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GOP looks for Senate campaign reset heading toward November

Republicans are looking to hit the reset button on their Senate midterm election playbook after weeks of poor polls and stories about Democratic momentum.

Senate GOP candidates emerged from primaries battered, bruised and struggling to gain traction in their general election matchups. Even GOP leaders in the upper chamber began expressing reservations about “candidate quality” and the party’s ability to win a majority.

But they now appear to be recalibrating — moving around funds, shifting messaging and sounding notes of optimism about their chances of picking up seats nearly two months out from Election Day.

“I pick out three of our candidates every summer that I think have the best shot at winning and invite them, and I picked these three because I thought they were in critical states and had a good chance of winning,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters in Kentucky on Monday.

The Republican leader was answering a question about a fundraiser he held in the Bluegrass State last week for Republican Senate candidates Mehmet Oz, who is running in Pennsylvania; Herschel Walker, who is vying for a seat in Georgia; and Rep. Ted Budd, who is looking to join the upper chamber representing North Carolina.

The three candidates, all of whom are backed by former President Trump, have struggled to pull ahead of their Democratic opponents in recent polls. Oz and Walker have been at the center of a number of controversies, plaguing their standing on the campaign trail. And earlier this month, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted Oz’s race from a “toss up” to “lean Democrat.”

Campaigns and political parties almost always undergo some changes as they pivot from primary season toward the general election, moderating various positions staked out in primaries and reevaluating where to best spend their resources.

But Republicans have been at the brunt of a wave of stories in recent weeks about Democratic momentum, particularly in key Senate races, as well as polls showing Democratic Senate nominees leading in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The latest public optimism from McConnell marks a shift from just a few weeks ago, when he conceded that the House has a better chance of flipping than the Senate because of “candidate quality” — a statement that, while in line with expectations, drew headlines because it came from the top Republican.

The comment was seen as a veiled reference to Oz, Walker, GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance, a Republican running for the upper chamber in Ohio. The latter two have also struggled to secure commanding leads against their Democratic opponents in recent polls.

This week, however, McConnell said he had “great confidence” in Oz, adding, “I think Oz has a great shot at winning.”

Democrats are favored to win control of the Senate over Republicans, according to election handicapper FiveThirtyEight, 66 percent to 34 percent.

One Republican strategist said the change in tone from McConnell is “part of the natural swing” from primary season to the general election campaign.

“What McConnell has to do is play the expectations game, and he wants to downplay expectations that they’re gonna do well, but not at the expense of hurting the candidates,” said strategist Terry Sullivan, who has worked on a number of Senate campaigns. “So he’s trying to make, to balance that. So he’s in a tough spot.”

Behind the scenes, Republican groups are also already moving money around.

Most recently, the Senate Leadership Fund — a GOP super PAC aligned with McConnell — scrapped $8 million worth of advertisements in Arizona that were scheduled to air between Sept. 6 and Oct. 3, according to AdImpact and Politico.

At the same time, One Nation, a group affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, is spending an additional $10 million-plus on television, radio and digital ads in a number of states with competitive races this cycle, including Arizona, according to CNN.

Masters, a venture capitalist, has consistently come in behind incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in recent polls. He is trailing Kelly in FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls 50.2 percent to 42.4 percent, and on Wednesday the election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved the race from “toss-up” to “lean Democrat.”

Senate Leadership Fund President Steven Law told Politico that while the group is “leaving the door wide open in Arizona,” the advertising adjustment in the Grand Canyon State was in part due to an “unexpected expense in Ohio.”

That unanticipated cost was a $28 million ad reservation the PAC took out in the Buckeye State last month to bolster Vance as he struggles to pull ahead of Rep. Tim Ryan (D) in a race the Cook Political Report rates as “lean Republican.”

The group also added $9.5 million to the Pennsylvania race last month, according to The Washington Post, where Oz is trailing Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D).

Additionally, the Senate Leadership Fund pulled about $1.7 million in advertisements in Alaska, according to Politico, where Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) is facing a general election challenge from Trump-backed GOP candidate Kelly Tshibaka. Law said the group opted to slash some ads because the incumbent “is in a very strong position.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is also rearranging where its funds are going. Last month, the Post reported that the group had cut roughly $10 million in ads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. The organization said that while it is still committed to those races, it is looking to prioritize advertisements taken out with campaigns and ones that are more financially feasible.

Though the group also said it added more than $4 million in televisions advertisements in Pennsylvania, according to the Post.

“With these committees, they’re always moving the money around and they’re moving money and placing bets on where they think it’ll pay off,” Sullivan, a founding partner at the public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies, told The Hill. “That is just very, very normal.”

He noted, however, that where the funding is being redirected to is “telling.” For example, with extra funds being spent in Ohio — which Sullivan called a “Republican state” — less money is being allocated to swing states or pickup states. 

GOP strategist Doug Heye, who previously served as communications director at the Republican National Committee, noted that cutting advertisements in states is often “a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.”

As Republican organizations rearrange funding, GOP candidates are beginning to tailor their messages — especially when it comes to abortion and the 2020 presidential election — as the race moves away from the primary stage.

Masters has emerged as somewhat of a poster child for this. The Arizona Republican posted an ad on Twitter last week characterizing his view on abortion as “commonsense.”

“Look, I support a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion. And most Americans agree with that. That would just put us on par with other civilized nations,” he said in the ad.

According to NBC News, Masters edited his campaign website to scrub a statement that said “I am 100% pro-life,” remove a line that outlined his backing of “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”

Masters also revised his website to take out a line suggesting that Trump was not reelected in 2020 because it was not a “free and fair” race, according to CNN.

Sullivan said the changes on the two polarizing issues represent the normal procession from primary season to the general election campaign.

“A lot of these folks had to win a primary, and now they have to win a general election, and so the issues you are emphasizing are gonna change in those situations,” he added.

The GOP strategist added that the adjustments being made by Republican candidates represent a shift from “red meat rhetoric” to messaging that will attract suburban swing voters.

“I think a lot of it is more mold shifting from a primary fight to a general election fight,” a Republican strategist involved with Senate races told The Hill. “I think all candidates sort of have to better tailor their message.”

Heye, the GOP strategist, said the adjustments being made across the map are a result of the political and campaign landscapes “constantly shifting,” especially in the current cycle.

And according to Sullivan, the landscape right now — nearly two months from Election Day — will mean little come November.

“We are a lifetime away from Election Day,” Sullivan said. “If you’re an undecided voter, you’re not paying attention to candidates at this point. It’s gonna be well after Labor Day, you’re gonna start to tune in, and so right now, you know, where people are at today doesn’t matter, what matters is where they’re at in a month.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Five reasons extreme weather is bigger in Texas

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.

The threat that extremes of drought and flood pose to Texas’s long-term water supply are just one aspect of the danger that intense weather — strengthened by the warming climate — poses to the Lone Star State and its people. 

“We are already the most vulnerable state in the country to these extreme weather disasters,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told The Hill. “And then we have climate change loading the dice against us.”

Here are five reasons why climate change is making Texas a more dangerous and unpredictable place.

Texas gets all the weather

Climate change takes normal phenomena and turns them freakish. That’s bad news for Texas, which has a wide range of possibilities for destruction even before rising heat enters the picture.

The chances of being struck by an severe weather disaster — such as the $125 billion onslaught of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — are like the odds of rolling two sixes on a pair of dice, said Hayhoe, a chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy who helped Austin put together its 100-year water plan. Texas, she said, already has extra sixes on its dice.

And climate change is turning some of them into sevens, she added.

“If you live in Kansas, you don’t really have to worry about hurricanes or wildfires, and if you live in Oregon, you have to worry about wildfires and drought, not to worry about hurricanes,” Hayhoe said. “If you live in Texas, you have to worry about everything.”

Climate change is disrupting natural cycles 

One challenge in talking about climate change in Texas is that the state’s weather has always been defined by strange, difficult-to-forecast extremes. 

The state’s climate helps explain why “all the major lakes in Texas are created by people,” said Tom Gooch, vice president at a Fort Worth-based infrastructure engineering firm.

In the state’s boom-and-bust water cycle, “it’s very difficult to get a reliable surface water supply to almost everyone if you don’t store the water,” Gooch said.

To the extent that there is an overall pattern, it’s the annual migration inland of a mass of hot, dense air during Texas’s stifling summer.

The hot air mass hunches atop the state, “deflecting storms away from the region,” Hayhoe said.

As the world warms, Hayhoe’s research has shown that a ridge of high-pressure hot air — which usually rolls back east over the Gulf of Mexico as the weather cools — will stay in place for longer, exacerbating and lengthening droughts.

Then when it finally does break up — and storms bring long-delayed precipitation — rains will be bigger and more intense as the hot air sucks up, holds and ultimately releases more water than it might have during storms in the 20th century.

The extremes are growing

By some metrics, such as average rainfall, the situation for Texas throughout the century to come doesn’t look that bad. 

“Climate models, on average, have a slight decrease going forward, but there’s not a strong consensus on that,” state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told The Hill.

“So if we took a simple-minded approach of saying, ‘drier means less rain,’ it’s not at all clear that we’ll have less rain. It’s not even clear that climate change is bringing rainfall levels down to what they were 100 years ago.”

But those averages may conceal the way that dangerous extremes are being stretched in both directions, Hayhoe said. 

“If you looked at that precipitation over the whole year, you’d be like, ‘Oh, well, there’s not really much change.’ But there is a world of difference between a summer where you get the rain evenly distributed — versus one in which it’s “drought, drought, drought, drought, drought, floods.”

“If you live in Texas, you have to worry about everything.”

Climate researcher Katharine Hayhoe

Scientists have gotten better at determining how much the human burning of fossil fuels over the past century has strengthened disasters such as hurricanes and heat waves — with one recent study finding that climate change increased the amount of rain released by Hurricane Harvey by about 37 percent.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier,” Hayhoe said. “In most cases, it’s not creating something new that you’ve never seen before. It’s taking something that you already are at risk from and making it worse.”

GOP officials remain reluctant to face climate change

Even as near-record drought and record flooding have pounded the state, Republican state-level politicians have near categorically refused to talk about the threat from climate change — let alone the role the state’s fossil fuel industry plays in worsening it.

When a reporter asked Gov. Greg Abbott (R) about the role of climate change in the recent Dallas-Fort Worth floods, Abbott pointedly refused to use those words. 

“We’re constantly looking at what extreme weather may lead to, whether it be power, demand, extreme heat, extreme cold, heavy water or even drought,” he said.

In Texas, “you might hear that we’re having extreme weather events with increasing frequency. But people still don’t like to say ‘climate change,’” state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D) of Dallas told The Hill. 

“Just extreme weather events with increasing frequency — which seems to me to change in the climate,” Johnson added.

The state’s antipathy toward climate talk is such that just two days after the Dallas-Fort Worth floods, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced the state was banning state and local governments from doing business with ten major banks — including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs — that he accused of using climate change as an excuse to boycott the state fossil fuel industry.

Infrastructure — and society — isn’t built for the new normal

That fact that weather is becoming more dire “in both directions is bad news, because we’re just like Goldilocks,” Hayhoe said. “We don’t want it too wet or too dry; we want it just right.”

Most aspects of modern society — from building codes to flood insurance requirements to where crops are grown — are built on the implicit and mostly unquestioned assumption of “a stable, stationary climate,” she said.

Those assumptions helped determine, for example, who in Houston needed to get flood insurance — those in properties with a 1-in-100 chance of flooding under National Flood Insurance Program requirements. 

But plenty of Houstonians who weren’t even in the 1-in-1000-year flood zone saw their houses flooded, generating losses that they weren’t insured for, Hayhoe said.

“These definitions are no longer relevant to our lives today,” she said.

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

Source: TEST FEED1

California gas-powered car ban could fuel GOP legal battle

California last week approved the country’s most ambitious electric vehicle (EV) targets, charting a course to banning the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. 

Now the question is whether Republican officials will be able to derail it in court.

Deborah Sivas, an environmental law professor at Stanford Law School, told The Hill that automobile manufacturers are already poised to make the changes outlined in California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which was approved by the California Air Resources Board last Thursday.

“They’re going to electric vehicles — they’re just going faster or slower, depending on the philosophy of the company,” Sivas said. 

“Who would be opposed to this?” she asked. “Well, there’s the ideological opposition.”

The GOP counter-offensive could take various forms, but will likely include lawsuits arguing that California does not have authority to set its own standards, and efforts to further erode federal Clean Air Act. 

California’s new rule, which follows a 2020 executive order issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), would increase the proportion of emissions-free cars sold in the state annually, until that percentage reaches 100 in 2035.

California’s targets extend far beyond federal goals, and many states have expressed their intention to follow suit. While President Biden said last year that he hoped half of new vehicle sales would be electric by 2030, California’s rule would require 68 percent of sales to be electric that year.

But in order to move ahead, California needs to apply for a special waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as mandated by the Clean Air Act.

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, it authorized California to set its own separate and stricter-than-federal emissions standards for vehicles.

Such action was deemed necessary due to historic smog that polluted the Los Angeles region.

But because the Clean Air Act includes a provision prohibiting states from implementing their own standards, California must apply for a waiver with the EPA for each new rule it wants to enact. 

The EPA must then approve that waiver unless the administrator determines that California’s reasons for applying are “arbitrary and capricious,” per the Clean Air Act.

“Congress wanted it to be easy for California to get a waiver, based on what local authorities felt in their judgment,” Sivas said. 

While the Biden administration is expected to accept California’s new application, red states could sue over that decision.

Further, a future Republican administration could revoke a previously-issued waiver, as the Trump administration did for a waiver that was issued in 2013. 

Republicans are already expressing opposition to Californina’s rule, with U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) calling it “bad and stupid.”

“I think that policy only harms people from the standpoint that government is going to dictate what you can buy. Here we are with people with that like minded opinion that they know best and want to control all,” he said last week, according to local news. 

Clues about how this may play out can be found in the conflict around that 2013 waiver, which the Biden administration reinstated in March. 

In May, the Republican attorneys-general of 17 states filed a lawsuit accusing EPA Administrator Michael Regan of violating the Constitution’s equal sovereignty doctrine by granting California the authority to set emissions restrictions that are stricter than the national limit.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who led the lawsuit, previously said in a statement from last year that vehicle emissions standards should be set by the federal government. 

“As a practical matter, this is not a waiver of federal regulation — it is a delegation of federal authority to a state, and an improper one at that,” he said. 

While Sivas characterized the legal theories presented in the May lawsuit as “kind of questionable,” she said that there could be an additional lawsuit filed against any future waiver the EPA grants. 

“Some folks opposed to the rule could try to directly challenge it on various grounds in state court,” Sivas said. “But I think the most likely and the suit with the most teeth is going to be to challenge the waiver that gets granted. So that’s a federal suit.”

If a new waiver from the EPA entirely replaces the old one, then California could argue that the May lawsuit is moot, according to Sivas.

Nonetheless, that would not necessarily prevent the petitioners from demanding that the case be heard anyway — as it could address legal issues that might arise again in a future challenge, she explained.

“Those 17 states are looking to take down that whole provision of the Clean Air Act,” she said, adding that these states want to make it impossible to even issue such waivers.

“I would normally say, that case has a pretty slim chance,” Sivas added.

While she believes that the D.C. Circuit — the destination for any future such lawsuit — would reject the case, Sivas said this might not be true for those above them. Historically, it has been difficult to challenge agency decisions at the Supreme Court, but its recent rightward tilt complicates the issue, she explained.

“Given what’s going on at the Supreme Court — and this case will clearly go up right up to the Supreme Court — it’s hard to predict what that court might do,” she said.

Sivas highlighted a June decision where the Supreme Court restricted the agency’s power to oversee power plants.  

“They’ve not shown any inclination on these big policy-type issues to defer to the agency,” she continued. “So I think it’s a big question mark.”

Margo Oge, who was the director of the EPA’s Transportation and Air Quality office for nearly two decades, said new language in the Democrats’ recently passed Inflation Reduction Act puts the California waiver on stronger legal footing. 

In addition to investing nearly $370 billion to fight climate change, that bill labels greenhouse gasses as air pollutants, meaning that it more explicitly enables the EPA to fight them. 

“There is a lot of strengthening of the Clean Air Act,” she said. “And it will protect, I think, California’s efforts.”

Jody Freeman, a professor of administrative and environmental law at Harvard Law School, said she did not expect car makers to join the GOP opposition, and added that California “leaning in like this is important because it lays down a marker.”

“It will be awkward for the auto industry to oppose it,” she told The Hill in an email, adding that manufacturers are currently pouring billions of dollars into electrification.

“And there is so much federal funding flowing to support both infrastructure and consumer demand,” Freeman said.

For the automotive industry, planning for vehicle fleets takes years, so even if the California rule is defeated companies may already be on a path to compliance. 

“It takes a long time — for about five years — to develop a solid plan,” Cynthia Williams, Ford’s global director of sustainability, told The Hill. “It takes time to build your supply chain in order to make sure that you have the right material to build the vehicles.”

Williams stressed that the company is committed to shifting toward selling a greater share of EVs, even if California’s rule were to be overturned. 

“We plan to forge ahead with our plan despite who’s in office or who’s in a leadership position,” she said. 

Still, Freeman acknowledged that “there are likely going to be legal ebbs and flows as this policy unfolds.”

“The Biden administration will surely grant the federal preemption waiver needed to approve California’s rules, but a new administration could revoke it, and then we’d be back in the courts,” Freeman said.

Sivas also said there is bound to be pushback from other entities like the fossil fuel sector, which tends to have more political influence than the auto industry. 

“I really hesitate to make any predictions,” Sivas said, noting that the recent activities of the Supreme Court were fueling her uncertainty. 

“They’re using environmental cases, to some extent, to really radically rethink the law,” she added. “So I just don’t have any confidence in predicting what might happen.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Federal judge rules New York can restrict gun carrying

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled New York state can restrict citizens from concealing and carrying guns in public through a new law that was challenged by national firearm organizations.

Judge Glenn Suddaby for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of New York dismissed a motion for an injunction blocking the law from taking effect on Thursday, arguing the plaintiffs, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), did not have standing to represent their members in court.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who defended the new law on behalf of the state, released a statement Wednesday night saying she had successfully fended off “baseless attacks by the gun lobby.”

“As gun violence continues to impact communities across the country, today’s decision is a victory in our efforts to protect New Yorkers,” James said. “Responsible gun control measures save lives and any attempts by the gun lobby to tear down New York’s sensible gun control laws will be met with fierce defense of the law.

“We will continue to defend the constitutionality of our laws to protect all New Yorkers,” the attorney general continued.

The GOA and GOF, which challenged the constitutionality of the law on the First, Fourteenth and Second Amendments, are likely to appeal the case to the U.S. Second Circuit Court.

Ahead of the ruling on Wednesday, the GOA tweeted that New York’s new law “would essentially make all of NY a gun free zone and infringes upon the rights of its citizens.”

New York passed the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) in July, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a previous state law requiring a proper cause for those who wish to conceal and carry in public.

The CCIA requires applicants for a concealed carry permit to undergo 16 hours of classroom training and two hours of live-fire exercises. Applicants would also be subjected to a review of social media accounts for the past three years to assess character, a rule coming in the wake of deadly mass shootings.

Additionally, carrying a firearm in amusement parks, schools, churches, subways and other places deemed sensitive by the state would be prohibited. Gun owners would also need to gain permission from property owners to bring a gun on private property.

The CCIA also requires four character references who can attest to the applicant’s “good character,” a point the GOA challenged as subjective. The plaintiffs also challenged the sensitive locations provision determined by the state and the training requirements, as well as other aspects of the law.

Suddaby, while dismissing the plaintiff’s request for an injunction blocking the CCIA from taking place, delivered a mixed opinion on each of the challenged counts but seemed inclined to back the plaintiffs if the case had went the full distance.

“The undersigned is left with a strong sense of the safety that a licensed concealed handgun regularly provides, or would provide, to the many law-abiding responsible citizens in the state too powerless to physically defend themselves in public without a handgun,” Suddaby wrote.

He was in favor of the plaintiff’s arguments that the “good character” requirement was based on “vague, subjective criteria.”

The judge also disagreed with the state including a list of locations barring gun owners from carrying in “sensitive” locations, which he said includes places that are “nonsensitive by nature.”

However, Suddaby did back the state on requirements for training, applicants to submit four character references, attend an in-person interview with an officer and submit to a social media background check.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) tweeted her support for the judge’s dismissal after the ruling.

“This is a just and right decision, and our smart, sensible gun laws will go into effect as planned tomorrow to keep New Yorkers safe,” she wrote.

Source: TEST FEED1

Federal court blocks ruling limiting voting accessibility for people with disabilities

A Wisconsin federal court on Wednesday blocked a state elections rule that would have forced voters with disabilities to cast their own ballots.

U.S. District Judge James Peterson with the Western District of Wisconsin ruled that state officials violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) because a 2021 ruling effectively prevented Wisconsinites with physical disabilities from casting a ballot in the upcoming midterm elections.

“Voters shouldn’t have to choose between exercising their federal rights and complying with state law. But that is the position that plaintiffs find themselves in,” Peterson wrote in his opinion. “If defendants cannot or will not give plaintiffs assurances that their right to vote will be protected, this court must do so.”

The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a case last year that accused the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) of overstepping its authority in the 2020 election by allowing for the widespread use of ballot drop boxes in elections.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed and prohibited the use of most ballot drop boxes in a July ruling, arguing only the state legislature could authorize such a move. The court order also construed state law as requiring voters to personally return absentee ballots.

Shortly after the ruling, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe held a press conference in which she said voters must deliver ballots themselves, sparking concern among the disabled community.

The firm Law Forward filed a motion against the WEC and Wolfe in late July on behalf of four Wisconsinites with disabilities who require a third party to help them vote.

One plaintiff, Timothy Carey, has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and must power a wheelchair with his mouth. Another plaintiff is paralyzed from the neck down.

“The disability community has labored long and hard for recognition, respect, and inclusion at every level of society; full access to their rights; and the best quality of life possible,” the complaint reads. “Access to the ballot is an essential tool in this effort: voters with disabilities have an especially keen interest in who leads our government, even as they face especially daunting barriers to voting for their government representatives.”

Law Forward said about 9.5 percent of Wisconsin residents aged 18 to 64 have a disability, highlighting the need to give them equal access under the VRA.

In the complaint, they argued the rule violated not only the VRA but also the Americans with Disabilities Act and the plaintiff’s First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.

Other than the VRA violation, Judge Peterson dismissed those claims as moot. He also ruled only for voters with disabilities, meaning other voters must return ballots themselves under the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling.

Peterson wrote in his opinion that the WEC clearly violated the rights of disabled state residents by forcing them to vote without third-party assistance.

“The Voting Rights Act is clear: disabled voters who need assistance in returning an absentee ballot are entitled to ask a person of their choosing for that assistance,” the judge wrote.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump team says sensitive info 'should have never been cause for alarm' in latest filing

Former President Trump’s legal team is arguing that the sensitive information contained in classified documents recovered from his Florida home “should have never been cause for alarm,” in its latest filing arguing for a special master to review the documents. 

The claim came in a Wednesday night filing as Trump asks the court to appoint a third party to review evidence, which would pause the investigation into his mishandling of government records.

The filing came after the Justice Department late Tuesday responded to Trump’s request, arguing a special master “would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”

Trump’s team argued Wednesday that the discovery of sensitive information in a previous batch of records should not have triggered the search of Mar-a-Lago in the first place, doubling down on his longstanding claim that executive privilege justifies keeping large tranches of classified documents in his personal residence.

“The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of Presidential records,” the filing says. 

“But this ‘discovery’ was to be fully anticipated given the very nature of Presidential records. Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm.”

Trump’s claim that authorities were wrong to be alarmed by his possession of classified materials comes as DOJ noted in numerous filings that Trump had in his home some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, including secrets gained from “clandestine human sources,” information prohibited from being shared with foreign governments and information obtained by monitoring “foreign communications signals.”

And in its late Tuesday filing the DOJ offered its most forceful rejection of Trump’s claims to any of the documents he kept stored in his home.

“Any Presidential records seized pursuant to the search warrant belong to the United States, not to the former President,” DOJ wrote.

“Plaintiff’s Motion, in fact, asserts that ‘the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022 . . . were created during his term as President.’ These are precisely the types of documents that likely constitute Presidential records.” 

Trump’s reply also argues that the National Archives “ simply ignored” the Presidential Records Act, which required the preservation and transfer of documents at the end of Trump’s presidential term, and jumped right to a criminal investigation “just weeks after President Trump voluntarily complied” with the Archives’ request for records.  

Absent from the filing is any backing for Trump’s earlier claims that he declassified the hundreds of intelligence records stored at his home.

The failure to reference that explanation, largely referenced by Trump himself on his social media channel, comes after the Justice Department in its own filing noted that in its months of dealings with Trump’s legal team to secure return of the records, they never claimed the documents had been declassified.

DEVELOPING

Source: TEST FEED1

42 states and territories will provide summer food benefits for children out of school

The federal government wants to help families combat inflation by providing temporary nutrition benefits to about 32 million children through a new summer program. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a temporary electronic benefit transfer, commonly known as EBT, called Summer P-EBT that will give eligible families free or reduced-price meals or to those that have a child under the age of six that lives in a household receiving supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) benefits.  

Benefits will be loaded onto a debit-type card that can be used to purchase food — with families of eligible children typically receiving $391 per child. Families in Alaska, Hawaii and the U.S. territories have higher rates. 

The benefit will be available in 42 states and territories and will provide an estimated $12.5 billion in temporary nutrition benefits. Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana and North Carolina are among the states participating. 

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“Providing children with the food and nutrition they need to live healthy lives is a year-round mission, and we are proud to partner with many states and territories to provide food-buying benefits for this summer,” said Cindy Long, administrator of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.  

“Our hope is that all states will adopt the program, ensuring that all children have access to the healthy food they need and deserve.” 

Summer P-EBT will only be valid up to 90 calendar days following a school year, a benefit available under a public health emergency declaration. 

States need to provide an approved school year or childcare plan for the 2021-2022 academic year in order to be eligible to provide Summer P-EBT. 

USDA already provides low-cost or free lunches to children in nearly 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools starting from kindergarten through 12^th grade through its National School Lunch Program. In 2019, USDA provided 4.9 billion lunches at a total cost of $14.2 billion. 

The need for food increased drastically during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, as students who relied on meals through their school suddenly lost that benefit. USDA responded by creating a pandemic EBT program that reimbursed families with children eligible for free or reduced-price school meals for the value of school meals missed because of pandemic-related school disruptions.  

USDA’s effort to provide families with some financial relief comes as Congress failed to extend the expanded child tax credit that lapsed late last year. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that some 91 percent of families with low incomes used their tax credit on basic household expenses — including food, clothing, shelter and utilities. 

About 10 percent of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2020, which USDA defines as households that were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their family members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.  

Household food insecurity affected about 15 percent of households with children in 2020. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrat Mary Peltola defeats Sarah Palin in Alaska special election

Former Alaska state Rep. Mary Peltola (D) was projected to defeat former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to win the special election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) term in the House, a stunning upset that makes her the first Alaska Native in Congress.

Peltola, a Yup’ik Eskimo, will also be the first Democrat to hold the seat in decades. The last time a member of her party was was elected to represent the state’s at-large congressional district was in 1971.

Her apparent victory came after votes were tabulated late Wednesday as part of the state’s new ranked-choice voting system.

Prior to her congressional run to fill Young’s seat, Peltola represented the southwestern Bethel region as a state lawmaker for a decade. She has also served on the Bethel City Council and Orutsararmiut Native Council Tribal Court. 

Peltola also ran in the primary for the same seat but whose term would begin in 2023. She advanced in the primary, as she was one of the top four vote-getters in Alaska’s open primary system. 

Other candidates who also advanced in that primary included not just Palin but also Nick Begich (R), the former co–chairman for Young’s 2020 reelection campaign.

In the general election, which is slated for November, the state will also use ranked-choice voting, where the candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote prevails in the election. 

But if no one gets more than half the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes gets knocked out and any voters who chose that eliminated candidate as their first pick have their second-choice votes applied to the applicable candidates. The process continues until one candidate receives more than half the votes.

Source: TEST FEED1

Court clears way for US to seize $45M airplane owned by Russian energy giant

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday announced the U.S. has obtained a warrant to seize a $45 million aircraft owned by a Moscow-based oil and gas corporation. 

A U.S. District Court in Texas authorized the seizure of a Boeing 737-EM airplane, which the DOJ said violated Department of Commerce sanctions against Russia when it flew in and out of the country.  

The plane, valued at $45 million, is owned by the Russian multinational energy corporation PJSC LUKOIL, according to the DOJ release.  

The DOJ said the plane last entered the U.S. in 2019 when it brought LUKOIL’s then-president and CEO, Russian oligarch Vagit Alekperov, to Houston, Texas.  

The aircraft is now believed to be in Russia, which has been the target of a number of sweeping Commerce Department sanctions in response to the country’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. 

The sanctions include “expanded prohibitions on the export, reexport or in-country transfer of U.S.-manufactured aircraft to or within Russia without a valid license of license exception,” per the DOJ. 

“Today’s actions to enforce the powerful export restrictions placed on Russia are our latest coordinated measures that let Vladimir Putin and his allies know that we are watching,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod in the release.  

Axelrod noted that the department “continues to vigorously enforce the export laws of the United States and stand with the people of Ukraine against Putin’s war of aggression.” 

The director of the DOJ’s KleptoCapture, an interagency task force charged with enforcing the sanctions against Russia, is coordinating the seizure.

Source: TEST FEED1

U.S. airline passenger complaints soared in first half of 2022

U.S. airline passenger complaints doubled in the first half of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, according to a Department of Transportation (DOT) report published this month.

Passengers filed nearly 16,000 complaints with the DOT against U.S. airlines from January to June. That’s more than double the 6,827 complaints filed in first half of 2021.

American Airlines recorded the most complaints in the first half of 2022, with 3,186 filed against the Fort Worth, Texas-based company on everything from flight problems, refunds, fares, refunds, baggage and accessibility issues.

United Airlines recorded 2,391 complaints from January to June of this year, while passengers filed 1,909 complaints against Spirit Airlines.

Ranking fourth was Frontier Airlines, at 1,750 filed complaints. In fifth place was Jetblue Airways, with 1,676 filed complaints.

Airlines have struggled to meet high consumer demand this year as travelers emerged from the pandemic’s peak waves and shutdowns, leaving many flights canceled and delayed, to the frustration of the public.

Companies have blamed everything from a pilot shortage to high fuel costs and extreme weather for the mass cancellations and delayed flights.

The travel disruptions have angered the Biden administration and congressional lawmakers, especially as thousands of flights were canceled over holiday travel weekends, including for the Fourth of July and Juneteenth.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg met with airline executives in June, and House Democrats introduced a bill this month that would force companies to give cash refunds to passengers if a flight is canceled or significantly delayed.

The DOT’s latest Air Travel Consumer Report, filed by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, also broke down the number of flight cancellations recorded in the first half of the year.

More than 106,000 flights were canceled from January to June. In the same period last year, just over 41,000 flights were canceled.

Southwest Airlines canceled the most flights, with 16,321 of them scrubbed in the first half of 2022.

The Dallas, Texas-based company has faced scrutiny for its canceled and delayed flights. The airline has canceled up to 40 percent of its flights on some peak travel days.

According to the DOT report, American Airlines canceled the second most number of flights, at 16,288 from January to June. Republic Airways cut 10,270 flights in the first half of 2022, ranking third.

Source: TEST FEED1