to debt limit legislation.  

“It’s unreasonable for any senator, any congressperson representing the United States government to say, ‘I’m not going to negotiate,’” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “If you can’t communicate and you won’t talk to each other, you got a problem.”   

Manchin emphasized Tuesday that he thinks “the world of President Biden, he’s been a friend for a long, long time.” 

But he said the Biden administration is working against the president’s calls for moderation and bipartisan cooperation. 

“What you say and what you do are two different things,” he said. “You can’t tell me you’re going to do something and then you have all your agencies and everything else doing something different, interpreting it different. 

“You can’t say we want to bring the prices of gasoline down — that means you got to produce more product, more oil in the market and we’re not doing it,” he added. “And then you have the oil companies saying, ‘We’re not basically going to invest under this type of oversight and restraint.’”  

Manchin told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview last month that “everything’s on the table” when asked whether he would run for president or another Senate term under a different party affiliation.  

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that when I make my decision, I make it based on what’s best … for my country and my state.”  

Manchin hasn’t yet said whether he plans to run next year for reelection to a fourth Senate term, though he has ruled out running for governor of West Virginia, a job he previously held. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Why Tim Scott could be the only senator to run for president in 2024

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (R) in the coming weeks will hold events in Iowa and his home state as part of a listening tour that is expected to springboard him into the 2024 Republican presidential primary, making him the first U.S. senator to jump into the contest in either party. 

There’s also a chance he’s the last.

Over the last 20 years of presidential politics, the Senate has been a breeding ground for those with presidential aspirations, no matter how successful their runs turned out. Starting with the 2004 campaign cycle and continuing every four years, other than 2012, at least four sitting senators have run for the White House regardless of party. In total, 12 senators currently in office have run for the top job at some point in their career.

In 2016, four current or former senators competed in the GOP presidential primary.

The difference this year may not be so much a lack of interest among senators as much as a reflection of the state of Republican Party politics. Former President Trump — who has officially jumped into the race — and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — who has not but is widely expected to — are garnering the lion’s share of attention and are far and away the leading candidates. 

“There’s a lane out there, and it’ll start probably getting occupied more as time goes on,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill, acknowledging that the power dynamic in the party is forcing senators who would otherwise jump in the presidential waters head first to recalibrate. “With Trump in, that affects, probably, some folks’ decisions.” 

While a number of high-profile party figures have made concrete steps toward a run, most senators who have shown interest in doing so have shifted toward alternate plans. 

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the former head of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm who has made waves and grabbed headlines by challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), says he is running for a second term in the upper chamber. 

Ditto for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). The buzz surrounding Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who both ran in 2016 for the GOP nod, has been muted this go-around. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) already ruled out a 2024 campaign.

 Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has made clear his desire for a second presidential bid at some point, is also gearing up for a Senate reelection campaign. The so-called LBJ law — which allowed Lyndon Johnson, then the Senate majority leader, to run for reelection and on the Democratic ticket for either president or vice president — allows Cruz to run for both if he chooses, however.

As for Scott, he will launch his listening tour with an event in Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 16 before making a pair of stops in Iowa on Feb. 22. The expectation that he will enter the race is being welcomed with open arms by a number of his colleagues. 

“Having Tim get into the race would be very well-received by a number of members of the Senate, me included,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told The Hill. “He’s sharp. He’s got a business background. He’s got a great personal story.”

“There’s a number of us that have basically been encouraging him to at least consider that type of a run,” Rounds continued. “This is good news, we think, that he’s at least exploring the possibility.”

Thune added that Scott would be a “great voice” to have in the field and “brings a lot to the table.” 

The apathy primary voters feel toward the senators demonstrates in part the power Trump continues to wield over the GOP, despite the somewhat tumultuous start to a campaign that has attempted to be more conventional in recent weeks. Most polls still show him leading the potential GOP primary field in national and early primary state polls. 

It also shows the power DeSantis has among the party faithful. The Florida governor has seen his stature grow to the point where he is being attacked consistently by the former president and is sitting closely behind Trump in survey after survey — and leading in some.

“I think the leadership is going to be coming from the states and governors, because they actually run things,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is retiring to run for the Indiana governorship. “I like anybody that comes from the outside. … To me, if you’re wanting to get more people from the farm system of politics, which are the career politicians, expect more of the same.”

Indeed, prospective candidates have largely come from the ranks of governors and Trump administration officials. Former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is expected to make her bid official later this month, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo move toward doing so themselves.

Other names tossed around include first-term Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and Trump critics Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), who says he’s eyeing an April decision.

On the Democratic side, the expectation that President Biden mounts a reelection campaign has kept the conversation muted. While the 2020 primary field featured seven senators, even those who have indicated they would like to make another run at some point — including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — have said they won’t challenge Biden. 

Some Senate Republicans and GOP operatives, however, caution that it is still early in the 2024 cycle. Tim Scott himself hasn’t announced a bid. Cruz has not ruled out running altogether.

And Rick Scott has continued raised eyebrows among some in the party, especially with a 7-figure national ad buy last month and his ongoing feud with McConnell, which kept up last week after the leader yanked him from his post on the Senate Commerce Committee. No matter, he has maintained that he is running for reelection in the Sunshine State. 

“I’d be shocked,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said about the possibility that Tim Scott could be the only senator running for president this cycle. “It’s early.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Republican senators submit amicus brief to Supreme Court arguing against student loan relief

More than 40 Republican senators have filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court arguing against Biden’s student loan relief plan. 

The Republicans, including the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), filed the brief on Friday for both student loan cases in front of the Supreme Court: Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown. 

The senators argue in the brief that Biden does not have the unilateral authority to cancel debt as he is trying to do. 

“President Biden’s student loan schemes do not ‘forgive’ student debt, but transfers it onto Americans who chose not to go to college or worked hard to pay off their loans,” Cassidy said. “These policies are a clear overreach of President Biden’s authority and unconstitutional.”

Biden’s student debt relief is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to cost taxpayers $400 billion. 

The Biden administration has maintained that it has the authority to unilaterally cancel debt through the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROS) Act, which it argues allows the administration to cancel debt during a national emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Republicans have rejected that argument, saying the act does not apply to the current situation and that Biden needed authorization from Congress to attempt to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for student borrowers. 

“The HEROES Act cannot plausibly be read to authorize the forgiveness of loan principal that places borrowers in a better position financially than before the emergency, much less to cancel half a trillion dollars in loan principal as the Secretary attempts to do here,” the senators wrote in the amicus brief. 

The oral arguments for the two student loan cases will be presented in front of the Supreme Court later in February, with a final decision likely to come out in May or June. 

The Republicans filed their brief the same day President Biden is set to give the State of the Union address, where he will likely mention student debt relief.

Source: TEST FEED1

Federal judge suggests abortion may still be protected by 13th Amendment

A federal judge this week suggested abortion could still be federally protected even after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer, according to court filings.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who was nominated by former President Clinton, asked the parties in an ongoing criminal case on Monday to file briefs on whether the high court considered the entire Constitution in overturning Roe, or if it only found the 14th Amendment didn’t confer abortion rights.

Despite the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization landmark decision, the judge went on to suggest that the 13th Amendment — which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude — could perhaps cement abortion rights.

“Here, the ‘issue’ before the Court in Dobbs was not whether any provision of the Constitution provided a right to abortion,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Rather, the question before the Court in Dobbs was whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provided such a right.”

Her filing came in response to a defendant seeking to dismiss charges of conspiring against rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Lauren Handy, an anti-abortion activist, is accused of unlawfully blocking access to an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. She argues the statutes protecting clinics are premised upon abortion being a federal right.

“There is no longer a federal constitutional interest to protect, and Congress lacks jurisdiction. For the same reason, the Court here does likewise,” Handy’s attorneys wrote to Kollar-Kotelly.

Kollar-Kotelly responded on Monday by saying she was “uncertain” that no provision of the Constitution protects abortions, and she asked the Justice Department to opine on the issue in writing by March 3.

If Kollar-Kotelly were to ultimately rule that the 13th Amendment protects abortions, however, the decision would likely be appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Mindful that this Court is bound by holdings, and in consideration of the Supreme Court’s longstanding admonition against overapplying its own precedent, it is entirely possible that the Court might have held in Dobbs that some other provision of the Constitution provided a right to access reproductive services had that issue been raised. However, it was not raised,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

Source: TEST FEED1

Live coverage: Biden set to deliver State of the Union

President Biden delivers the State of the Union tonight, his third time addressing a joint session of Congress but his first before a divided government.

Biden is expected to tout his administration’s and Democrats’ accomplishments over the past year, using the speech as a launching pad for a 2024 presidential run. He will also lay out his priorities for the coming year, likely touching on the debt ceiling, police reform and the economy.

At the same time Republicans are looking to fight back, and they’ve already started.

The president is set to speak at 9 p.m.

Follow live updates from The Hill all day below:

Source: TEST FEED1

Twitter suspends Sen. Steve Daines's account

Twitter suspended the account of Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, because the social media platform said it violated its media policy.

Daines’s @SteveDaines account did not show his profile or background photos as of Tuesday morning, and slew of posts going back as far as last Friday showed a statement that read, “@SteveDaines’s account is temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.”

The statement also linked to Twitter’s sensitive media policy, which notes that users could not publish graphic media or adult content on their banner images or profile header, among other places. 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), linking to a reporter’s tweet, alleged that Daines had been suspended from his account because he and his wife were shown hunting in his profile header. The Hill has reached out to Twitter for comment.

“This is insane. Twitter should immediately reverse this suspension,” NRSC spokesman Philip Letsou said in a statement.

Other Republicans rallied around Daines on Twitter and defended the Montana Republican.

“This is the family photo that got @SteveDaines put in twitter jail. Stop censoring our Montana way of life!  Great shot, Cindy!” tweeted Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), who included a photo of the Daines and his wife hunting. 

“Twitter has ridiculously suspended Sen. @SteveDaines because his profile picture is of him and his wife hunting…What a disgrace!” said Donald Trump Jr. in a post on Twitter. 

Source: TEST FEED1

2022 military intelligence report mentioned Trump-era balloon sightings: report

A 2022 military intelligence report mentioned sightings of high-altitude Chinese balloons during the Trump administration, CNN reported Monday. 

The report from last April, entitled “People’s Republic of China High-Altitude Balloon,” stated that a Chinese surveillance balloon circumnavigated the world in 2019, during the Trump administration, and went past Hawaii and Florida in the process. 

CNN noted that this is the first indication that the U.S. military was aware of previous Chinese spy balloons before one crossed the U.S. last week, but the timing when officials became aware of the Chinese balloons is not clear based on the documents reviewed. 

The news of the report comes after former President Trump denied that Chinese spy balloons flew over the country multiple times during his time in office. Former Trump national security advisers John Bolton and Robert O’Brien both also said they had not heard of any balloon incidents, and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe agreed. 

But a U.S. senior defense official said last week that spy balloons belonging to the Chinese government crossed over U.S. territory briefly at least three times during the Trump administration. This came after Republicans criticized the Biden administration for a few days over its delay in shooting down the balloon while it was over U.S. territory. 

The Biden administration has said it decided against shooting the latest balloon down while it was over land because it feared falling debris could hurt people on the ground. It instead shot the balloon down on Saturday after it crossed over the Atlantic Ocean. 

CNN reported that China “launched and controlled” the previous balloon in 2019, adding that the military intelligence report stated that China had deployed multiple high-altitude balloons that could fly for months at a time at between 65,000 and 328,000 feet. 

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the leader of U.S. Northern Command, told reporters on Monday that the Defense Department was not aware of the previous balloons when they were in the air but instead learned of them through other means of collecting intelligence.

Source: TEST FEED1

The Hill's Morning Report — Biden speech to hail ‘historic’ bipartisan strides

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.

President Biden’s speech tonight will include plenty of references to the economy, previews of presidential campaign themes and clarifications added by speechwriters about the Chinese spy balloon.

Special guests seated in the first lady’s box — including Bono; Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova; Paul Pelosi; and working Americans from 16 states, many who encountered the president during his travels — will pop up in the text as inspirational touchstones for favored issues (prompting cheers that may sound more resounding at times than the enthusiasm in the room for the president).

“In two years, the president has overseen a historic [economic] recovery and laid the foundation for steady and stable growth in the years to come” — The White House.

House Republicans will largely stay seated and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who will shake hands with Biden before the president begins his speech just a few feet in front of him, will be studied for every facial expression beginning at 9 p.m. ET.

For any president, the State of the Union address is an important political and agenda-setting tool. For an 80-year-old chief executive poised to launch a reelection campaign and stuck with ho-hum job approval ratings, it’s a rare chance to reach Americans unfiltered, unedited and on a stage he knows well.

For two terms during the Obama era, Biden clapped from the seat filled tonight by Vice President Harris. He will exchange quick handshakes with members of the House and Senate he’s long known. The work ahead, however, has less to do with legislating than winning over voters who are unsure Biden should even seek a second term, report The Hill’s Brett Samuels and Alex Gangitano.

Senate Democrats who hold the majority are in a position to help Biden with his aims amid divided government, but they are intensely focused on how tough it will be in 2024 to have 23 of their seats in play, including seats in red states (The Hill).

The president plans this week to travel to Madison, Wis., in a battleground state, and Florida, home to former President Trump, who is the only announced GOP presidential candidate, and Sunshine State conservative Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is eyeing a 2024 White House bid amid strong showings in a string of polls. Biden will talk about protecting Social Security and Medicare in Tampa.

House Republicans are eager to counter boasts in Biden’s speech, reports The Hill’s Emily Brooks. They want to reach their base of supporters using assertions of wasteful federal spending, runaway debt and inflation, a border crisis and rising crime, and administration missteps with Russia and China. They are preparing investigative hearings they hope will support conservative accusations against the FBI, Hunter Biden and the president’s motives in retaining (and quickly returning) classified documents.

The Hill: The U.S. intelligence community, not the Pentagon, detected previous Chinese spy balloons approaching or above the United States but not until after the fact, Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, said Monday. The threats were detected through intelligence information collection subsequent to the events. The U.S. didn’t learn about Chinese balloon intrusions that occurred during the Trump administration until after the former president had left office (Bloomberg News).

▪ The Hill: The Chinese balloon ordeal could overshadow Biden’s State of the Union message.

▪ Stars & Stripes: Earlier Chinese surveillance balloon sightings or detection occurred near Texas, Florida, Hawaii and Guam. The incidents near Hawaii and Guam were reported prior to last week’s events.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Five questions ahead of tonight’s presidential address.

▪ The Hill: Five things Biden is likely to say and not say during tonight’s speech.

▪ The Hill: Biden’s post-midterm honeymoon shows signs of ending.

▪ Vox: The history of State of the Union speeches, explained.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: During his speech, Biden will urge quadrupling a new 1 percent tax on stock buybacks.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS

McCarthy on Monday spoke at the Capitol ahead of the State of the Union, offering a “prebuttal” of sorts, urging Biden to enter negotiations with Republicans on a “responsible” debt limit increase that avoids any U.S. payment default while also addressing the country’s longer-term fiscal challenges. McCarthy, speaking a full 24 hours before Biden’s speech, sought to get ahead of the president and reinforce his role as the leading congressional negotiator.

“We need a different approach — no drawing lines in the sand and saying ‘it’s my way or the highway,’” the Speaker said. “But most of all, no blank checks for runaway spending.”

McCarthy on Monday laid out broad principles but offered no specifics on spending cuts. The White House in a statement called congressional Republicans’ priorities “utterly backwards.”

While Biden and McCarthy met last week to discuss the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, the two remain deadlocked on the issue. The White House said the president will discuss federal spending cuts with Republicans but only after the debt ceiling is lifted, while the Speaker said Republicans will lift the ceiling only if Biden agrees to spending cuts (Reuters and Bloomberg News).

▪ Vox: Republicans struggle to get their act together for a debt limit deal.

▪ Roll Call: McCarthy, House Republicans reframe debt limit strategy.

▪ The Hill: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the economy is strong and every “responsible” member of Congress should raise the nation’s debt ceiling without costly brinkmanship. “You don’t have a recession when you have 500,000 jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years,” she said on Monday. “What I see is a path in which inflation is declining significantly, and the economy is remaining strong.” 

GOP lawmakers are planning to probe the Biden administration for what they are calling a failure to protect national security when a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. for several days before it was shot down, writes The Hill’s Brad Dress. Biden is under pressure from both sides of the aisle to take action to ensure that similar incidents don’t occur again and potentially retaliate against the apparent Chinese incursion into U.S. airspace. There are also many questions still unanswered — such as why the Trump administration was apparently unaware of previous balloon sightings under its watch. 

Politico: Congressional centrists plot deal-cutting course in divided government.

House Republicans are gearing up to grill former Twitter employees at a hearing Wednesday, escalating their accusations that social media companies are censoring content with an anti-conservative bias. As The Hill’s Rebecca Klar reports, the hearing will largely be based around the “Twitter Files” released at the end of last year about how the company handled a decision around moderating the spread of a story about the president’s son, Hunter Biden, during the 2020 election. The tweets revealed in the thread largely showed internal debates among employees over the decision and lacked details of influence from Democrats. 

Nonetheless, the thread fueled a chorus of outrage from the GOP who are now using their House leadership to dig into the debate. Meanwhile, Democrats may have their own set of questions to press Twitter’s former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker, and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth on based on scrutiny about Elon Musk’s takeover of the company and overall handling of misinformation online. 

The Hill: Biden needs to address sweeping tech layoffs, Big Tech backers say.

As Republican lawmakers from states such as Texas, Florida, Mississippi and Kentucky chair or sit on top of some of the House’s most high-profile committees, their influence can benefit their constituencies depending on their specific needs and offer a more direct opportunity for lawmakers to see their states’ interests addressed. The Hill’s Caroline Vakil and Nick Robertson have rounded up the states whose Republican lawmakers have benefited the most in the new House GOP majority.  

➤ POLITICS

Up and down the ballot, Republicans are increasingly turning to more traditionally qualified candidates to fill out their 2024 roster, hoping to bounce back from a series of disappointing losses by outsiders in last year’s midterm elections. The Hill’s Max Greenwood and Julia Manchester write that while populist outsiders and inexperienced candidates steamrolled their way to the top of the GOP over the course of more than a decade — reflecting a sense of anti-establishment fervor among the party’s disaffected grassroots — now some Republicans believe that the era of the outsider may be coming to an end. 

▪ The Washington Post: Can Biden 2020 his way to victory in 2024?

▪ Politico: A house divided: The mega-donor couple battling in the GOP’s civil war.

▪ Roll Call opinion: What my 2009 interview with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) tells me about 2024.

▪ Politico: Trump’s 2024 game plan: Be the dove among the hawks.

Meanwhile, as House Republicans aim to use their majority to divide Democrats on toxic political issues, they’ve found early success rehashing an old idea: the “horrors” of socialism. House GOP leaders staged a vote Thursday on a resolution condemning socialism as a fundamental threat to the foundations of American independence — a proposal that split Democrats and provided a potentially potent new attack line for GOP candidates heading into the 2024 elections, reports The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell. While a majority of Democrats voted in favor of the measure, 100 members of the 212-member caucus declined to endorse it. And GOP leaders wasted no time pouncing when the tally was final. 

“That wasn’t a college vote on a college campus. That was a vote in the U.S. Congress that 100 Democrats couldn’t say socialism was wrong,” McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol. “That’s a scary point of view.” 

▪ The New York Times: Harris is trying to define her vice presidency. Even her allies are tired of waiting.

▪ The Hill: Allies defend Harris after critical New York Times piece.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Rescuers in Turkey and Syria are desperately combing the rubble in search of survivors after a series of powerful earthquakes killed more than 5,000 people, as of reports this morning. The temblors collapsed thousands of buildings and created a humanitarian disaster in an area of the world already wracked by war, a refugee crisis, deep economic troubles and cold temperatures. The initial magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which struck in the early hours of Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey, was also felt in Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and Lebanon. Since then, dozens of aftershocks, including an unusually strong 7.5 magnitude tremor, have struck Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said almost 3,000 buildings collapsed across his country, where more than 1,760 people died and 5,000 people were injured (The New York Times and Reuters). 

“We do not know where the number of dead and injured can go,” he said.

▪ The New York Times: Rescues typically happen within three days of an earthquake, an expert said. The logistics of finding survivors in Turkey and Syria are daunting.

▪ The Washington Post: A dire situation in northwest Syria: Devastating quake amid civil war.

▪ The Hill: Why the earthquake in Turkey, Syria was so devastating.

▪ The New York Times: Mapping the damage from the earthquakes.

▪ BBC: Turkey earthquake: Death toll could increase eightfold, the World Health Organization says.

Ukraine’s outgoing defense minister has said the country is anticipating a new Russian offensive later this month. At a news conference, Oleksiy Reznikov said not all Western weaponry will have arrived by then but Ukraine had enough reserves to hold off Russian forces (BBC). The impact of Russia’s stepped-up assault is already being felt in the towns and villages along the hundreds of miles of undulating eastern front.

Exhausted Ukrainian troops say they are already outnumbered and outgunned, even before Russia has committed the bulk of its roughly 200,000 newly mobilized soldiers, while the civilians in the region once again face the agonizing decision of whether to leave or to stay and wait out the coming calamity (The New York Times).

▪ The Guardian: U.N. chief fears world is heading towards “wider war” over Russia-Ukraine conflict.

▪ Reuters: Ukraine reports record Russian deaths as Moscow presses offensive in east.

The New York Times’s “The Daily” podcast unpacked the significance of the Chinese spy balloon incident at this point in President Xi Jinping’s tenure and its impact on frayed diplomatic relations between China and the United States. 

▪ NPR: This wasn’t the first Chinese balloon over the U.S. Why were the others ignored?

▪ The Hill: What we know about Chinese balloon sightings during the Trump presidency.

OPINION

■ How should an older president think about a second term? From Eisenhower to Biden, questions of age have persisted, by Jeffrey Frank, The New Yorker Daily Comment. https://bit.ly/3HEYrCl

■ America’s distrust of Washington is a five-alarm political crisis, by Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman, opinion contributors, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3Xavcxd

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 at 10 a.m. The House chamber is the setting at 9 p.m. ET for the State of the Union address.

The Senate meets at 3 p.m. to resume consideration of the nomination of DeAndrea Benjamin to be a United States circuit judge for the 4th Circuit. 

The president will deliver a State of the Union speech at 9 p.m. ET in the Capitol.  

The vice president will attend the State of the Union event in the Capitol.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck at the State Department at 2 p.m. He will meet with Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg at 4:30 p.m. The secretary will attend Biden’s speech at the Capitol tonight.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet with Germany’s Habeck and French Foreign Minister Bruno LeMaire to discuss various issues, including clean energy and Ukraine. The secretary will attend the president’s speech tonight in the Capitol.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will speak at noon at an event organized by the Economic Club of Washington. David Rubenstein, the co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, will interview Powell at the event.

First lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will attend the State of the Union event tonight, along with invited guests, Cabinet officials and some Supreme Court justices.

ELSEWHERE

➤ STATE WATCH

🚆 Authorities in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Monday supervised the release of toxic chemicals from five derailed train cars to reduce the threat of an explosion. Armed with modeling information, the governors in both states ordered immediate evacuations for a 1-mile-by-2-mile area surrounding East Palestine, Ohio. Ahead of the controlled release of vinyl chloride, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) urged residents to heed warnings about potential lethal fumes and life-threatening hazards following a rail accident that began days ago.

About 50 Norfolk Southern train cars carrying products ranging from wheat and malt liquor to hazardous materials derailed on Friday night in a fiery crash near the Pennsylvania state line. The train with three crew members on board was traveling from Madison, Ill., to Conway, Pa. A mechanical problem with a rail car axle caused the crash, according to federal investigators (USA Today and WTAE).

Meanwhile, a minor 3.8 magnitude earthquake shook western New York Monday morning, according to The New York Times. 

⚡ NBC News: In Maryland, the FBI last week arrested two people in a foiled plot to attack Baltimore’s power grid. One is a known 27-year-old neo-Nazi leader. Federal authorities described the alleged plot as “racially or ethnically motivated.” More than 61 percent of Baltimore residents are Black.

🚰 The federal government will likely intervene in a squabble among seven states, including California, over how to share reductions in Colorado River water consumption, Arizona’s water chief told The Hill. Two competing proposals are so different that the government may be the final arbitrator, either with a unilateral solution or a combination of imposed and voluntary measures, The Hill’s Sharon Udasin reports.

“We will continue to try to get an agreement,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. “The path we’re on seems like the federal government’s going to step in.” 

➤ EDUCATION & SOCIAL MEDIA 

Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have become an alternative resource to share history lessons and discuss issues that students may not cover in school, writes The Hill’s Cheyanne M. Daniels, including issues of race, gender identity and sexuality. Jay Colby, a 29-year-old Houston resident, runs one of those accounts. In 2020, Colby started Black History Unlocked, an Instagram account that delves into the contributions, inventions and struggles of Black people around the world. 

“We try to cover Black history from all different viewpoints and not just one time period or one country,” Colby said. “A lot of these stories are not being told and you wouldn’t necessarily know this information if you didn’t do the deep research yourself,” Colby added. “So when [people] see them, it can be shocking. That’s what I think the appeal is.” 

▪ The Hill: Texas governor unveils plan for a statewide government TikTok ban.

▪ The Washington Post: Some see liberal arts education as elitist. Why it’s really pragmatic.

Parents trust Democrats over Republicans when it comes to K-12 education, according to a new poll commissioned by the National Parents Union (NPU). The poll, released ahead of the State of the Union, found that 46 percent of surveyed parents trust Democrats to lead primary education policy, while 38 favor Republicans and 16 percent are undecided.

“Damn right we’re worried about this country and what lies ahead for our children,” NPU President Keri Rodrigues told The Hill. “Parent voters have run out of patience for politicians that allow poisonous politics to interfere with delivering on their promise of solutions.”

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC 

Twenty-one states legalized recreational use of marijuana, but policymakers failed to mull its effects on public health. Health risks raise the prospect of increased regulation and oversight (Politico). “One of the reasons I have fought so hard to be able to legalize, regulate and tax is because I want to keep this out of the hands of young people. It has proven negative consequences for the developing mind,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Capitol Hill’s unofficial cannabis czar.

Vox examines what an abortion hotline reveals about reproductive care after Roe. Linda Prine, a physician and co-founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, describes the new realities for patients in states where the procedure is banned.

▪ The Washington Post: Patients who need intravenous nutrition supplies at home fear dangerous shortages.

▪ Axios: California is no longer pursuing a K-12 COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

▪ The New York Times: The COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers ends Friday in New York City. Vaccination and boosting for municipal workers will be optional.

▪ The New York Times: A 66-year-old Iowa woman on Jan. 3 was taken to a funeral home where employees discovered her in a body bag gasping for air. The Alzheimer’s care center that declared her dead was fined $10,000.

▪ The Hill: “Tripledemic” infected nearly 40 percent of households, survey finds.

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): 1,111,678. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 3,452 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

And finally … The newest moons around Jupiter discovered by lunar hunters using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile look like pearls dangling in space. Astronomers announced 12 new ones on Friday, making the planet the most moon-accessorized in our solar system, thanks to an updated count of 92 (CBS News and USA Today).

The European Space Agency in April will send a spacecraft to study some of those moons — and, of course, Jupiter, a giant orb that appears striped and color-washed in cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. NASA next year will launch the Europa Clipper to explore Jupiter’s moon of the same name, which may harbor an ocean beneath its frozen crust.

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and Saturn are each surrounded by small moons believed to be fragments of once bigger moons that collided with one another or with comets or asteroids. Uranus has 27 confirmed moons, Neptune has 14 and Mars, two.  

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Democrats have a 'messaging problem' with voters, despite accomplishments

Senate Democrats are having trouble getting their message across to voters heading into the 2024 election cycle, when they will have to defend 23 seats.  

They say they plan to run on their accomplishments in the last Congress. But that may be a problem: A large majority of voters across the country say President Biden hasn’t gotten a lot done.  

A Washington Post-ABC News poll published on Monday found that 62 percent of Americans don’t think Biden has accomplished much during his first two years in office.  

Despite passing a major infrastructure investment law in 2021 and prescription drug reform in the Inflation Reduction Act last year, only 32 percent of Americans said Biden made progress improving roads and bridges in their communities and only 30 percent said he made progress lowering prescription drug costs.  

“My first reaction is the Democrats have a messaging problem,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University who has served several times as a Senate fellow.

“Certainly the consistent message has been the Schumer message that the accomplishments of the Biden administration are really unprecedented, practically back to the time of the New Deal,” he said. “It is objectively an impressive list, but somehow the public seems to be rejecting that message perhaps because subjectively they’re not seeing the results.”  

The disconnect between the Democratic message and voters across the country could make it tougher for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to persuade incumbents such as Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to run for new terms in Republican-leaning states.  

It could also make it tougher for vulnerable incumbents such as Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) to run on their legislative accomplishments when Republicans are expected to hit them again on topics like inflation and cultural issues. 

Monday’s Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 32 percent of independents nationwide think Biden has accomplished a great deal or a good amount while 66 percent said he accomplished not much, little or nothing.  

Senate Democrats are putting a more positive spin on the poll, arguing that it shows how much ground they can gain with voters by implementing the bills that Biden signed into law and explaining them to the public. 

Aides say Biden will do that on Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, when he will highlight the key bills passed since he took office.   

Schumer has compared Biden’s first two years in office to President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.  

“These two years in the Senate and House, in the Congress, was either the most productive in 50 years — Great Society — or the most productive in 100 years since the New Deal. So I think it’s been extremely, extremely productive,” he told reporters at the end of 2022. 

Infrastructure, insulin cap ‘haven’t started yet’

Democratic strategists say their party faces several messaging challenges over the next 21 months: The investments and reforms that Biden signed into law in the 117th Congress will take years to implement, the president himself is not a very compelling salesman and the bills that Biden signed into law will be overshadowed by Washington’s looming political dramas over the debt ceiling and other issues.

Robert Borosage, a progressive activist and co-founder of Campaign for America’s Future, said “the big thing is the big agenda things that Democrats passed haven’t started yet.” 

“It’s not surprising that people don’t feel that these policies have affected them yet because they’re just being put in effect,” he said. 

For example, a key element of the Inflation Reduction Act, a $35 dollar-a-month cap on insulin, just went into effect on Jan. 1. 

Borosage said that inflation and the high cost of everyday goods is giving people a more negative view of the economy than it deserves.  

The Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 34 percent of Americans said Biden has made progress creating good jobs in their community, even though the president on Friday touted the creation of 12 million jobs since he took office in 2021.  

The economy created 517,000 new jobs last month alone.

Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former Senate aide, said voters “will start feeling the impacts” of the laws passed in the next Congress before the 2024 elections, such as investments to expand access to high-speed internet and clean drinking water.  

“You may not think the infrastructure bill and the IRA are hugely important but when you have clean water and internet access and then you start seeing, ‘Oh right, this is what the Democrats did,’ then it will start to seep in. I think part of it is letting the laws take effect and then explaining, ‘Hey, we did that,’” he said.

Biden needs ‘cheerleaders’

But Kott acknowledged that Biden is not a natural salesman who likes to toot his own horn as much as past presidents, which makes it somewhat tougher to tout his accomplishments.  

“Joe Biden, he’s not the type of guy who goes out and brags about his accomplishments, that’s just not who he is. Joe Biden is just a boring get-the-job-done kind of guy. That’s who he is. And he’s the type of Democrat that I think a lot of the moderates like because that’s who he is,” he said. “He just sort of puts his head down, finds the solution to a problem and accomplishes it. 

“You might need some more cheerleaders out there, and that’s where I think the rest of the administration and outside groups like the AFL-CIO come in and brag on his behalf,” he added.  

Democratic aides say there is also frustration among lawmakers with the fleeting attention the media pays to their legislative accomplishments, as news cycle coverage quickly moves to new topics, such as Biden’s handling of classified information, the Chinese surveillance balloon and the partisan battle over raising the debt limit.  

Schumer at one point chastised the media for mostly ignoring the Ocean Shipping Reform Act that Biden signed into law in June to speed up the supply chain and fight inflation.  

A few months after Congress passed the bill, the price of shipping a container over the ocean dropped 60 percent, one Democratic aide noted.  

A second Democratic aide said the White House is aware of Biden’s problems getting his record of accomplishment across to voters and plans to deploy the president aggressively over the coming months to hammer home his message.  

Biden appeared with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) at the Brent Spence Bridge in Covington, Ky., last month to highlight funding for it in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill. Biden visited a deteriorating rail tunnel in Baltimore a few weeks later to talk about $4 billion in federal funding being invested to keep trains running smoothly between Washington and Philadelphia.  

The president and Schumer visited the Long Island Railroad west side train yard last week to promote $292 million in grants from the bipartisan infrastructure bill to rebuild the rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and Manhattan.

“I think Biden’s actually doing a better job of staying on message. I think the White House understands the disconnect with voters in a way the Obama [administration] didn’t, which is why I think you saw the Brent Spence Bridge event,” said the second aide. “I think they recognize the problem.”

Source: TEST FEED1