Categories Uncategorized

The political winners and losers of 2022

2022 had plenty of political drama: the midterm elections, the congressional investigation into Jan. 6, record numbers of migrants at the southern border, big pieces of legislation and former President Trump’s declaration of his 2024 White House candidacy.

As the year draws to a close, here are some of the biggest winners and losers.

WINNERS

President Biden

Biden’s biggest victory came in limiting a defeat.

The midterm elections saw his party lose control of the House of Representatives, but only very narrowly, while retaining control of the Senate.

It was a remarkable result, cutting against the grain of modern history where a president’s party almost always loses much greater ground in the first midterms.

The outcome was all the more surprising in Biden’s case because of his mediocre approval ratings and an economy afflicted by high inflation.

In the end, however, Biden’s argument that a GOP purportedly taken over by “ultra-MAGA” Republicans had real bite.

Elsewhere, the president got his Inflation Reduction Act passed, as well as other items of legislation expanding health care for veterans and boosting support for the U.S. semiconductor industry.

Amid all that, Biden held an international coalition together with impressive unanimity against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in February.

The 80-year-old president has plenty of vulnerabilities as he mulls whether to seek a second term. But he is clearly among the year’s political winners.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)

DeSantis, in the space of a year, has gone from a rising Republican star to a plausible front-runner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination.

The key moment was DeSantis’s emphatic reelection win — he defeated Democrat Charlie Crist by almost 20 points — on an otherwise deeply disappointing night for the GOP.

The contrast between DeSantis’s result and the defeats for various candidates endorsed by Trump could hardly have been starker.

DeSantis was to the fore in fights over hot-button issues from COVID-19 to migration as well.

He embraced controversy much of the way — such as by organizing flights of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., amid a chorus of criticism.

But that didn’t hurt his political fortunes at all. DeSantis’s political brand — Trump with less chaos, basically — has gained real steam this year. 

Sen-elect John Fetterman (D-Pa.)

Fetterman pulled off an impressive feat, taking a seat back for the Democrats. In doing so, he vanquished a high-profile Republican, TV star Mehmet Oz.

The achievement was all the more notable because Fetterman suffered a stroke just before winning his primary. His recovery kept him off the campaign trail for a long stretch. His performance at the sole televised debate with Oz was halting, to the point that it left even many in his own party unnerved.

But Fetterman won by almost five points in the end, taking the seat from which Republican Sen. Pat Toomey was retiring. It was the sole Senate seat to shift from one party to the other this year.

The victory was a validation of Fetterman’s unorthodox style, which won over some voters that the national Democratic Party has at times struggled to reach.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D)

Whitmer was one of the GOP’s top targets in gubernatorial races this year but in the end her reelection race was not even close.

She defeated her Trump-backed Republican challenger Tudor Dixon by more than 10 points.

It was a win for Whitmer’s blend of pragmatic politics, personal charisma and strong advocacy for abortion rights. The abortion issue was especially salient in Michigan, where there was a separate ballot measure on the topic.

Whitmer was also in the news for more ominous reasons — the plot hatched by right-wing extremists to kidnap her in 2020. Several men have been convicted by federal or state courts, with the longest prison sentence of almost 20 years being handed down to de facto leader Barry Croft in late December.

Whitmer begins her second term on Sunday as a well-established and rising name in Democratic politics. 

If Biden were to decline to run for a second term, she would be at least in the mix of possible contenders.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)

In a year that had its fair share of drama, the 52-year-old Jeffries ascended to the top spot among House Democrats with notable ease.

Jeffries will become the minority leader when the new Congress convenes. He won the spot by acclamation in late November, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced her intention to give up her leadership role.

Jeffries will have huge shoes to fill, given Pelosi’s two-decade run atop the Democratic conference. But his move up, along with key lieutenants Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), marks a clear generational shift. Clark and Aguilar will be minority whip and caucus chair, respectively.

Although the Democrats are losing control of the House, the precarious thinness of the GOP majority gives Jeffries and his colleagues some hope.

MIXED

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)

McCarthy appears on the brink of achieving his long-held ambition of becoming Speaker. That, in itself is a huge victory.

It is not yet quite guaranteed, however. Five House Republicans have indicated they will not support him, enough to endanger his quest given that there are only 222 GOP members and normally 218 votes are required to become Speaker.

McCarthy’s main advantage is that no serious rival to him has emerged for the Speakership. The one declared alternative, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), already lost heavily to McCarthy in an internal GOP vote.

It’s also possible that McCarthy could squeeze though if some of the five GOP members opposed to him vote “present” or simply don’t show up to cast a vote.

In any event, the smart money says McCarthy ultimately ends up with the gavel. 

But the narrow Republican majority, and the suspicion with which he is regarded on the most pro-Trump wing of the party, is almost guaranteed to make his life difficult in the year ahead.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)

Few people in the political world suffered such a rollercoaster of fortunes as Cheney.

On one hand, her congressional career was brought to an emphatic end when she was easily beaten in her primary in August.

Her challenger, now-Rep.-elect Harriet Hegeman (R-Wyo), hammered Cheney by nearly 40 points. Hageman had been endorsed by Trump, Cheney’s nemesis.

On the other hand, Cheney’s national profile rose higher than ever thanks to her role as the vice-chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. From her berth on that panel, she delivered some of the most searing criticisms of Trump — and of those Republicans who have backed him.

In June, she warned those Republicans who had supported Trump out of expediency or political cowardice, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone. But your dishonor will remain.”

It is Cheney who will be gone from the new Congress, however. Her next move is unclear.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz).

Sinema retained her leverage and her ability to frustrate Democratic senators for much of the year. She kept up her opposition to any reform of the filibuster and also maneuvered to carve out some more lenient tax provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Sinema’s willingness to buck the party line had fueled the prospect of a primary challenge when she seeks reelection in 2024. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) had been widely seen as a possible progressive rival.

Instead, Sinema announced in early December that she would switch her party affiliation to independent.

The ramifications of that move in the Senate are modest, but it complicates the calculus for a challenger from the left in 2024.

Arizona Democrats have a tough choice between letting Sinema have a free run, or challenging her with their own nominee and likely gifting the seat to Republicans in a three-way race.

LOSERS

Former President Trump

Trump had a very bad year indeed.

The most obvious example came in the midterm elections, when many of his most high-profile endorsees lost.

There was also his dinner with antisemites Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes; his call for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution, which drew criticism even from many Republicans; the vivid descriptions of his behavior in and around Jan. 6. 2021, as unearthed by the House Select Committee; and on Dec. 30 the release of several years of his tax returns.

On top of all that, the former president faces numerous legal troubles. 

The FBI’s August raid of Mar-a-Lago may yet lead to charges regarding mishandling classified information or obstruction. 

The Department of Justice is investigating the Mar-a-Lago matter as well as conducting a separate probe into Jan. 6. Both efforts are now overseen by special counsel Jack Smith.

Fani Willis, a district attorney in Georgia, is examining the actions of Trump and his allies aimed at overturning the 2020 election result in her state. In December, the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud.

Trump has, of course, been written off numerous times before. He is right now the only major declared candidate for the GOP 2024 nomination.

But there’s no denying he is in a diminished position as the year ends.

Herschel Walker

Walker was perhaps the most high-profile GOP failure this year.

He suffered a prolonged defeat in the race for a Senate seat representing Georgia, falling behind in the first round of voting before finally losing a Dec. 6 run-off to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).

There are at least two factors that made Walker’s experience especially bad.

From a political standpoint, he lost a race in a state that remains conservative and Republican-friendly — even if Biden did carry it by a narrow margin in 2020. 

In this year’s gubernatorial race, for instance, incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R) defeated Stacey Abrams (D) by seven points.

In a more personal realm, Walker’s decision to enter the race set in a train a sequence of events that saw past alleged misdeeds, including credible accusations of domestic violence, get fresh prominence and new stories emerge. 

Two former girlfriends said Walker — who ran on a strongly anti-abortion platform — encouraged them to get abortions after becoming pregnant by him.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Mayorkas had the misfortune to preside over one of the worst issues for the Biden administration — immigration.

The total number of encounters between border agents and unauthorized migrants at the southwestern border reached an all-time high of almost 2.4 million during the 2022 fiscal year, which ended September 30.

There has been no let-up since then, with encounters for both October and November each exceeding 230,000.

Those figures come against the backdrop of the possible end of Title 42, the old law that was resurrected by the Trump administration to speedily turn back migrants on public health grounds.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in April that there was no longer any public health justification for using the rule. But its cessation has been blocked by the courts, and now rests with the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in February.

Mayorkas has stressed that the Biden administration is trying to plan for the ending of Title 42 by sending extra agents to the border and boosting processing capacity.

But the sense of growing crisis clearly impacts his reputation.

Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.)

A late entry to the “losers” category, Santos dominated the final weeks of the year as a series of lies and exaggerations came to light.

Santos has admitted he neither graduated from New York’s Baruch College nor worked for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, as he claimed.

Many of his misrepresentations, or the explanations of them, were even more outlandish. After it emerged that he is not, in fact, Jewish, Santos took refuge in the idea that he is “Jew-ish.”

He also claimed his firm lost four employees in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, which it did not; and he appears to have tweeted both that his mother had been a victim of 9/11 and that she died in 2016.

There are, too, questions lingering around how exactly Santos got the money to help fund his campaign for the House seat representing New York’s 3rd District. The New York Times reported that “a hefty chunk” of Santos’s total funds “came in the form of a $700,000 loan from Mr. Santos himself.”

It appears likely that Santos will take his seat, and Republican criticism of him has been fairly muted. But he is already under investigation by federal and local prosecutors as he prepares to begin his congressional career.

Gubernatorial candidates Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke

Abrams and O’Rourke both suffered tough losses this year. Over the longer term, both have traveled eerily similar trajectories — and not in a good way.

The two were considered rising Democratic stars not so long ago. But, in each case, consecutive defeats have called their electoral futures into serious question.

Abrams’s loss to Kemp this year was much wider than her defeat in their original contest, in 2018. Then, Kemp won by less than two percentage points. This year, he won by seven points, dashing earlier Democratic hopes that Abrams could emerge victorious.

Abrams is credited by many Democrats for her work on voter registration, which her supporters say has been pivotal in making her party competitive in her home state.

But two losses in a row, and the fact that she has never won federal office, weigh against her.

O’Rourke lost his Texas gubernatorial race to incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott (R) by 11 points, a far more emphatic defeat than his narrow failure to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2018. This year’s loss was, in the end, expected.

O’Rourke had electrified the liberal grassroots in the race against Cruz but much of that gloss had already come off thanks to an ill-starred, short bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Abrams and O’Rourke are still much in demand among progressives for their prowess in advocacy and communication. Electorally, the road ahead looks much steeper.

Source: TEST FEED1

Immigration, energy, abortion: Scalise announces first legislation for House GOP

House Republicans will focus on IRS funding, energy production, immigration, crime and abortion with their first items of legislative business after they take control of the House next week.

Steve Scalise (R-La.), the incoming House majority leader, announced on Friday a slate of eight bills and three resolutions that he will bring up in the first two weeks of the 118th Congress.

“The American people spoke on November 8th and decided it was time for a new direction. The last two years have been tough on hard-working families as they have grappled with drastic increases in the cost of living, safety concerns with violent crime skyrocketing in our communities, soaring gas and home heating prices, and a worsening crisis at our Southern border,” Scalise said in a letter to colleagues on Friday. “In the 118th Congress, we will work to address these problems by passing bills that will improve the lives of all Americans.”

None of the legislative items appear likely to pass in a Democratic-controlled Senate and signal that Republicans will put a heavy focus on messaging as they control the chamber in a divided Washington for the next two years.

The first bill, as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) revealed in September, will rescind a boost to IRS funding that passed as part of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act in August. Republicans have repeatedly falsely said the boost will authorize 87,000 new IRS agents, but that estimate includes support staff and non-agent IRS employees and replacements for those who leave over a decade.

Two of the GOP bills concern the country’s management of petroleum and energy production.

One bill would prohibit “non-emergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve” without a plan to boost energy production on federal lands. Republicans have heavily criticized President Biden for releasing oil from the strategic reserve.

Another bill would restrict the Energy secretary from selling petroleum from the strategic reserve to China.

In two other bills, the House GOP turns its focus to immigration and border issues.

The Border Safety and Security Act would allow the Homeland Security secretary to turn away certain migrants in order to achieve “operational control” at the border. Republicans have repeatedly accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of not meeting the legal standard of “operational control” at the border by preventing unlawful entries and contraband.

Another bill would require the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is used during sales of firearms, to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement if a person in the U.S. illegally attempts to buy a firearm.

Two more of the bills revolve around abortion, an issue that helped define the midterms after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade over the summer. But Republicans are not proposing any kind of national abortion restriction.

They will bring up the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require care to be given to an infant who survives an abortion procedure. Democrats have argued that a 2002 law already guarantees infants’ legal rights.

Another would permanently codify the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion procedures, and expands the prohibition to bar federal funding for insurance plans that offer elective abortion.

Additionally, Scalise said he will bring up a resolution condemning recent attacks on anti-abortion centers and churches.

The House will also establish a select committee on China, which will formally be called the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. The select committee has been a longtime priority of McCarthy, and he has announced Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) as his pick to chair the panel. Republicans have expressed optimism about the potential for bipartisan cooperation in that committee on China policy.

Lastly, House Republicans aim to address crime with a bill to require prosecutors to report how many cases they decline to prosecute and other metrics and a resolution to express support for law enforcement and condemn efforts to defund or dismantle such agencies.

The legislative slate comes as Republicans have still not formalized committee assignments or chairs for contested posts and as McCarthy faces opposition that threatens to keep him from becoming Speaker. Republicans have also repeatedly criticized Democrats for not bringing bills to the floor through the regular order of going through committees first.

Scalise addressed matters of regular order and the lag in organizing committees in his letter to colleagues.

“We understand that developing a good process will lead to better legislative outcomes. Returning to work in person, empowering each committee, moving legislation through regular order, encouraging Member input, and allowing adequate time to read legislation will be major priorities of our incoming majority. We are excited to make those principles a reality in the House,” Scalise said. 

“We do also recognize that it will take some time for our committees to organize and start moving legislation through regular order. In the meantime, we will begin bringing up meaningful, ‘ready-to-go’ legislation in the House.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Southwest faces lingering questions after winter storm meltdown

Southwest Airlines restored its flight schedule on Friday, ending a weeklong stretch of mass cancellations that disrupted millions of travelers’ holiday plans. 

After canceling roughly two-thirds of its flights since the start of the long holiday weekend, Southwest canceled just 1 percent of its Friday trips, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. 

But questions remain about how quickly Southwest can make customers whole, whether it can prevent this kind of meltdown from happening again and how lawmakers and regulators in the nation’s capital will respond to the fiasco. 

Southwest promises reimbursements 

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said Friday that the airline will cover stranded travelers’ unexpected costs, a key sticking point for enraged customers. 

“We’ll be looking at and taking care of things like rental cars, hotel rooms, meals, booking customers on other airlines, so that will all be part of what we’re covering here as we reimburse our customers and make good on this issue,” Jordan said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”  

Southwest executives said Thursday that it will take several weeks to process requests. The airline launched a page for travelers to ask for refunds and reimbursements, and another to help thousands of passengers find their lost luggage. 

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has pressured Southwest to promptly reimburse travelers, warning that he would use his authority to levy fines against the airline if it doesn’t make customers whole. 

“No amount of financial compensation can fully make up for passengers who missed moments with their families that they can never get back — Christmas, birthdays, weddings, and other special events,” Buttigieg wrote in a letter to Jordan Thursday.  

“That’s why it is so critical for Southwest to begin by reimbursing passengers for those costs that can be measured in dollars and cents.” 

Buttigieg said that customers should submit a complaint to his department if Southwest denies them compensation. 

An unprecedented meltdown 

While last week’s winter storms forced other airlines to cancel a relatively small number of flights, they completely derailed Southwest’s antiquated scheduling system, which employees say has needed an overhaul for years.  

At the height of the crisis, Southwest was unable to locate many of its pilots and flight attendants, let alone route them to the correct plane. Southwest had to cancel nearly two-thirds of its trips to get the situation under control. 

“I’ve been around the business for close to half a century, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Rob Britton, a former American Airlines executive who teaches crisis management at Georgetown University. “We’ve seen other outages and debacles, but all of those things pale in comparison to this absolute mess.” 

Southwest’s Jordan said Friday that the airline faced worse weather impacts than its competitors — the winter storm hit two of its largest hubs — but acknowledged that Southwest needed to make more investments in its operations.  

“It really was the scope of the problems attempting to be solved, just to move crews around, keep the airline moving,” Jordan said.  

Southwest employees warned for years that the airline was prioritizing short-term profits and investor rewards instead of updating its aging infrastructure.  

Southwest shelled out $5.6 billion on stock buybacks in the three years leading up to the pandemic and was the first major airline to reinstate its dividend when restrictions attached to federal COVID-19 relief expired.  

“Years in the making, this meltdown happened because Southwest’s management lost touch with its employees and became fixated on accounting metrics, stock buybacks and institutional investors,” Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, wrote in an opinion piece Friday. 

Murray predicted in November that Southwest was “one IT router failure away from a complete meltdown” during a busy travel period such as Christmas. He added that the airline should “release a clear plan and timeline for replacing Southwest’s IT infrastructure and obsolete crew-scheduling systems.” 

Other experts have blamed Southwest’s point-to-point system, which allows the airline to offer more direct flights than its competitors but can strand crew members when things go wrong. 

Customers reported being unable to reach Southwest representatives for days to reschedule their flight or locate their luggage.  

Things were only made worse because Southwest does not have any interline agreements with its competitors. Those deals, which are struck between several of the top carriers, would have allowed Southwest travelers to rebook their flight on another airline with relative ease. 

How will Washington respond? 

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are promising to investigate Southwest, which received more than $7 billion in federal aid from Congress to keep its employees on the payroll and operations intact during the pandemic.  

But lawmakers haven’t expressed interest in passing legislation to address the meltdown and ensuing customer complaints. Instead, they’re putting pressure on Buttigieg to crack down on Southwest and other carriers using laws already on the books. 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) criticized Buttigieg on Twitter Thursday, arguing that the meltdown could have been avoided if the secretary had instituted tougher rules that would result in fines if airlines overbooked flights or canceled flights at the last minute.  

While Buttigieg issued record fines against Frontier Airlines and a handful of foreign carriers in November for violating refund rules, Khanna tweeted that the penalties were “inadequate” and “didn’t go after the worst offenders,” referring to the big four carriers. 

A DOT spokesperson said that airlines agreed to provide free rebooking and pay for food and lodging in the case of cancellations after Buttigieg urged them to improve their customer service plans in August.   

“The department will hold Southwest Airlines accountable, including pursuing fines against the carrier if there is evidence that the carrier has failed to meet its legal obligations,” the spokesperson said.

All eyes are on Buttigieg’s proposed airline refund rule that would require airlines to give timely cash refunds to customers when their flight is canceled or significantly delayed.  

Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called for the rule to require covering secondary costs such as travel, lodging and food. A group of 34 bipartisan state attorneys general said it should include penalties for airlines that sell tickets without having adequate staffing.  

The department is beginning the process of reading through thousands of comments on the rule after the comment period expired on Dec. 16.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump blasts Democrats, Supreme Court after House releases tax returns

Former President Trump ripped Democratic lawmakers Friday for releasing several years of his tax returns, warning of dire consequences for the nation while touting his ability to avoid paying income taxes.

“The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people. The great USA divide will now grow far worse,” Trump said in a statement issued shortly after House Democrats released six years of his personal and business tax returns.

“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises,” he continued.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax policy and the IRS, on Friday released redacted versions of Trump’s personal and business tax returns from 2015 through 2020. The panel released a report last week summarizing Trump’s records, which showed how the former president avoided paying taxes in several years by using tax credits and policies meant to encourage business investment. 

The Ways and Means Committee’s investigation also revealed that Trump was not audited during the first two years of his presidency despite the IRS’s policy of annually auditing the president.

The committee received Trump’s tax returns earlier this year after the Supreme Court struck down a lawsuit from him to protect them, ending a two-year legal battle over the documents. 

Trump was the first president since Richard Nixon not to release any of his tax returns to the public while in office, refusing repeated requests to do so throughout his presidency.

Democratic lawmakers who sought Trump’s returns argued that it was essential for Americans to know if the former president was following federal law and if the IRS was fulfilling its duty to audit the president. 

“A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) in a Friday statement.

“We are only here today because four years ago, our request to learn more about the program … was denied,” Neal continued.

Trump and GOP lawmakers countered that there was no legitimate reason for Congress to seek Trump’s personal financial information and denounced the Democratic efforts as a political witch hunt.

“Democrats have charged forward with an unprecedented decision to unleash a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since Watergate,” Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas), the ranking Republican on Ways and Means, said in a Friday statement.

“This is a regrettable stain on the Ways and Means Committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it,” he continued.

Updated at 12:09 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

READ: Trump's business taxes released by House Ways and Means

The House Ways and Means Committee on Friday released six years’ worth of former President Trump’s tax returns, totaling more than 45 documents with hundreds of pages.

The reveal comes after a years-long battle to release the information.

Here are a look at Trump’s business taxes from 2015 to 2020.

Source: TEST FEED1

READ: Trump's personal taxes released by House Ways and Means

The House Ways and Means Committee on Friday released six years’ worth of former President Trump’s tax returns, totaling more than 45 documents with hundreds of pages.

The reveal comes after a years-long battle to release the information.

Here is a look at Trump’s personal taxes from 2015 to 2020.

Source: TEST FEED1

Ways and Means panel releases Trump’s tax returns

The House Ways and Means Committee released six years of former President Trump’s business and individual tax returns on Friday, totaling 46 documents with hundreds of pages and more than a gigabyte’s worth of data.

The dump of raw returns comes in the final hours of Democratic control of the House and a week after they were summarized in two congressional reports that found Trump was reporting huge losses, greatly offsetting his tax liability, in some cases reducing it to zero.

The reports from the Ways and Means Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) also found that Trump was not being regularly audited by the IRS, in an apparent violation of IRS policy, which mandates that sitting presidents are to be audited under normal IRS procedures.

Tax experts say they are interested to get a closer look at Trump’s accounting methods and the ways he was able to get out of paying taxes.

Trump reported large business losses, usually in the tens of millions of dollars, in every tax return obtained by the Ways and Means Committee. Several of these losses derive from a larger $105 million loss that was then spread out to reduce Trump’s tax liability.

This is an established accounting practice to get out of paying taxes in the real estate industry, tax experts say.

“The losses seem to be from K-1s (Partner’s share on income and Deductions) received from entities and partnerships that he has shares in,” New York tax attorney Steven Goldburd said in an email to The Hill. “As a real estate professional he is entitled to take these losses. These losses can be from actual losses, but more likely from real estate depreciation expenses. These entities may not actually [be] losing money, but in fact have the depreciation that are wiping out the partnership’s income.”

Analysts are also looking at foreign bank accounts and payment information that may give a clearer picture of Trump’s relationship abroad.

“I’m going to be looking for things like foreign ownership, foreign accounts, foreign ownership of Trump businesses, payments to foreigners,” Steve Rosenthal, an expert with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said in an interview. “There’s bound to be some items that may yet pop out to external reviewers that [the JCT] missed.”

The Committee released returns on eight of Trump’s nearly 500 business entities. Those eight returns comprise two of Trump’s branding trademarks, three that pertain to his golf club in Bedminster, New York, and two high-level holding companies that contain the others.

“Those two upper-tier entities sit at the top of Trump’s LLC empire. The numbers all roll into those, and I’d like to see some aggregate numbers there,” Rosenthal said.

Democrats released the tax returns as part of a probe into the IRS’s presidential audit program, but Republicans interpret the release as a personal attack against Trump.

“With the publicly released transcript of Democrats’ secret executive session, Americans now have confirmation that there was never a legislative purpose behind the public release of these confidential records and that the IRS was conducting audits prior to Democrats’ request,” Ways and Means Republican leader Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said in a statement on Friday.

“Despite these facts, Democrats have charged forward with an unprecedented decision to unleash a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since Watergate.”

Brady also warned of future committee actions related to the release of personal tax returns. The Ways and Means Committee will be led by Republicans when control of the House switches next week.

“Going forward, all future Chairs of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will have nearly unlimited power to target and make public the tax returns of private citizens, political enemies, business and labor leaders or even the Supreme Court justices themselves,” Brady said.

Source: TEST FEED1

The Hill's Morning Report — Committee to release Trump's fill tax returns on Friday

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.

Former President Trump’s actual tax returns are set to be released on Friday, following the release last week of six years of tax return information as part of reports into the presidential audit program. The documents revealed that Trump wasn’t being regularly audited by the IRS and was reporting big business losses each year.

While tax experts aren’t expecting huge revelations from the raw returns for 2015 to 2020, the more detailed documents could provide additional information on key areas of interest regarding the former president’s businesses and professional associations, writes The Hill’s Tobias Burns.

“Those of us who are interested in his relationship with Russia will be looking for any kind of confirmation of what Don [Trump] Jr. said in 2008 that Trump interests had received much of their money from Russian sources,” former CIA officer and journalist Frank Snepp told the Hill. 

Meanwhile, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is closing up its business with the release of thousands of pages of transcripts — and the interviews with various people surrounding Trump have included a number of bombshells. The Hill’s Stephen Neukam has rounded up the five most interesting things mentioned in the interviews, from the allegation that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows burned documents during the transition, to indications that the committee agreed to shield the testimony of a number of witnesses from the Department of Justice — including those dealing with criminal proceedings stemming from the Capitol breach.

▪ The Hill: Trove of Jan. 6 panel depositions offers new insights on fateful day.

▪ NBC News: Federal judge says Trump may have signaled to supporters “to do something more” than just protest.

▪ The Hill: Donald Trump Jr. details efforts to sway father on Jan. 6 in panel deposition.

Minority Leader and House Speaker hopeful Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is in the very last stretch before the Speakership elections on Jan. 3. Some members expect the Speakership fight to go to multiple ballots and possibly last days, as infighting between GOP lawmakers is threatening to derail the proceedings (NY1).

The fight over the gavel could have an unintended victim: House staff. As Politico reports, guidelines sent to committees lay out a messy, complicated process for how the race will have a trickle-down effect on everything from paying committee staff to student loan repayments. 

“Committees need to be aware that should a House Rules package not be adopted by end of business on January 13 no committee will be able to process payroll since the committee’s authority for the new Congress is not yet confirmed,” according to the memo sent out to House committees.

Politico: Battleground Republicans say they’ll only vote for McCarthy for speaker. More than a dozen GOP lawmakers, including members-elect, wrote in a letter that they would not back any “so-called shadow ‘consensus candidate.’”

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Questions loom at CNN after difficult year. 

▪ Politico: The presidential race is entering a new phase. Here’s who’s best positioned.

▪ Vox: The best, worst, and just plain dumb of American politics in 2022.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ MORE POLITICS

Rep.-elect George Santos’ (R-N.Y.) general election opponent on Thursday called for a House investigation into Santos over biographical fabrications he told on the campaign trail.

“We call upon Congress and demand Congress conduct a House ethics investigation into George Santos,” Robert Zimmerman (D) said Thursday.

Zimmerman’s comments come a day after Republican District Attorney Anne Donnelly promised to prosecute Santos if he committed any crimes. Federal and state authorities are also probing Santos’s finances and fabricated backstory he spoke about while he ran for office — concerning where he worked, went to school and even volunteered (Politico).

▪ The Washington Post: A tiny newspaper on Long Island broke the Santos scandal, but no one paid attention.

▪ The New York Times: What can the House do to address Santos’s falsehoods?

▪ The Washington Post: Santos said 9/11 “claimed my mother’s life.” She died in 2016.

The outgoing Democratic Congress has proved a disappointment for immigration activists, writes The Hill’s Rafael Bernal. Over the past two years, a number of immigration reform bills simmered on the legislative back burner and sometimes caught flickers of national attention, but leadership never found the right time to give immigrants top billing.

Republicans are expected to crack down on environmental and socially conscious investing, known as environmental, social and governance investing (ESG), when they retake the House next year. The broad term encompasses attempts to invest ethically, and can include actions by the government, investment firms and banks or individuals. 

But GOP members argue that ESG could harm the fossil fuel industry — the main driver of climate change — and that the government should not be providing incentives to foster it (The Hill).

▪ The Hill: Treasury delays new restrictions for electric vehicle tax credits, drawing Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) ire.

▪ Politico: Senate GOP dealmakers depart just as Congress control splits.

As defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s (R) election challenge nears an end, GOP strategists suggest she may soon take a conservative media gig or perhaps pursue national political aspirations, writes The Hill’s Zach Schonfeld. Whatever path she takes, they stress that her staunch views won’t win over Arizona independents and moderate Republicans. 

The White House launched its first major broadside in response to incoming House Republicans who are likely to spearhead aggressive oversight of the administration. In letters to those lawmakers, a top lawyer for the president pledged that the administration would operate in good faith with them, but also said that oversight demands made by congressional Republicans during the last Congress would have to be restarted (Politico).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with scores of missiles in one of its heaviest barrages of the war, pressing further with a campaign to destroy civilian targets as officials in Moscow denounced the prospects of peace talks in the coming months (Bloomberg News and Reuters).

“Senseless barbarism,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “These are the only words that come to mind seeing Russia launch another missile barrage at peaceful Ukrainian cities ahead of New Year.” 

For months Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked Western countries for further air defense help to combat the Russian attacks. The United States last week announced nearly $2 billion in additional military aid, including the Patriot air defense system, which offers protection against aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping via video conference, where Putin said Xi would make a state visit to Russia in spring 2023, marking a public show of solidarity from Beijing for the war in Ukraine. Putin added the visit would “demonstrate to the world the closeness of Russian-Chinese relations” (Reuters and CNN).

▪ The Atlantic: How China is using Putin.

▪ Reuters: Most Ukraine regions suffer power outages after Russian missile barrage.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: The bravery and the recklessness of Ukraine’s improvised army.

Israel’s government was sworn in Thursday, putting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in charge of a right-wing and religiously conservative administration that will likely test ties with the United States and Europe, amid fears that it will undermine the country’s democracy and stability.

The policies the government — Israel’s most right-wing to date — has pledged to pursue have raised concerns about increased tensions with Palestinians, the undermining of Israel’s judicial independence and a rollback of protections for the LGBTQ and other marginalized communities (The New York Times).

Biden on Thursday marked Netanyahu’s swearing-in by saying that his administration will continue to support the two-state solution in the Middle East, warning that he will oppose policies that endanger it (The Hill).

The Washington Post: Pelé, Brazil’s “king of soccer,” dies at 82. Quick, agile, adept with both feet and laser-like with his headers, he helped Brazil win three World Cup titles.

OPINION

■ Sudden Russian death syndrome, by Elaine Godfrey, contributor, The Atlantic. https://bit.ly/3YRNvJH 

■ Why 2022 was a very good year, by Jonathan Alter, contributor, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3vn0zJt

WHERE AND WHEN

🎆 Happy New Year from us at Morning Report! We hope you had a wonderful 2022, and can’t wait to keep you informed about all the newsy things 2023 is sure to have in store. Kristina Karisch will be back in your inboxes on Jan. 3, and Alexis Simendinger returns to the newsletter on Jan. 4.

👉 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 on Tuesday, Jan. 3.

The Senate will convene at 9:30 a.m. for a pro forma session.

The president has no public schedule. He and first lady Jill Biden are in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands, with their family.

The vice president is in Los Angeles with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

The first lady is in St. Croix with the president.

ELSEWHERE

➤ AIR TRAVEL

Progressives are taking aim at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg over the Southwest Airlines holiday travel fiasco that continues to cause mass delays and cancellations across the country. 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a leading left-wing lawmaker, took to Twitter on Thursday to question the Transportation Department’s handling of the debacle, referencing a June recommendation from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asking department officials to demand airlines compensate travelers for canceled or significantly delayed flights and cover their basic expenses like food and accommodations (The Hill).

“We’ve never seen a situation, at least not on my watch, with this volume of disruptions, so this is going to take an extraordinary level of effort by Southwest,” Buttigieg said in a televised interview with ABC earlier this week. “And we will mount an extraordinary effort to make sure that they’re meeting their obligations.” 

Southwest, which has been caught in a vexing tangle of misplaced staff, thousands of canceled flights and technical problems since last week’s storm, said Thursday that it plans to return to normal operations on Friday “with minimal disruptions.” According to FlightAware, more than 2,300 of Southwest’s flights — or about 58 percent — were canceled on Thursday (The New York Times). The Wall Street Journal reports that employee volunteers rebuilt crew schedules manually after storm disruptions overwhelmed systems and led to thousands of canceled flights.

▪ Bloomberg News: Southwest’s silver lining: memories of gaffes fade fast.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Southwest promises to reimburse customers affected by meltdown.

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH 

Hospitals across the country have experienced near-constant crises since the pandemic hit in 2020, Vox reports. In addition to the persistent threat of COVID-19, there were unexpectedly brutal waves of respiratory syncytial virus last summer and again in the fall. Monkeypox put hospitals on high alert for a very different kind of infectious disease.

The fragility of the U.S. health care system was laid bare by the pandemic. Heading into 2023, there is little sign of relief for overworked and overwhelmed health care providers.

“The future is not next year. The future is 10 years from now that you’re working on right now,” said Terry Scoggin, CEO of Titus Regional Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, Texas. “It’s hard to get people to think about 10 years from now when they haven’t gotten over what happened 10 months ago.”

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) process for approving the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, was “rife with irregularities,” according to the report from a congressional investigation, which was released on Thursday. The report shows the agency’s actions “raise serious concerns about FDA’s lapses in protocol,” in approving a drug that harbored great concerns over efficacy. The 18-month investigation, initiated by two congressional committees after the FDA approved the drug, also strongly criticized Aduhelm’s manufacturer, Biogen (The New York Times).

▪ The Hill: Biden administration seeks to rescind Trump-era “conscience” protections for health workers.

▪ The New York Times: After half a century, Anthony Fauci prepares for life after government.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability 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): 1,092,456. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,530 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 …  👏👏👏 Bravo to winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz! We asked about political moments that defined 2022 and readers delivered. Thank you to everyone who’s answered the quiz for your thoughtful guesses each week.

Here’s who Googled or guessed their way into The Hill’s championship trivia team: Paul Harris, Patrick Kavanagh, Cliff Grulke, Bob McLellan, Jane Heaton, Charles Hantl, Amanda Fisher, David Peikin, Richard Fanning, Barton Schoenfeld, Neil Bergsman, Harry Strulovici, Vita Treano, Steven Abern, Mike Purdy, Barbara Golian, Jack Barshay, Randall Patrick, Dom Sacco, Steve James, Joan Domingues, Corinne Khederian, Jerry LaCamera, Stan Wasser and Luther Berg.

They knew that when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) mixed up the Gestapo and the Spanish cold soup gazpacho — resulting in the ever-memorable term “gazpacho police” — she was criticizing routine security checks by the Capitol Police.

They knew that prior to assuming the presidency in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky had a career as a comedian. 

They knew Liz Truss cemented her record-breaking short term as U.K. prime minister when she resigned after only 44 days in office. 

And finally, they knew that much of Sen.-elect John Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) social media strategy hinged on trolling Republican opponent Mehmet Oz’s long-term residence in New Jersey.

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!

House majority gives Republicans a chance to take on ESG investing 

Republicans are expected to crack down on environmental and socially conscious investing, known as ESG, when they retake the House next year. 

ESG, which stands for environmental, social and governance investing, is a broad term for attempts to invest ethically, and can include actions by the government, investment firms and banks or individuals. 

For example, the Biden administration recently put forward a regulation that enables money managers to consider “the economic effects of climate change” in investments that they oversee. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed requiring publicly traded companies to disclose how much they contribute to climate change.

ESG can also include decisions by investment firms, banks or individuals to steer money away from companies whose practices or products they consider unethical or bad for the environment. 

Proponents of ESG see it as a way for people to help themselves do well financially by investing money into companies seen as having a positive impact, or that meet a set of environmental and social standards.  

Republicans argue that ESG could harm the fossil fuel industry, and that the government should not be providing incentives to foster it. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change, so entities operating under this philosophy may not put as much money into this industry as they would have otherwise. 

Republicans have also raised concerns that money managers who take these factors into account may do so at the expense of profits for their clients. 

Patrick McHenry (N.C.), the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, told The Hill in a statement that committee Republicans will “work together to conduct appropriate oversight of activist regulators and market participants who have an outsized impact.” 

He specifically called out a proposed SEC regulation that would require companies to disclose their emissions and the risks that climate change poses to their business.  

“This is contradictory to established law that already requires companies to disclose information if it is material to investors,” McHenry said.  

Proponents of the SEC proposal have argued that the rule will help investors understand the complex impacts that climate change could have on financial markets.  

Earlier this year, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee also took aim at this rule.  

In the minority, the GOP had little ability to do much about ESG, but the House majority will give them a more powerful platform.

House GOP lawmakers will have oversight authority through which they can request or in some cases subpoena documents and conduct hearings on a wide range of topics they hope to examine.  

ESG is likely to be a focus, given broad Republican condemnation of the investing practice.

Joseph Brazauskas, former counsel on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said that he would expect that the party will take a close look at ESG even as they also focus on other initiatives,

“They’ve got a big staff over there and they’re obviously working on a lot of different issues,” Brazauskas said of the House Oversight Committee.  

The Financial Services Committee is also expected to play a big role.  

And at the state level, Republicans are also putting their sights on ESG.

Earlier this month, the state of Florida said it would pull $2 billion that was being managed by the firm BlackRock over the issue, calling the company’s position on ESG “undemocratic.” BlackRock argued that it was actually Florida that was putting politics ahead of finances “given the strong returns BlackRock has delivered to Florida taxpayers.” 

A 2021 meta-analysis from New York University found ESG to be generally associated with better financial performance for stock holders.

In Congress, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) are attempting to repeal a Biden administration rule that eased restrictions on considering ESG factors when firms manage retirement investments. 

While the specific effort is unlikely to pass through the divided Senate, Barr told The Hill that he and his colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee are likely to take a hard look at the issue.  

“Environmental, social, and governance represents everything that is wrong with woke capitalism,” he said in a statement. “ESG is cancer to our capital markets and will receive serious oversight scrutiny from me and my House Financial Services Committee colleagues in the 118th Congress.”

Barr’s office also said that the congressman plans on “expanding on” a bill he introduced that would specify that investment advisers can only take monetary factors into account. The office declined to elaborate.  

Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee made antitrust arguments about ESG investing, signaling another potential line of inquiry.  

Brazauskas, who now represents energy clients at law firm Bracewell LLP, said that such investigations typically begin with the government, but could later extend to actors in the private sector.  

“Sending letters to the private sector and backed up by subpoena authority you tend to get information and documents a lot quicker than you do from the federal government,” he said. “There’s always the possibility that private entities will be wrapped up in any sort of oversight.” 

Some environment and ESG advocates told The Hill, meanwhile, that they see the Republican attacks on the investing practice as the latest battleground in the ongoing and highly partisan battle over climate change.  

Jessye Waxman, a senior campaign representative with the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said she sees the situation as “those who are in the pockets of fossil fuel interests” pushing back against “the inevitable low-carbon transition.”  

Waxman said that so far, GOP pushback has had “more of a chilling effect than we might have anticipated,” citing examples like Vanguard’s recent exit from an industry climate initiative.   

Vanguard said at the time that it made the move to clarify that the company “speaks independently on matters of importance to our investors,” among other reasons.  

Yet Waxman noted that financial markets are global and said overall she believes the financial sector is making climate progress.  

“Even with this backlash, financial institutions are still moving forward, even in the United States,” she said. 

Source: TEST FEED1