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Majorities in both parties say democracy in danger of collapse: poll

Majorities of Democratic and Republican respondents in a new poll said that they think U.S. democracy is in danger of collapse.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that 67 percent of all of those surveyed said democracy is in danger, up 9 points from January. 

Seventy-two percent of registered Democratic voters and 70 percent of Republicans expressed fears about the future of U.S. democracy, as did 69 percent of independents. 

The fears are higher among women, at just over three-quarters, than among men, at 58 percent — and higher by 1 point among white adults than among Black adults, 70 to 69 percent.

The results follow polling showing concern about the nation’s democracy, including a recent survey in which threats to democracy ranked as the top concern for a plurality of voters. 

President Biden is expected to give a primetime political address Thursday evening to argue against the “extremist threat to our democracy” he blames on former President Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday said Biden is giving the speech “because he thinks our democracy is at risk.”

Biden has long pushed against the positions of the former president and his base, but has been ramping up his own rhetoric ahead of this year’s midterms.

At a Democratic National Committee event in Maryland last week, Biden told a crowd that “Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans have made their choice — to go backwards full of anger, violence, hate, and division.”

“Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” he told the crowd. 

The Quinnipiac University poll of 1,584 U.S. adults, conducted Aug. 25-29, has a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden approval rating up 9 points since July

President Biden’s approval rating hit 40 percent during the month of August in a new Quinnipiac University poll, a 9-point spike from just one month ago. 

The new poll, published on Thursday, found that 40 percent of respondents approve of the job Biden is doing in the Oval Office,  rising from the 31 percent low approval rating he received from Americans in the same poll in July. 

Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president. 

Along party lines, 83 percent of respondents who identified as Democrats said they approve of the job Biden is doing, an 11 point increase from last month’s poll. 

Ninety-two percent of Republican respondents said they disapprove of the job Biden is doing, while 55 percent of Independent respondents also disapproved. 

When asked about Biden’s handling of current issues, 50 percent of respondents approve of Biden’s approach toward the COVID-19 pandemic, and 44 percent of respondents approve of his approach toward climate change. 

Twenty-seven percent of respondents approve of Biden’s approach to the situation at the Mexican border, the lowest reading he has received in the questionnaire, the poll said. 

The poll comes as Biden and his administration have seen a slew of legislative victories in the past month which includes the passing of his climate, health care, and tax package and his announcement last week of his administration’s initiative to cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans. 

Fifty-three percent of respondents approve of the administration’s plan to cancel some student loan debt for many Americans, while 43 percent of those surveyed disapprove of the new initiative. 

The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted from August 25-29 with a total of 1,419 respondents. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia and Ukraine are caught in a mutually desperate stalemate

Despite periodic predictions that either Ukrainian or Russian forces are on the verge of a battlefield breakthrough, there can be little doubt that the war in Ukraine has ground to bloody stalemate. Neither side possesses, nor is likely to possess in the foreseeable future, the kind of decisive military advantage that would allow it to prevail on the battlefield and realize even its more modest geopolitical objectives.

Nor do either of the belligerents possess the staying power to continue the war at the current level of intensity for much longer. Russia faces economic and political obstacles to the kind of mass mobilization prolonged conflict would require, while Ukraine’s Western backers are unlikely to be willing or able to continue supporting Kyiv in the face of gas shortages, economic woes and the exhaustion of their own stockpiles of arms and ammunition.

This being the case, the only real question is whether the current operational reality can best be characterized as a “mutually hurting stalemate” or a “mutually desperate stalemate.”

If it is a mutually hurting stalemate, then the conditions are ripening for productive negotiations to begin. A mutually hurting stalemate, of course, is technically a situation in which both belligerents find themselves locked in a conflict that neither can win unilaterally and that is so painful to both that they judge it more advantageous to start negotiating rather than continue fighting.

But we are not yet in such a stalemate — indeed, we are not even close to the point where Kyiv and Moscow will judge that there is more to be gained than lost by joining their foes at the negotiating table.

On the Russian side, the levels of pain remain high but bearable. The international sanctions have hurt Russia, but not as dramatically as many had hoped; and Russian battlefield losses, while eye-popping, have not been back breaking. Moreover, Moscow’s ability to hang in the fight has been reinforced by the belief (hope?) that both Ukrainian resolve and Western support will not survive the coming winter. Bottom line? While Russia is hurting, the pain remains bearable.

And that pain is certainly more bearable – to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies, at least, if not the average soldier at the front – than conceding to Kyiv even a “small win” at the negotiating table. The Russian leadership simply has too much invested in the success of their “special military operation” to agree to return even to the January 2022 status quo ante, let alone to that of January 2014.

Similarly, on the Ukrainian side, the pain of the current stalemate remains politically sustainable. Painful? Without doubt. The physical devastation and human suffering visited on Ukraine by the Russian invaders is without doubt cataclysmic. But not unbearable. As with the Russian regime, the Ukrainian leadership continues to be able to sustain the war politically and militarily, buoyed by the belief (hope?) that the other side will crack before they do and that all that is required for victory, therefore, is to hang in the fight just a little bit longer.

So, while the situation on the ground in Ukraine is obviously a stalemate, and while it can fairly be described as mutually hurting, it cannot really be characterized as a “mutually hurting stalemate” in the technical sense described above. And that, I would suggest, means that it is evolving into something far more ominous — something I will call a mutually desperate stalemate.

In this form of stalemate, one or more of the belligerents comes to consider both battlefield deadlock and diplomatic negotiations to be unbearably costly, driving it to desperately seek a third option — one that may be risky and even dangerous but that also entails the prospect of ending the stalemate on favorable terms.

The logic here is simple: Where one of the belligerents knows that the status quo will become increasingly costly and foreseeably untenable, “rolling the dice,” while risky, is the most rational course of action because it at least creates the possibility of salvaging a “small win,” even if it will not yield a decisive victory.

That’s the risky part. The dangerous part is that rolling the dice is likely to involve some sort of escalation. On Kyiv’s part this might entail horizontal escalation involving attacks on Russian assets in Crimea or Russia proper, or both. On Moscow’s part it might similarly entail horizontal escalation, though in the form of strikes against NATO members providing arms, ammunition and other forms of aid to Ukraine. But it might also involve vertical escalation in the form of nuclear strikes, either for demonstration purposes or in earnest.

Either way, the potential for catastrophe – for both the belligerents and others – is obvious. The war could become even more destructive, possibly even widening to include NATO members, and conceivably even spiraling into a nuclear war between Russia and the United States.

We’re not there yet, of course. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have reached the point of mutually desperate stalemate. But it is a looming probability, and one that may be upon us sooner rather than later.

Indeed, I would suggest that, given the way this conflict has unfolded to date, the only real questions now are: When will we achieve this state of mutually desperate stalemate, which side will succumb first and what will the ensuing escalation look like?

Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter @aalatham.

Source: TEST FEED1

How the IRA can supercharge local climate action and strengthen communities

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the most ambitious climate legislation in U.S. history, was signed into law last month. Not only will it help advance critical climate action, it will also bring huge opportunities right to the doorsteps of Americans across the country.

This new law offers a plethora of policies that will fight the climate crisis, improve air quality and help all communities benefit from clean energy in their neighborhoods and homes. The passage of this national legislation is game-changing for the climate and for people. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1 billion metric tons in 2030 — 10 times more climate impact than any other single piece of legislation ever enacted — and it’s the first to put the needs of disadvantaged communities front and center.

Pollution affects everyone’s health, but low-income communities and communities of color have historically been most burdened with negative health impacts. The bill will deploy clean energy at scale over the next decade, and in doing so reduce particulate pollution from fossil fuels to avoid up to 3,900 premature deaths and up to 100,000 asthma attacks annually by 2030. 

Tax credits are one key element of the bill that will drive clean energy production. They are available for the next 10 years and designed to benefit communities, support well-paying jobs, reduce pollution and shrink energy costs for consumers. According to recent analyses, the IRA’s power sector tax credits could translate into up to $278 billion in electricity cost savings, with the average household saving up to $220 annually through lower energy bills and less costly goods and services more generally.

In contrast to earlier versions of the credits, these are directly payable to non-taxpaying entities such as states, tribes, municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives, enabling them to drive clean energy projects in their localities without having to enter into complex financing arrangements. This is critically important, as it enables more of the federal funds to go directly to “steel in the ground” in the communities where they are most needed.

To benefit workers and disadvantaged communities, the tax incentives are five times larger for projects that meet prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements, which will encourage new well-paying jobs and help us train the next generation of workers. The IRA is predicted to create almost 1 million jobs between now and 2030. Bonus incentives are also provided for clean energy projects sited in or benefiting low-income communities, those that are historic victims of environmental injustice and communities at risk of losing fossil fuel jobs or revenues in the energy transition.

Communities will also be able to shape projects to address specific environmental justice concerns through grants that can be used for everything from reducing pollution in low-income communities and communities of color to increasing transit options and reconnecting communities previously separated by highway expansions. In addition, a $27 billion clean energy technology accelerator, or green bank, will invest in state and local financing institutions to rapidly deploy clean technologies and leverage private sector dollars — with a focus on projects in disadvantaged communities that would otherwise lack access to financing. 

At the household level, homeowners will directly benefit from an influx of tax credits and rebates for energy efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies (including heat pumps, EVs, solar panels, electric ovens, induction stoves and more) that will enable them to save money while helping to address climate change and pollution in their communities. More than 200 local governments have set community-wide 100% clean energy goals, and these residential incentives will be critical for encouraging homeowners to take action to help meet these goals. Savings for consumers can be substantial — on the order of $1,800 per year if they take advantage of multiple incentives for heat pumps, water heaters, electric vehicles and solar panels.

So, how can cities and towns take advantage of these federal programs while also advancing equity? Communities don’t need to go it alone — they can learn from peers, collaborate with states and access many technical assistance programs underway. To prioritize community needs, they can hold listening sessions to understand disadvantaged populations’ unique challenges, needs and priorities. Through these conversations, the local government can create a realistic plan that prioritizes projects that have already received local buy-in. In addition, cities that are new to these types of projects can learn from those who have already been directing funding specifically for climate and energy projects within disadvantaged communities.

The IRA is estimated to put the U.S.’s target of cutting emissions in half by 2030 within reach. With the passage of this new law, communities are closer than ever before to reaping the economic, health and climate benefits for all their residents, including those most vulnerable. By taking advantage of these new opportunities at our fingertips, we can make a better future start today.

Lori Bird is director of World Resources Institute’s U.S. Energy Program and Polsky chair for renewable energy.

Source: TEST FEED1

School safety concerns rise to highest level in 20 years: poll

Parents’ concerns for their children’s safety at school are at the highest level in over two decades, according to a new poll. 

The Gallup survey released Thursday found that 44 percent of respondents shared concerns about their children’s safety in schools, while 56 percent of those surveyed had no concerns. 

School safety concerns are the highest since March, 2001, Gallup noted, when 45 percent of respondents expressed concerns. 

Parents’ concerns hit a peak in 1999, when 55 percent of respondents expressed fear for their children’s safety in public schools in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, where two students killed 13 of their fellow classmates and educators. 

Parental fear fell in the aftermath of Columbine but surged to 45 percent in 2001 after the shooting at Santana High School in Santee, California, according to the survey giant. 

Twenty percent of parents in the new poll also reported that their children said they felt unsafe at their schools, an 8-point increase from August, 2019.

The Gallup survey comes in the wake of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas earlier this year, which resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two schoolteachers. 

The poll was conducted from August 1 to August 23 with a total of 1,006 respondents. The poll’s margin of error was 4 percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Instead of lobbying Congress, the NCAA should embrace the free market

College football revelry will be in full swing on Saturday when teams kick off the 2022 season, but there’s one tradition that needs to end — the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) insistence that its players are amateurs. Players are now free to earn money from their name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts but NCAA policies are preventing them from realizing their full market potential. Federal policymakers should resist calls to legislate these misguided rules and the NCAA should embrace the free market instead. 

With annual revenues exceeding $18.7 billion, college sports are big business. Power Five schools alone — the 69 programs competing in the NCAA’s most prestigious conferences — rake in about $8.3 billion each year from various sources, such as the Big 10’s new seven-year media deal valued at $1.2 billion annually.

But players receive nothing in the form of wages, despite the fact that the average economic value of a Power Five football player is estimated to be $1.3 million over a four-year collegiate career. That’s because the NCAA has long held that its athletes are amateurs, not professionals, strictly forbidding most forms of compensation and threatening players and programs with harsh penalties for violating its bylaws. 

This model was dealt a blow in last year’s NCAA v. Alston decision, when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion raised antitrust concerns, observing, “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.” While the unanimous decision was limited in scope, finding the NCAA can’t limit education-related payments to athletes, Kavanaugh warned of an “overdue course correction.” 

The Alston decision pushed the NCAA to establish a temporary NIL policy and at least 28 states have passed laws enshrining collegiate athletes’ rights to earn NIL compensation so they can pursue endorsement deals, autograph sales, and other money-making ventures that were previously banned by the NCAA. But the NCAA’s interim NIL policy and guidance clings to its amateurism fairy tale, making it difficult for players to get the best deals possible. 

Notably, the NCAA still prohibits recruits from communicating with third-party boosters, and NIL agreements can’t be tied to enrollment at a particular institution. This makes it hard to shop around for the best deal and has resulted in one-sided contracts with unfavorable terms for athletes, according to reports by The Athletic. Under the rules, deals must be based on the value each player brings to an NIL agreement, meaning they can’t get extra money just because they’re the star quarterback or a heralded recruit.

The NCAA, it seems, is hell-bent on capping how much players can earn from NIL, claiming the rules promote competitive balance by putting schools on an even playing field for recruits. But considering donations account for 24 percent of Power Five college athletic revenues, it’s more likely they just don’t want competition for this $2 billion funding pie that helps fund elaborate facilities, multimillion-dollar salaries, and expanding bureaucracies. 

For example, the University of Alabama is making $600 million in upgrades to its athletics facilities and recently awarded Nick Saban with a $93.6 million contract. While boosters have plenty of cash to throw around, NIL deals could eat into athletic department budgets, threatening their lavish status quo.   

But the NCAA knows its rules may be on shaky legal grounds, which is why they’re lobbying Congress for a federal policy that would preserve their monopoly. Ultimately, they’re seeking an antitrust exemption to prevent an onslaught of lawsuits once they start enforcing NIL restrictions with sanctions and other penalties. 

For anyone who spends their fall Saturdays watching football, inviting the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to regulate college sports is a recipe for disaster. Americans need less — not more — politics in their lives. But more importantly, federal legislation likely would codify an unjust system that shortchanges players to the benefit of the NCAA and its 1,100 member colleges and universities. 

Rather than looking to Washington for solutions, the NCAA should embrace the free market by letting boosters and players agree to whatever financial terms work best for them. This is how the rest of society organizes itself and collegiate athletes should be no different. 

Aaron Smith is the director of education policy at Reason Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @AaronGarthSmith.

Source: TEST FEED1

Are Russians collectively guilty of the regime’s crimes?

Recent talk of travel restrictions for all Russians has produced a debate about the morality of such a step. Is it right for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s opponents to be lumped together with Putin’s supporters? Isn’t a blanket prohibition unjust?

The answer is that it depends on whether Russians do or do not collectively share some trait that would warrant such a punitive measure. Obviously, it can’t be the mere fact of being Russian or speaking Russian or living in Russia.

The only trait that could justify collective opprobrium would have to be behavioral. If all Russians acted in a manner that enabled, promoted or directly caused the Putin regime’s crimes, then all Russians would be guilty or responsible collectively for those crimes.

Sergey Radchenko, the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has argued that Russians aren’t collectively responsible for any crimes: “There are many Russians who shamefully support Putin’s hideous aggression in Ukraine — directly, by waging war, and indirectly, for example by refusing to condemn Russia, or by maintaining false detachment as if the war is no concern of theirs. I will judge them individually, and let myself be judged, too, but only to the extent that they and I are personally responsible for specific crimes and misdeeds.”

Significantly, he insists that collective responsibility or guilt is a totalitarian notion (tell that to Alexander the Great when he razed cities), thereby overlooking the inconvenient fact that the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the German theologian Martin Niemöller, and the German philosopher Karl Jaspers all spoke of German collective guilt for Nazi crimes. They may have been wrong to do so, but their anti-Nazi and anti-totalitarian credentials are impeccable.

In fact, while the notion of collective guilt is no longer accepted by most Germans, they do acknowledge that they share a collective responsibility for Adolf Hitler’s crimes. As a leading German politician recently put it: “Our collective responsibility remains. It extends to future generations and to Germans whose families came to Germany after National Socialism.”

In sum, if the Germans could have felt collectively guilty, or still feel collectively responsible for Hitler’s crimes, so, too, can the Russians. They may have participated directly in killing innocent Ukrainians (or Georgians or Chechens or Crimean Tatars …) or they may have supported the killing of these people. Support could be expressed publicly, as in taking part in pro-regime demonstrations, voting for Putin, or smearing a “Z” on some wall, or it could be expressed privately, as in feeling pleasure that Crimea is “ours” again, lauding Putin for making Russia great, or failing to express outrage at the regime’s crimes. This last action — or, rather, the absence thereof — is important. One can become complicit in a crime by perpetrating it, supporting it, or failing to condemn it. Commission of crimes is punishable by law. Supporting or failing to condemn them is not illegal, but it is immoral.

Of course, the mere fact that individual Russians may be morally complicit in crimes does not yet translate into collective guilt or collective responsibility. Numbers matter, as do sustained patterns of behavior. Germans overwhelmingly supported the Hitler regime and overwhelmingly failed to condemn its actions between 1933, when Hitler came to power, and 1945, when World War II ended and the Nazi regime collapsed. To be sure, the Nazi repressive apparatus was efficient and terrifying. Although the very real possibility of being arrested for some minor protest affected what Germans could or could not have done under Hitler’s regime, we still regard them as collectively having “fallen.”

Putin and his criminal regime have enjoyed fantastic levels of support in Russia for the past two decades. His popularity has often approached 90 percent and usually remains in the 60-80 percent range. Russians cheered when he violated international law, invaded the Donbas, and annexed Crimea in 2014. The war against Ukraine provoked some initial demonstrations and mass flight from Russia, but Putin’s popularity remains distressingly high even as thousands of Russians are losing their lives in Ukraine. Many Russians openly support the looting, killing, raping and, ultimately, genocide in Ukraine.

If 100 percent of all Russians must be guilty of some action in order for their guilt or responsibility to be deemed collective, then Russians cannot be collectively guilty or responsible. But neither can Germans. If we loosen the requirement and substitute “an overwhelming majority” for 100 percent, then collective guilt or responsibility becomes plausible.

What, then, should Russians do? A courageous Russian soldier, Pavel Filatyev, who recently published a scathing critique of the war and regime, has an answer. He’s opposed to apologizing to Ukrainians. One apologizes “when one steps on someone’s foot. At the moment, to say ‘excuse me’ is insufficient.”

What would be sufficient? The international community and the Hague will have to decide that. In the meantime, Russians could help their cause by expressing collective shame and outrage at the Putin regime’s genocidal behavior. Both shame and outrage entail no risk and can be expressed easily by an overwhelming majority. They won’t end Putin’s regime, but they’d be a start toward Russia’s moral regeneration.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The Hill's Morning Report — Trump’s battle with DOJ intensifies; Palin loses

Former President Trump on Wednesday issued a last minute plea to a federal judge for an independent review of documents seized by the FBI more than three weeks ago as the fight between the former president and investigators continues to rage on. 

Trump’s lawyers said in a Wednesday night filing that a special master is needed to determine if any of the materials seized are subject to executive privilege in the name of fairness. If “left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation,” according to the former president’s legal team. 

Trump maintains he did nothing wrong in possessing cartons of White House documents at his residence, even classified or top secret materials, for more than a year. The Justice Department, in court filings, has described possible criminal obstruction without identifying Trump or anyone else as a target.

Lawyers for Trump assert that the Justice Department’s view that it screened documents found at Mar-a-Lago for attorney-client privilege now requires independent court corroboration, along with backup review by the former president’s representatives. 

“There is no guarantee that the ‘limited set’ of potentially privileged materials identified by the Privilege Review Team constitutes all privileged materials among the Seized Materials,” Trump’s attorneys Lindsey Halligan, James Trusty and Evan Corcoran to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon (Politico).

Trump’s lawyers also assert the government’s search by the FBI was unnecessary and occurred in “the midst of the standard give-and-take” between Trump and the National Archives and Records Administration. The Justice Department “gratuitously” released information publicly, including a photograph of classified documents seized from the home, the former president’s lawyers assert (The Associated Press).

The former president’s team notably did not claim in its push for a special master that while in office, Trump declassified the documents in question. Chris Kise, the former Florida solicitor general recently hired by Trump to join his legal team, did not sign the filing submitted to the court. 

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump seemingly admitted that he knew sensitive documents were contained in cartons at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 at the time of the FBI’s search. A Trump lawyer told the government in June in writing that no such documents remained on the property. 

“They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet,” Trump wrote on social media, referring to a Justice Department photograph taken during the search and submitted to the court.

A hearing on the question of an independent special master is scheduled today in Florida. On Saturday, a federal judge said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint an independent reviewer, but allowed the Justice Department an opportunity to respond. The Justice Department on Tuesday said it had evidence of efforts at Trump’s residence to conceal classified documents despite a grand jury subpoena in May to produce records removed from the White House and in the former president’s possession. 

▪ The Hill: Trump team says sensitive info “should have never been cause for alarm” in latest filing.

▪ The Associated Press: Republicans notably silent, split as Trump probe deepens.

▪ Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill: Justice Department details path of obstruction culminating in search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

▪ CBS News: Timeline: The government’s efforts to get sensitive documents back from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

▪ The Washington Post analysis: The telling gap between what Trump says and what his lawyers argue.

▪ The New York Times: Here’s how the Justice Department’s photograph of sensitive documents found at Mar-a-Lago, released to a court late on Tuesday, came about. 

On the political scene, Trump’s impact on a number of midterm races is not what he had hoped and as a result, some GOP candidates have created a bit of distance with the former president. 

As The Hill’s Max Greenwood and Caroline Vakil detail, certain Trump-endorsed candidates, including Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Abe Hamadeh,  the GOP nominee to become Arizona attorney general, have scrubbed Trump’s presence from their social media accounts following their primary victories. But the list of conservative candidates appearing with the former president during a Saturday rally in Wilkes Barre, Pa., includes Oz (Pocono Record).  

Democrats have more confidence about sharing a campaign stage with President Biden, including Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). All have appeared with or plan to join the president at events.

Struggles on the Senate map for Republicans have also forced party leaders to hit the reset button on midterm playbook as momentum grows across the aisle. According to The Hill’s Mychael Schnell, a cadre of Senate GOP candidates have struggled to gain traction in the general election cycle, having emerged from primaries in a weaker position than had been initially hoped. 

Rhetorically, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) recent comment lamenting “candidate quality” on the right has shone a light on the uphill climb for the party to retake the upper chamber after two years in the minority. 

▪ The Washington Post: Billionaire investor Peter Thiel rebuffs McConnell over Senate rescue in Arizona. 

▪ University of Virginia’s Center for Politics: Senate races in Pennsylvania and Arizona moved to “lean Democratic.”

▪ The New Republic: Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) shadow presidential campaign is frustrating his fellow Republicans.

On the House side, Rep. Charlie Crist (Fla.), the Democratic nominee for the Florida governorship, resigned his seat in Congress on Wednesday as his campaign hits the homestretch in his bid to unseat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) (The Hill).

Hours after Crist’s resignation, House Democrats regained their three-seat margin when Democrat Mary Peltola was projected to defeat Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich to win the Alaska special election to serve out the remainder of the term of the late Rep. Don Young (R).

In the second round of the ranked-choice contest, Peltola won with 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent against Palin, the state’s former governor who Trump endorsed. The win also means that Peltola is the first native Alaskan elected to Congress (The Hill). 

Related Articles

▪ Hanna Trudo, The Hill: Progressives aim to prove they can win in Congress — and at the ballot box.

▪ NBC News: Lawmakers warn of potential political violence in campaign’s homestretch.

▪ The Hill: The White House calls out DeSantis, Rep. Margorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for political comments referencing physical violence.

▪ The Associated Press: Michigan election board rejects abortion rights initiative. 

LEADING THE DAY

➤ ADMINISTRATION

🍎 With schools across America welcoming students back to classrooms in August and this month, the administration on Wednesday focused on the nation’s shortage of teachers, which challenges local school districts and millions of parents who recoil at the thought of another school year in which their children are instructed by parades of substitutes and recruits with scant educational experience.

First lady Jill Biden and members of the president’s Cabinet joined leaders of the nation’s teachers’ unions at an event in the Roosevelt Room to talk about the federal government’s ideas to encourage fixes, including higher pay supported with federal dollars dispersed to states as part of the American Rescue Plan. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh recently wrote to state and local officials encouraging them to pay competitive wages for education positions and to establish teacher training programs to recruit and retain educators (The Hill). 

The first lady, a community college teacher by profession, announced the administration’s partnership with private-sector recruiting companies, such as ZipRecruiter, to help schools advertise their available K-12 positions. Indeed.com will set up virtual hiring fairs and Handshake will help recruit college undergraduates who are studying education to enter the field after graduation (USA Today).

The president photo bombed the meeting, offering a walk-in quip for his wife: “Whatever she says, I agree with.”

ABC News: In the Charlotte, N.C., school district, the school year began with 400 teacher vacancies. 

A recent USA Today analysis of existing research suggests many of the U.S. teacher vacancies are related to shortages that predated the pandemic and concentrated in schools serving large percentages of nonwhite students or children living in poverty. Meanwhile, another study found persistent and widespread shortages of non-teaching personnel, such as bus drivers and custodians.

Meanwhile, the administration is expected to unveil applications in October for eligible student loan borrowers to register for income-specific debt forgiveness, which was announced by the president in August. Borrowers will have a limited time to apply if they want to see the relief take effect before the end of the year, and even then, experts believe the federal process could be challenging and time-consuming for applicants (The Hill).

One big consideration for some borrowers eager to see their student loan debts erased is whether their windfall will be subject to taxation in their states, a potential unwelcome surprise that won’t occur at the federal level (Forbes and CBS News).

The president’s plan, which did not go through Congress, could add tax bills as high as $1,100 for student loan borrowers in some states, according to a recent Tax Foundation analysis.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL 

A United Nations inspection team this morning was making its way to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant under heavy guard and wearing bulletproof vests when news reports described shelling by Russian forces along the agreed-upon route. 

“Having come so far, we are not stopping,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said, according to the Kyiv Independent. The Ukraine Foreign Ministry said Russia was in “violation of its commitments.”

The largest nuclear facility in Europe is occupied by Russian forces and still operated under duress by Ukrainian staff. The IAEA team is attempting to safeguard the site and prevent a radiation catastrophe amid a war. Kyiv and Moscow, which each agreed to emergency inspections, traded accusations on Wednesday about shelling near the complex (The Associated Press).

Russia continued Wednesday to use energy as a stealth weapon against its adversaries, which are also its customers, halting natural gas supplies via Europe’s key supply route and intensifying an economic battle between Moscow and Brussels. The move raises the prospects of recession and energy rationing ahead in some of the region’s richest countries (Reuters).

The European Union on Wednesday made it harder for Russian citizens to gain entry into the 27-nation bloc. After failing to put in place a full tourist ban on Russians entering the EU, the nations instead decided to make it more arduous for them to secure short-term visas to enter Europe’s passport-free travel zone. The EU made it tougher for Russian officials and businesspeople to enter the bloc in May (The Associated Press).

The funeral for former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev will take place on Saturday, Reuters reports. The Associated Press noted that the Nobel Peace Prize winner who died Tuesday is to lie in state Saturday in Moscow’s House of Unions. That building, located between the Bolshoi Theater and the Duma, for decades held the bodies of deceased Soviet leaders, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. ​​Gorbachev is to be buried next to the grave of his wife Raisa in the cemetery of Novodevichy Convent in southwest Moscow, the resting place of the ousted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and former President Boris Yeltsin.

The wrong plane out of Afghanistan (The Washington Post). 

OPINION

■ In politics, sometimes it’s riskier to keep a promise than break one, by Charles Lane, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3Rcn0dK 

■ Be skeptical of the Democratic comeback in the 2022 midterms, by Karl Rove, columnist, The Wall Street Journal. https://on.wsj.com/3Q704uK

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet on Friday at 10 a.m. for a pro forma session and return to work in the Capitol on Sept. 13.

The Senate convenes on Friday at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will travel to Philadelphia to deliver an 8 p.m. ET speech to the nation about protecting democracy, including voting and other rights. 

Vice President Harris will fly to Durham, N.C., for a 2 p.m. tour of the Durham Center for Senior Life, where she will speak an hour later about the Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions to lower prescription drug costs for seniors. In the evening in Durham, Harris will speak at a fundraising event at a private residence and then depart the city at 7:20 p.m. to return to Washington.

The first lady has a busy itinerary, ending in Philadelphia to watch the president’s speech tonight. But first, she will speak at the launch of a college Apprenticeship Ambassador Initiative at the White House at 2 p.m. She will deliver pre-recorded remarks at 6:30 p.m. for teachers and school staff at a back-to-school town hall hosted by the White House and the two major teachers’ unions. 

Economic indicators: The Labor Department will report at 8:30 a.m. on filings for unemployment benefits in the week ending Aug. 27. (Analysts on Friday will pore over the government’s jobs report for all of August). According to payroll company ADP, the private sector added 132,000 jobs in August, down from almost 270,000 in July (The Hill).

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2 p.m.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler speaks to reporters at 9 a.m. at a roundtable event hosted by The Christian Science Monitor in Washington.

🖥  Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE

➤ STATE WATCH

Texas has a water problem. As The Hill’s Saul Elbein writes, the Lone Star State is finally paying attention to the threats that extreme drought and flooding pose to the state’s long-term water supply. It is one aspect of the danger that weather — strengthened by a warming climate — poses to Texas and to native Texans. “We are already the most vulnerable state in the country to these extreme weather disasters,” climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe told The Hill. “And then we have climate change loading the dice against us.” 

▪ The Hill: Five reasons extreme weather is bigger in Texas.

▪ Los Angeles Times: Extreme heat wave pushing California power grid to limit, with rolling blackouts possible.

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved customized booster shots developed by Pfizer and Moderna to combat the most prevalent sub variants of omicron, known as BA.4 and BA.5, as well as the original COVID-19 virus (The Hill). 

In an era of extraordinary advances in tackling infectious diseases, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, surgery, disease prevention and expertise offered in private and public hospitals, the United States fell behind in 2021. U.S. life expectancy dropped by nearly a year from 2020, primarily the result of COVID-19, but also because of drug overdoses, suicides and heart and liver diseases (USA Today).

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,046,244. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 383, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

➤ SPORTS

The U.S. Open crowd on Wednesday night was enthusiastically behind Serena Williams, who needed three sets to topple Anett Kontaveit, the No. 2 seed, in the second round of what could be Williams’ final magical run through a major championship.

In front of another capacity crowd on a hot New York night inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, Williams, 40, upset the younger Kontaveit 7-6 (7-4), 2-6, 6-2. The six-time Open champion dug deep, relying on the power and precision that has helped to define her game for years (ESPN). Celebrity fans including Tiger Woods, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, Spike Lee and Dionne Warwick looked on. And in the stands was Williams’ daughter Olympia, who celebrates her 5th birthday today.  

THE CLOSER

Take Our Morning Report Quiz

And finally … 👃 It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by recent headlines featuring odiferous events, we’re looking for smart guesses on the nose, or, news.

Email your responses to asimendinger@thehill.com and/or aweaver@thehill.com, and please add “Quiz” to subject lines. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.

In the United Kingdom, who launched a line of perfume in August that boasts “top notes of geranium, lavender and hyacinth”?

1. Boris Johnson
2. Prince Charles
3. Elton John
4. David Beckham

In Sweden, which delicacy, described by some as smelling like “bad eggs” and a “decomposed body,” left fans lined up outside supermarkets last week to score some of the nation’s scarce supply?

1. Köttbullar
2. Illaluktande sko
3. Surströmming
4. Västerbotten

In Italy, Mayor Roberto Gualtieri this week landed on the front page of The New York Times because what is fouling Rome’s air?

1. Homeless encampments
2. Garbage
3. Industrial smokestacks
4. Tiber river

In the U.S., residents in South Florida and near San Francisco Bay in the past two weeks have been upset about surpluses of which stinky culprit(s), according to various news accounts? 

1. Sargassum seaweed
2. Algae
3. Red tide
4. All of the above

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver. Follow us on Twitter (@alweaver22 & @asimendinger) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

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DRIED UP: Texas cities in fear of running out of water

The American West is experiencing its driest period in human history, a megadrought that threatens health, agriculture and entire ways of life. DRIED UP is examining the dire effects of the drought on the states most affected — as well as the solutions Americans are embracing.

AUSTIN, Texas — As the Western U.S. suffers under its worst drought in a millennium, the government of Texas, a state that faces its own unique set of dangers from extreme weather, is at last turning to deal with the threat that climate change poses to its long-term water supply. 

Texas’s situation is sufficiently dire that in July, a majority-Republican panel on the state legislature voted unanimously to require the state water planning board to consult with the state climatologist as it advises cities in planning to meet the state’s water needs in the future.  

The rule change “removes the possibility that the political climate could harm [local water officials’] ability to plan responsibly for the future,” state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D), a major backer of the shift, told The Hill. 

“It kind of insulates the regional water authorities from political pressures that would harm their ability to do what they need to do,” Johnson said.  

But that process won’t bear fruit for years — and Texans increasingly worry that the crisis is here now. 

Never rains but it pours

The most recent demonstration of the volatile climate was last month’s flash downpours that stunned Johnson’s hometown of Dallas — a record rainfall that interrupted the city’s longtime drought, running off baked earth and acres of asphalt infrastructure to flood much of the city. 

Those kinds of events offer a foretaste of the future Texas can expect, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told The Hill. 

“You saw record dry conditions week after week after week — and then all of a sudden, a summer’s worth of rain in a single day,” Hayhoe said. 

For much of the state, annual levels of rainfall may not change much — but that average conceals potentially lethal extremes of drought and flood, she said. “The amount of precipitation is staying the same. But the distribution is changing. It’s getting more extreme in both directions.” 

Even if rainfall totals and distribution both stayed the same — which is unlikely — the simple fact of rising heat under climate change could presage water shortages, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told The Hill. 

“Lakes evaporate faster, water in the ground evaporates faster,” said Nielsen-Gammon, who is also a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. 

That’s a problem for a state whose water storage strategy relies heavily on a collection of nearly 200 open-air reservoirs, exposed at all times to the baking sun. Moisture sucked into the air can also worsen flash storms, making rain events large enough to overwhelm the ability of soils to absorb them and catchment infrastructure to trap them. 

Population growth looms

When these disruptive impacts are added to the booming populations foreseen by the Texas Water Development Board — expected by 2070 to surge from around 30 million to 52 million — they create a situation that worries many water planners interviewed by The Hill. 

Much of that growth is expected along the dry and vulnerable I-35 corridor that connects Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio, Austin and the enormous collection of towns and cities surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth. The highway roughly divides Texas’s wet east from its dry west.  

With that influx of people will come new water-dependent industries, from manufacturing plants such as the new Tesla facility going up outside Austin to more than a dozen high-tech semiconductor factories. And even with climate change making the weather ever more extreme, the state is fighting hard to protect fossil fuels. Those take a lot of water too, particularly when oil and gas is extracted through fracking. 

“If any community in the state fails, and its water supply, that is big national, international news, and then has impacts on, I would argue, on the economic growth and perception of Texas,” Robert Mace of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment told local station KXAN, which is owned by The Hill’s parent company, Nexstar Media.  

The looming prospect of a more intense and unpredictable drought-flood cycle presents a fearsome challenge for water planners. 

It’s also one that — at least as it pertains to climate change — local officials have largely been left to figure out on their own, state water experts told The Hill.

For now, members of the Water Development Board “certainly don’t appear to be addressing [climate issues] directly,” Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist, told The Hill. 

In contrast to the state’s specific and data-driven approach to planning for population growth, “there isn’t any official projection as far as streamflow or groundwater recharge impacts from climate change,” he added. 

“It’d be really nice if individual water suppliers weren’t left to their own devices to tackle the issue.” 

But the Texas Water Development Board’s planning process has traditionally looked backward, not forward, in envisioning the worst-case scenario that managers should plan for. 

“By not considering climate change, we’re counting on water that’s probably not going to be there in the future,” Mace told KXAN said. “And so that increases the risk of reservoirs going dry, and of people losing their water supplies.”  

Incorporating climate planning, however, is extraordinarily difficult. 

“The key word with climate is complicated,” Matt Nelson, a water resources professional at the Texas Water Development Board, told The Hill. 

Even at the state level, Nelson said, models are ambiguous, leaving the coming effects on the ground unclear. That means that state officials who move quickly to, say, increase supply are at risk of installing expensive and potentially “maladaptive” infrastructure aimed at solving the wrong problem, he added.

The long-term trend of climate change — to the extent that it’s clear — is also easily drowned out in the near-term chaos of Texas weather, he said.  

“There can be more substantial risk in the near term than a climate long-term effect,” Nelson said. 

Local groups take action

Some individual water suppliers have taken the state’s absence as an invitation to make their own plans.

For the city of Austin, the onrushing threat of climate change has led the city to study its own vulnerability — and to secure its water supply out past 2100, by which point its population is expected to triple from 1.1. million to 3.3 million. 

“Water utilities are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change. The nature of our product is such that we have to be responsive and adaptive to these changes as they’re happening in real time,” program manager Marisa Flores Gonzalez of Austin Water told The Hill.

Over the turbulent century to come, “we may have periods of time where we have plenty of water around — more water than we want,” Flores Gonzalez said.  

“But we need to be able to take advantage of those supplies when they’re present during average or wet conditions and store that water so that we can make use of it during drought times.” 

Austin is exploring a number of ways to do this. City officials are scouting locations where excess water could be injected into natural subterranean caverns in periods of abundance — in effect creating an artificial aquifer, immune to evaporation, that the city can draw on during the extended dry periods to come. 

Groundwater injection is a measure that many other cities around the state are pursuing — most notably San Antonio, an hour’s drive south of Austin, but also smaller cities such as El Paso and even folk music mecca Kerrville.  

Dallas-Fort Worth and other cities of the north Texas sprawl are building new reservoirs as fast as possible, and both Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston are exploring ways to pipe in water from other basins as they look to a future where their own stores will be overtaxed. 

But with “really out of the box unprecedented things are definitely being discussed, we often neglect the easiest and most common one — which is conservation,” Hayhoe said.  

Austin, for example, has winnowed the amount of water needed per person per day by a nearly a third since the 1990s, and it’s about a quarter of the way through a campaign to switch all the city’s analog water meters to leak-detecting smart ones. 

And the city is experimenting with pilot sewage recycling systems — which treats wastewater on-site for reuse in watering, fountains and flushing toilets — which could ultimately cut demand for water by 75 percent, KXAN reported.

At the extreme end of this strategy, the residents of Big Spring, Texas — in the state’s arid far west — drink purified and treated wastewater, a system officially called “direct potable reuse” and sometimes derided as “toilet to tap,” public radio station WHYY reported.

‘The lowest point that I’ve ever seen’

Nelson at the Water Development Board says the board is working to incorporate usable climate models into its planning process. Board researchers are working with Nielsen-Gammon to try and derive standardized rules and models that are sufficiently flexible to bring to bear on state planning processes, such as trying to figure out how changing heat levels will impact evaporation from different regions’ lakes and rivers. 

The state itself lags behind growing cities such as Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, where local governments have done their own expensive climate forecasting — and many of which are already in the process of securing new supplies against their booming populations.  

But most of Texas’s more than 1,200 incorporated towns and cities don’t have the resources to do their own climate planning — and are less likely to have multiple options to draw from in the case of a crisis.

That’s happening even just west of Austin, as former cattle ranches in the region known as the Hill Country — popular for its wineries and swimming holes — get converted into housing developments, which demand water for taps, toilets and lawns.

“With the explosive growth, the wells [are] at the lowest point that I’ve ever seen,”  hydrologist Douglas Wierman told KXAN.

Wieman warned that these communities are draining the Lower Trinity Aquifer to the “tipping point where our demand for water resources has outpaced the ability of our aquifers and rivers to replenish themselves,” Wierman added.

In the Hill Country, that’s meant a booming business for “water haulers” making deliveries to families whose wells no longer reach the shrinking water table, KXAN reported.

A cruel paradox of Texas water politics is that those municipalities most vulnerable to climate change are likely to be least willing or able to prepare on their own.  

The smaller the city, Nielsen-Gammon said, “the smaller the water supply — and the less likely they will be able to deal with climate change and possibly not even be willing to consider it because they have more immediate concerns.” 

It’s those bodies that are at the greatest risk from climate change, Perry Fowler of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network told KXAN. 

“If local entities aren’t already looking at fortifying their water sources, then they’re already really behind the eight ball on that,” Fowler said.

KXAN’s Mia Abbe and Christopher Adams contributed to this report.

Previously in this series:

Texas cattle industry faces existential crisis from historic drought

Lakes Mead and Powell are at the epicenter of the biggest Western drought in history

Seven stats that explain the West’s epic drought

Why Great Plains agriculture is particularly vulnerable to drought

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Progressives aim to prove they can win in Congress — and at the ballot box

When John Fetterman this week urged President Biden to decriminalize marijuana, he received cheers from all corners of the Democratic electorate. 

For years, Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor and the party’s Senate nominee, has supported the reform he believes will create a fairer criminal justice system. While Biden didn’t address his request directly, Fetterman’s push is the latest way liberals are angling for more influence ahead of the midterms.

In November, they just might get it. Progressives may have had an overall disappointing primary season, but they did come out on top in a small number of races with outsized importance. Now they are looking to the fall as an opportunity to prove that they can be the safe choice for voters who care about electability — and, should they win, to elevate more of their signature issues.

“That’s exactly what we’re seeing,” said Naveed Shah, political director at Common Defense, a progressive group that endorsed Fetterman and several other liberal candidates this cycle. Democratic candidates are “taking on a lot of these same issues that progressives have been talking about for a long time, whether it’s student loans or expanding health care or anything else.”

“That’s a big shift,” Shah said. “Even for folks who aren’t progressives in name, they are taking on more of these progressive ideas. That’s exactly the goal. The goal isn’t just to get progressives that bear the title elected, it’s really to shift the party.”

A string of progressive Democratic candidates are inching towards winning their general elections from the Rust Belt to the South. In many cases, they have overcome centrist competitors under tough circumstances.

Moderates often say that the left will face a true test of power and longevity when waging the political war against Republicans, not more marginal battles within their own party. Indeed, there’s no shortage of Trump-aligned GOP aspirants flooding airwaves with messaging that progressive nominees will drive the country into a mess along with Biden. 

But their efforts have struggled to catch on in critical areas. Fetterman leads his rival, Mehmet Oz, a physician and television personality, in poll after poll, and Republicans have bemoaned their nominee as unsophisticated and disappointing in public and private. On Wednesday, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics moved the Pennsylvania race to “leans Democratic,” matching the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in the latest encouraging sign for the Fetterman camp.

Biden, too, sought to put his thumb on the scale in his home state this week.

“Fetterman’s a hell of a guy,” the president said during a speech on gun control in Wilkes-Barre. “A powerful voice for working people, and he’s going to make a great United States senator.”

In the Midwest, Democrats are also watching in close anticipation as Mandela Barnes, the progressive Senate nominee in Wisconsin, looks to unseat Sen. Ron Johnson (R) in the quintessential battleground. Despite being both controversial and unpopular, Johnson has been a mainstay in his party’s conservative establishment for years, tacking toward Trump in his fight against Barnes.

The Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss-up.”

“That’s going to alter the balance,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a grassroots coalition aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), about Fetterman and Barnes’s races. “It’s going to put progressives in a more strategic position and it’s going to allow us to hold the line, which we tried to do but couldn’t because we didn’t have the numbers.”

To be sure, while Democrats are getting increasingly excited about holding the Senate, and see Fetterman and Barnes as key pieces of that plan, their path to victory is far from easy or guaranteed. 

But if the duo of Senate hopefuls win on Nov. 8, they would not only likely help Democrats keep their control of the chamber, but would also open the idea of what’s possible for the left wing in swing states and in the upper chamber itself, where moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have often set the terms throughout Biden’s administration.

“You know what, we may be able to get rid of the filibuster,” said Geevarghese. “We may be able to dilute the outsized power that Manchin and Sinema hold.”

Things are expected to be even more lively among liberals in the House. While many Democrats expect to lose the lower chamber, Biden’s uptick in approval has challenged the conventional wisdom about potential margins of defeat and has tamped down the idea that a red wave is coming. 

If Democrats lose by just a handful of seats, some are expected to argue that the party in power is still strong, and that they only need to make tweaks in key districts, rather than to their entire strategy and direction. 

“They win when they get things done and then talk about it,” said Celinda Lake, a lead pollster on Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. “Voters often haven’t known what Biden and Dems did.”

Progressives are already counting victories. And some are making the quiet argument that the Congressional Progressive Caucus, their collective bargaining bloc, is expected to expand by as many as nine seats, including adding to the most fervent members of the “Squad.” That, they say, will allow them to be better organized and continue to push the policy debate in their direction.

In Texas, Greg Casar, a former Austin City Council member, is on track to win the general election in the Democrat-safe 35th Congressional District, as is Becca Balint, a public school teacher in Vermont’s 1st Congressional District. Meanwhile, two state representatives, Delia Ramirez in Illinois’s 4th Congressional District and Summer Lee in the area surrounding Pittsburgh are also projected to win. And Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a young activist in Florida, won his primary for a safe Democratic district in a swing state. Many progressive Democrats likely to enter the House are candidates of color.

The enthusiasm on the left has coincided with Biden’s own ascent. Previously unable to break out of the low to mid 30s in approval ratings, many centrist Democrats blamed the left flank for encouraging him to take on policies that they saw as too aspirational and costly for most of the country to get behind. They pointed out that Biden won the election against Trump as a moderate and that voters expected him to govern that way. 

But as he alleviated some of progressives’ gravest policy concerns, his standing with the public started to change. He signed the Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act into law and assuaged some of activists’ worries around climate change, taxes and health care. 

“It’s telling that in the closing period before the general election really kicks off in full post-Labor Day, Biden’s becoming more popular,” said Geevarghese.

Biden then went a step further by announcing he was going to forgive as much as $20,000 in student loan debt for the most vulnerable borrowers and $10,000 for millions of others, a move that exceeded even some progressives’ expectations.

“What really I think has been a huge shift, honestly, and I say this as a fan of President Obama, is that President Biden is becoming the most progressive president we’ve ever had,” said Shah. “A lot of his victories have been because of the things that he’s been able to get done with the Progressive Caucus and others on that side.”

Those policy wins have given progressives a jolt of momentum they hope to carry into the general election, where they are making the argument that they need to give Americans more reasons to vote Democrat over Republican. That, they say, can easily be done by delivering more policy achievements by the fall. And any pushback from moderates about the party’s rampant liberalism isn’t as important on the ground, these Democrats say, because voters don’t always choose based on ideology.

“Voters don’t pay attention,” said Lake about the possibility that the left growing in numbers could alienate some people. “Voters like the progressive agenda.”

Source: TEST FEED1