Forty-eight years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. That act set off a discussion within the Special Prosecutor’s Office as to whether he should be prosecuted, a debate that ended a month later with the pardon issued by President Ford. As the debate continues today about whether Donald Trump should be prosecuted for his efforts in 2021 to prevent a peaceful transition of power, it is useful to look back at some of the factors that were considered in 1974.
Some of those in the Special Prosecutor’s Office considered the answer not subject to debate. The evidence of Nixon’s guilt of obstructing justice was clear: the evidence was on recordings. Others were being prosecuted for this crime, and since he was a former president, the legal issues associated with a sitting president were no longer present. This view was that to treat Nixon differently violated the fundamental principles of equal justice — no one is above the law.
In memoranda to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, I took a different view. I agreed that the evidence of guilt was sufficient to prosecute. I also agreed that not prosecuting Nixon risked creating a double standard inconsistent with principles of equal justice. But I also believed that it was appropriate for us, as prosecutors, to consider whether prosecuting Nixon would be in the public interest. The country had been obsessed with Watergate for several years, and a prosecution would continue that obsession for years more, and potentially prevent focus on important issues confronting the country.
Given these two competing considerations, I recommended deferring a decision to allow time, and the emotions of the moment, to pass. I also argued that an immediate decision to prosecute inevitably would lead to significant undesirable delays in the trial of Watergate defendants who had been indicted already. Since they included a former attorney general, a former White House chief of staff and the president’s former chief domestic policy adviser, proceeding against them was not unfair, regardless of the decision involving Nixon.
What does this mean in deciding whether to prosecute Trump? First, assuming that others involved in orchestrating efforts to prevent a peaceful transfer of power are prosecuted — which, based on the public record, seems likely — then promoting the concepts of equal justice and that no one is above the law plainly favors Trump’s prosecution.
Turning to the public interest argument, the facts today are different. In 1974, Nixon had resigned the presidency after near-total loss of support from Republicans in the House and Senate; he was returning to California with no prospect that he could ever return to the political stage. The facts today are the opposite. Trump persists in actively seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, is very much present on the political stage. A number of elected officials or candidates continue to parrot his claims about a “stolen election.” Not prosecuting Trump puts nothing behind us and does not, as would have been the case in 1974, allow the country to move past the trauma of recent years.
Some may argue that prosecuting Trump will only add to the dangerous divisiveness in America today. That may be a risk, but not doing so would pose similar dangers. And equally important in weighing the national interest is that the offense here is far more serious than the crimes Nixon committed. It does not minimize the seriousness of Nixon’s obstruction of justice to say that actively working to undermine our democracy by preventing the peaceful transfer of power to a winning presidential candidate is far more serious.
That leaves the last factor to be considered: the strength of the evidence. It is not enough to say that there is enough evidence to bring a case; prosecutors must believe they have sufficient evidence to feel confident they can achieve a conviction. In 1974, the prosecution decision was going to be made by a special prosecutor, not an attorney general appointed by the president.
In this case, Attorney General Merrick Garland — perhaps believing that as a former judge of the Court of Appeals he would be perceived as above politics — has chosen not to appoint an independent counsel. That decision can be questioned. There may be no question about Garland’s integrity and the non-political nature of his career, but because President Biden appointed him, there will be questions about his impartiality. Thus, it would be prudent, even at this late stage, to appoint an independent counsel — not to re-do the investigation or appoint a whole new set of line prosecutors, but to assess the evidence to determine its sufficiency, direct any additional investigative actions, and make the final prosecution decision.
While it may be difficult to find someone of sufficient stature and independence who has not already voiced an opinion about Donald Trump, it is worth trying to do so. Any decision will be controversial, but it is worth doing whatever can be done to promote as widespread acceptance as possible.
Richard J. Davis served as an assistant Watergate special prosecutor and task force leader.
Imagine that the Justice Department has settled a big case against a bank accused of race discrimination in lending. Many people have come forward to claim their portion of the settlement fund, but not as many as the parties initially estimated and significant money remains unclaimed.
What should happen to the leftover money? Should it go back to the bank? Maybe, but that might mean that the bank essentially has gotten off easy. What about paying extra to the people who came forward? Perhaps, but it seems odd that they should benefit financially simply because they were easier for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to find. Until recently, the government avoided these twin problems by depositing leftover settlement funds in the Treasury.
All that changed in 2009, when the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division adopted a policy of diverting leftover settlement funds to third-party charities. A similar practice long has existed in private litigation, notably in class-action cases, where it is known as “cy pres,” from the French “cy pres comme possible,” meaning “as nearly as possible.” The principle originated in trusts and estates law, where courts construed wills to award unfulfillable bequests to a charity as similar as possible to the decedent’s original choice. But that practice is subject to greater abuse outside the trust context.
Records show that the Civil Rights Division often used third-party settlement payments after 2009, but it was far from the only division within the DOJ that did. For example, the Justice Department and many agencies charged with enforcing the nation’s environmental laws, including the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior, entered into settlement agreements requiring private parties to fund “Supplemental Environmental Projects,” or SEPs. The use of SEPs often leads to parties being strong-armed into funding organizations that share the current administration’s policy preferences. For example, in 2012, Gibson Guitar Company was required to “donate” half a million dollars to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to benefit the environment.
In the private litigation context, cy pres has been controversial in class-action lawsuits. As law professor Samuel Issacharoff told the New York Times, “It gives rise to this unbelievable world that I was shocked to hear about, and I’m not easily shocked in litigation. Charities hire lawyers to go lobby the judge for extra money.”
There is even the occasional private settlement that offers no payments to class members and pays only third-party charities. A pending certiorari petition filed by Theodore Frank — an attorney who has won numerous cases fighting against settlement abuses — has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether such settlements are permissible under federal laws governing class actions.
Lawyers have been notorious for choosing recipient organizations that, although perhaps worthy, are closer to their hearts than those of the plaintiff class. For example, law schools, notably those attended by a lawyer or judge in the case, often have been third-party settlement beneficiaries.
But when the Department of Justice is the entity doling out leftover settlement funds, additional concerns exist. Diverting government funds to non-governmental third parties violates the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause, the Miscellaneous Receipts Act, and the Anti-Deficiency Act, all of which are designed to ensure Congress controls the purse and that executive branch officials can’t create their own slush funds.
The practice also promotes political cronyism by allowing preferred third parties to receive public funds. DOJ emails produced to Congress revealed that federal officials cautioned colleagues specifically not to allow any settlement funds to support our nonprofit employer, Pacific Legal Foundation — not that we were seeking any — because of our perceived ideological orientation.
Other emails showed that leaders of nonprofits were aggressively lobbying for donations and regularly met with then-Assistant Attorney General Tony West to request third-party settlement payments. One nonprofit leader joked about building a statue of West to which his employees could bow down every day after the DOJ’s $200,000 payment cleared.
What about safeguards to ensure the payment recipients avoid waste, fraud and abuse? Ordinarily, when the federal government grants money to a private organization, financial auditing and reporting rules are in place to ensure that the grant is used as intended. But no such guardrails on taxpayer money exist when the government hands out grants as third-party settlement payments.
Because of these problems and others, the Trump administration issued rules abandoning the use of third-party payments in 2017. But now, the Biden administration has issued a draft rule that would bring them back. The draft rule does contain safeguards that would limit some problems described above, but those modest protections don’t cure the fundamental constitutional and statutory violations.
The Department of Justice should reject this draft rule and revive the older prohibition on third-party settlement payments. Taxpayer money should not be used for this politically motivated cronyism.
Alison Somin (@AlisonSomin) and Frank Garrison (@fdgarrison) are attorneys at Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit legal organization that defends Americans’ liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse.
Get ready for Democratic campaign ads, triumphant White House bill signings and town hall events with voters that will paint Republicans as beholden to drug companies and big corporations while Democrats will say they delivered prescription drug and insurance savings, imposed a minimum tax on some of the richest companies and made history to battle climate change.
And get ready for campaign ads where GOP candidates will say patient access to drugs will be limited, inflation will increase and higher taxes will hurt the economy.
With a Sunday vote of 51-50 just 92 days before Election Day, Democrats clinched a massive Senate victory despite hard-fought wrangling over President Biden’s original $4 trillion Build Back Better plan, which was reworked and passed as a trimmer, $740 billion measure renamed the Inflation Reduction Act (The Hill). Whether provisions in the 755-page bill can substantially ease current inflationary pressures is a question mark, although support for health coverage costs as well as prescription drug savings under Medicare are expected to benefit millions of Americans.
House lawmakers are expected to return to Washington from their summer recess to vote on Friday to send the measure to the president’s desk (CNN, The Associated Press and The New York Times).
▪ The Hill: Winners and losers from the Democratic tax, health care and climate change bill.
Cheers erupted in the Senate on Sunday after Vice President Harris broke a party-line tie to clear the budget reconciliation package, which many lawmakers until days ago had assumed was dead. Senate passage overcame 18 months of infighting among Democratic centrists and liberals, staunch opposition from the minority, doubts since the spring about a changing U.S. economic and energy landscape, jitters about the president’s leadership and second-guessing about Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) deal-making skills.
Biden — who is trying to navigate through a pileup of challenges (including his just-ended quarantine with COVID-19) and abysmal poll numbers — called the Senate cloakroom during the roll-call vote to thank staff members on speakerphone for their hard work. Through the White House press office, the president had a pointed reaction at the ready as he voiced his eagerness to sign the compromise (The Hill).
“Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests,” the president said. “I ran for President promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does — period. … This bill tackles inflation by lowering the deficit and lowering costs for regular families.”
Harris, while turning aside a question about the potential effect on the midterms, told reporters the bill’s passage demonstrated to Americans that they’re being heard. “And one of the things that they want is that their leaders get things done, fix the problems, offer solutions,” she said. “What happened today is tremendous in terms of the solutions that are being offered.”
Schumer this month pulled a secret, negotiated deal into the spotlight with help from foot-dragging Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Then the pair reached a separate agreement with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on Thursday, giving Democrats their 50th vote and paving the way for victory, despite Sinema’s lone vote on Sunday from her side of the aisle to back a GOP tax amendment.
Before his colleagues voted on final passage, Schumer predicted the changes achieved would “endure as one of the defining legislative measures of the 21st century,” adding it had “been a long, tough and winding road, but at last, at last we have arrived.”
Many Democrats are hopeful that young voters in particular will reward the party this fall for pushing into law incentives that tackle climate change. Those provisions provide $369 billion in energy security and climate investments, the largest-ever federal effort, including $4,000 and $7,500 tax credits for purchasing used and new electric vehicles, respectively. The credits cannot go towards vehicles that have batteries made from minerals processed in China.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) grew emotional on Sunday as he described his personal pride. “This is the biggest climate action that any country has ever taken, and now I can look my kids in the eye and say we’re really doing something about climate,” he told reporters (The Hill).
The Hill’s Niall Stanage, in his latest Memo, writes that Biden’s hot streak with legislation and this month’s successful U.S. missile strikes against al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, while applauded by many voters, are unlikely to mute Democrats’ worries about November.
▪ The Associated Press: Biden steps out of the room and finds legacy-defining wins.
▪ The New York Times: In a victory for the fossil fuel and pipeline industries, Manchin’s donors include pipeline giants that benefit from his climate deal. An official in Schumer’s office said the pipeline compromise “was only included at the insistence of Sen. Manchin as part of any agreement related to this reconciliation bill.”
▪ The Washington Post: Republicans blocked a proposed $35 cap on insulin costs for millions of patients by stripping it from the Senate-passed bill.
▪ The Hill: For members of Congress, a stock trading ban becomes a hot-button campaign issue.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ POLITICS
If Biden seeks reelection, as he says he will do if his health is good, analysts suggest he needs to widen his viewfinder beyond the much-investigated former President Trump as his GOP opponent and weigh a race against Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“To me, DeSantis is the scarier prospect,” one Democratic strategist said. “He’s a smarter version of Trump, he’s way more strategic, and he doesn’t have a hundred lawsuits at his feet. If Trump goes bust, and he very well may, he’s the main guy I’d be watching,” the strategist tells The Hill’s Amie Parnes.
▪ The Hill: DeSantis, a former House member elected governor in 2018, stokes the culture wars as his 2024 profile grows.
▪ The Associated Press: Florida prosecutor vows to fight his suspension by DeSantis.
▪ Politico: DeSantis is cementing power as governor in ways that are unprecedented in his state. He has used his suspension powers to knock out a Hillsborough County state attorney based in Tampa, a school superintendent, the Palm Beach elections supervisor and the Broward County sheriff.
▪ Jonathan Martin, The New York Times: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is ready to lose, but she’s not ready to quit. “If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay,” she repeated during an interview last week.
▪ Fox News: Cheney, during that New York Times interview, would not commit to supporting the Florida governor if he’s the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. “I think that Ron DeSantis has lined himself up almost entirely with Donald Trump, and I think that’s very dangerous,” she said.
▪ The Hill: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) scored a political victory last week with a resolution supporting the expansion of NATO, an international bloc often criticized by Trump.
▪ Josh Kraushaar, Axios: Celebrity candidates threaten the GOP’s hopes of a Senate majority: “McConnell is concerned that this crop of GOP Senate nominees is reminiscent of flawed Tea Party-aligned candidates like Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin, who lost winnable races in 2010 and 2012.”
🗳On Tuesday, Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin hold primaries. Check out House races in play, as dissected by the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman; a look at Connecticut’s contests with WSHU public radio and the Hartford Courant; the battle for a Vermont House seat, reported by News4Jax; and Wisconsin’s GOP primary race for governor (PBS Wisconsin and The Associated Press). In Minnesota, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press has a preview and MinnPost explains how voters on Tuesday in the state’s 1st Congressional District may be handed one of the most confusing ballots they’ve encountered.
The Associated Press: In Wisconsin and Minnesota, GOP seeks power over elections.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ ADMINISTRATION & PUBLIC HEALTH
Frustrated advocates from the LGBTQ community say they need more help from the White House to deal with the monkeypox virus (The Hill). State and local governments want to raise public awareness about vaccinations, precautions and treatments tied to the virus without stoking stigmas associated with the population most at risk for contracting the virus, primarily gay and bisexual men who have skin-to-skin contact during sex with a partner who is infected.
Former Food and Drug Administration Administrator Scott Gottlieb told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that U.S. public health officials must boost monkeypox testing “substantially” to gain control over spread of the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early this month reported cases of monkeypox in all but two states. The transmission has been rapid following the earliest confirmed U.S. cases in mid-May and prompted several cities to declare public health emergencies before the Biden administration followed suit last week. The CDC estimates that a U.S. population of 1.6 million to 1.7 million people are considered at high risk of contracting the virus.
Partly due to short-sighted planning, the U.S. faces a scarcity of monkeypox vaccine doses compared with the increasingly large population of those at risk of contracting the virus. To stretch what’s available, scientists are debating a technique called intradermal injection, which involves carefully guiding a needle carrying a vaccine, in this case Jynneos, into skin layers, a thin space that has immune cells. This technique, which is not easy to do successfully without training and practice, could theoretically stretch supply to offer monkeypox shots to five times as many people. The downsides: the vaccine could be incorrectly administered, thus failing to benefit patients, and scarce doses of effective medication could be wasted (The New York Times).
Biden tested negative twice for COVID-19 over the weekend and opted, in consultation with his doctor, to end his isolation at the White House on Sunday to travel to Delaware to be reunited with first lady Jill Biden, who has been in their home state since her husband contracted COVID-19 last month (The Hill).
🌏 In Hong Kong, required hotel quarantine time for all visitors is now shortened from seven to three days as a continued, but somewhat relaxed COVID-19 precaution (Reuters).
As of today, 77.8 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 66.4 percent is “fully vaccinated,” according to the Bloomberg News global vaccine tracker and the government’s definition. The percentage of Americans who have received third or booster doses is 31.8.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will soon implement the PACT Act to benefit veterans exposed to toxic chemicals and burn pits, approved by Congress after weeks of public demonstrations and some last-minute legislative drama. Biden will sign the bill during a South Lawn ceremony on Wednesday. The Hill’s Jordan Williams reports the VA will be closely watched because of its poor track record managing medical and hospital benefits for veterans.
■ Senate Democrats strike a blow against cynicism — and hopelessness, by E.J. Dionne Jr., columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3JCefGy
■ Democrats vote to raise drug prices (price controls for Medicare mean higher costs for everyone else), by The Wall Street Journal editorial board.https://on.wsj.com/3P5L9AH
WHERE AND WHEN
The House will meet at 1 p.m. on Tuesday for a pro forma session while in recess. Members are expected to reconvene on Friday to vote on the Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act.
The Senate convenes at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.
The president begins his day at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., before flying with the first lady to Chavies, Ky., to join Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) and the state’s first lady, Britainy Beshear, to survey the impact of recent flooding that killed at least 37 people, plus discuss response efforts and meet with affected families at 2 p.m. The Bidens return to the White House this evening. The Associated Press previews Biden’s visit HERE.
The vice president will convene university and college presidents to discuss access to reproductive health care, with opening remarks scheduled at 3:15 p.m. in Harris’s ceremonial White House office.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Pretoria, South Africa, where he meets Monday at 10 a.m. local time with Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor before co-hosting the U.S.-South Africa Strategic Dialogue. Blinken will join a working lunch with his counterpart before holding a joint afternoon press conference with Pandor before he gives an afternoon speech about the U.S. strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa. He meets in the late afternoon with employees and families from the U.S. Mission in South Africa.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Agriculture Deputy Secretary Jewel Bronaugh will visit the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington at 12:30 p.m. for a roundtable discussion with community partners and food bank staff members about addressing hunger in U.S. communities.
Chinese and Taiwanese warships shadowed one another on Sunday as Beijing’s four days of military exercises were supposed to end, part of China’s protests against the recent visit to Taiwan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (Reuters). China on Monday said its drills, which have involved missile strikes, warplanes and ship movements across the midline of the Taiwan Straits, will continue (The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal).
Ukraine said on Sunday that renewed Russian shelling damaged three radiation sensors and hurt a worker at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, in the second hit in consecutive days on Europe’s largest nuclear facility. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has assailed Moscow’s tactics as “nuclear terror” (Reuters).
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called today for international inspectors to be given access to the dangerously embattled nuclear plant (Reuters).
Great Britain’s Defense Ministry said in an intelligence analysis over the weekend that the Russian invasion that started Feb. 24 “is about to enter a new phase” in which the fighting would shift to a roughly 217-mile front line extending from near the city of Zaporizhzhia to Russian-occupied Kherson (The Associated Press).
Six more ships carrying agricultural cargo held up by the war in Ukraine received authorization Sunday to leave the country’s Black Sea coast as analysts warned that Russia was moving troops and equipment in the direction of the southern port cities to stave off a Ukrainian counteroffensive (The Associated Press).
A fragile cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants that took effect late Sunday was holding into Monday morning (The Associated Press). It’s a bid to end days of violence that killed dozens of Palestinians and disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. The flare-up was the worst fighting between Israel and Gaza militant groups since Israel and Hamas fought an 11-day war last year (The Associated Press). Biden, in a White House statement Sunday night, said he supports the cease fire.
➤ COURTS
Military service academies and colleges and universities that consider race in admissions help the U.S. military achieve a diverse officer corps, which benefits the military branches and U.S. overseas operations, retired military heavyweights advised the Supreme Court, The Hill’s John Kruzel reports. Justices on Oct. 31 will hear oral arguments in a legal challenge to race-conscious admissions policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University (Bloomberg News).
And finally … This week’s hunters in the Florida Everglades may outnumber their prey while trudging through muck, underbrush and summer heat in search of invasive Burmese pythons.
A contest that has attracted 800 participants from at least 32 states and Canada offers thousands of dollars in prize money to those who bag and present the highest number of dead pythons by the time the event ends a week from today. The state adds bonus cash for the longest serpent in each contest category, and disqualifications occur if hunters try to slither past the rules (snake extermination must be humane and cannot involve native species).
Bounty hunting is Florida’s way of removing a hazardous interloper. Burmese pythons — a foreign occupier in the 1.5 million-acre wetlands preserve and national park — prey on birds, mammals and other reptiles. A female python can lay as many as 100 eggs a year and the best way to find those females, the savviest hunters say, is to let the male pythons lead them to the targets.
“Every python removed is one less invasive species preying on our native birds, mammals and reptiles,” said Florida first lady Casey DeSantis (The Associated Press and CNN).
I will not be voting Republican in this year’s midterms.
But polls show people over 65 leaning heavily Republican this November. An Economist/YouGov poll released Aug. 1 gave the GOP a 15-point advantage with this group.
To me, that means seniors will be voting against their own best interest.
Just last week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Social Security and Medicare should no longer be guaranteed as mandatory for seniors. He favors having them reviewed by Congress every year.
That fits with a plan outlined by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to allow Social Security and Medicare to expire every five years unless renewed by a vote in Congress. Scott, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is basically calling for an end to the social safety net for my over-65 crowd.
Why are seniors voting for Republicans when congressional Democrats are protecting entitlements key to their economic survival?
Democrats are also on the verge of saving seniors money by making their prescription drugs cheaper.
Legislation passed by the Senate on Sunday allows Medicare to negotiate prices with prescription drug manufacturers; caps out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients at $2,000; and increases the prescription drug subsidies for seniors on low incomes.
“Why would we create a situation where we’re at the mercy of the drug companies to pay whatever they charge?” AARP senior vice president Bill Sweeney asked.
In addition, the Democrats’ bill — expected to be passed by the House this week and signed by President Biden soon afterward — includes money to boost the Affordable Care Act’s ability to keep down the cost of health insurance, again benefitting seniors, directly or indirectly.
There’s more.
Which party is doing the best job of handling COVID-19?
Senior citizens — people over 65 — account for 16 percent of the U.S. population but 75 percent of deaths from COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The best way to prevent seniors from dying or being hospitalized from COVID is vaccination.
Congressional Democrats backed Biden administration spending on a successful mass vaccination campaign.
Currently, 79 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Sixty-seven percent of Americans are fully vaccinated.
When COVID shut down the economy in 2020 and 2021, the Democrats acted without a single GOP vote to pass the American Rescue Plan. The emergency bill sent 90 percent of American households stimulus checks to keep the economy going. That was a big benefit to the high percentage of seniors in poverty.
Keep in mind, Democrats acted for seniors even after senior voters voted for Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race by 52 percent to 47 percent, according to exit polls.
Four years previously, people over the age of 65 voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton by 7 percentage points.
Republicans did not reward those voters with backing for social safety net programs for seniors – Social Security and Medicare. And they are not backing legislation to cut the cost of prescription drugs.
But seniors keep voting for Republicans.
It is worth noting that, as of 2019, 81 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters were white, according to Pew Research.
Those voters could be supporting Republicans due to discomfort with rising racial diversity and immigration.
Norman Lear, producer of the television show “All in the Family,” turned 100 this year. The most famous character he ever put on TV was a white senior citizen, Archie Bunker.
In an essay last month for The New York Times, Lear said Bunker likely would have been a Trump voter in 2016. But he added:
“For all his faults, Archie loved his country, and he loved his family, even when they called him out on his ignorance and bigotries.”
Lear continued:
“But I think that the sight of the American flag being used [by Trump supporters] to attack Capitol Police would have sickened him. I hope that the resolve shown by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and their commitment to exposing the truth, would have won his respect.”
One final Republican insult to senior citizens is the constant attack on President Biden’s age.
At every turn, they suggest the 79-year-old is mentally weak. They say he fell off a bike. They say he stumbled over the steps to Air Force One. He walks like an old man.
What about the fact that Biden is still riding a bike, keeping a demanding schedule, killing terrorists, and beating back Russian aggression?
Also curious is the GOP indifference to insulting older voters for being like Biden – old.
Trump is 76. The current Republican leader in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is 80.
President Reagan, a hero to Republicans, was 77 when he left office.
Yes, the coarsening of our culture and the abandonment of traditional values unsettles seniors. That includes me and I’m a black immigrant.
Yes, the snarky disrespect and ingratitude of millennials — “Ok, Boomer” — irritates the hell out of me.
But voting for people who are talking about cutting Social Security, lying about stolen elections, and backing violent riots on Capitol Hill is self-hate for seniors.
As my old man once advised, it is “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
Senate Democrats after a very long series of votes have approved a massive $740 billion bill that will make significant investments in climate change while lowering the price of prescription drugs and taking steps toward a more equitable tax code.
That the Senate was able to get the bill done is somewhat of a surprise if you look back to December 2021, when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) appeared to torpedo the efforts with an announcement on Fox News that he could not support the measure because of inflation.
It was just the first time Manchin appeared to kill the bill, only for him to save it with a last-minute deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) late last month that caught most of Washington and the nation by surprise.
The package now moves to the House, where it is expected to be approved despite opposition from Republicans and some disappointment from Democrats about its size.
Here are five takeaways.
Senate Democrats stuck together
The Senate was in session Saturday, beginning a vote-a-rama at 11:30 p.m. Saturday that continued through Sunday in which Democrats blocked GOP amendment after GOP amendment.
Republicans had a few goals with their amendment strategy.
One was to force Democrats into tough votes ahead of the midterm elections on gas prices, taxes, immigration and other issues.
Another aim was to add a “poison pill” amendment to the package that might weaken its support in the House and force the whole enterprise to collapse.
None of these amendments were added to the package — at least for the first 14 or 15 hours of the marathon, because Democrats were able to stick together to fight them off.
That changed after 2 p.m. Sunday, when Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and six other Democrats backed a measure that raised revenue by extending for one year the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions that was a key feature of the 2017 Trump tax cut bill.
Democrats initially worried passage of that amendment could hurt the bill, but after its passage they offered another amendment that replaced the SALT cap extension with a different tax provision.
It was somewhat predictable that Democrats stuck together since it was a necessity for final passage, but it was still notable given the stark differences between centrists like Manchin and Sinema and progressive voices such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
During the final vote, several Democrats offered hugs to Sinema. The relief on members’ faces as they said goodbye ahead of the August recess was clear.
Sanders, Dems both showed some frustration
It wasn’t all love and roses for Democrats during the marathon night of votes.
While the larger story was Democrats battling off GOP amendments, Democrats also killed off multiple amendments from one of their own caucus members: Sanders, the two-time presidential candidate.
In one of the night’s most heated moments on the floor, Sanders offered an amendment to revive the expanded child tax credit, which lapsed late last year, as part of the Democrats’ sprawling package.
“Pathetically, the United States has the highest child poverty rate of almost any major country on Earth, and it is especially high among young people of color,” Sanders said. “This is the wealthiest nation on Earth, we should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any country.”
The Sanders measure would have restored an expanded $300 credit for four years, and would have been paid for by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent.
Democrats argued that while much of the party agreed with the Sanders proposal, if added it would have sunk the entire package.
“Sen. Sanders is right, the child tax credit is one of the most important things this body did. It brought down the child poverty rate by 40 percent almost immediately,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who nonetheless urged colleagues against voting for the amendment to avoid bringing “the bill down.”
As the debate continued and Sanders pushed back at Brown, asking what harm there would be in at least forcing those Democrats opposed to the tax credit from killing it while the rest of the caucus— 48 senators in all — voted for it, Brown could be heard saying “come on, Bernie.”
In the end, Democrats did stick together — with Republicans but without Sanders — voting down the amendment 1-99.
One senator has a lot of power in the 50-50 Senate
At one time the package House and Senate Democrats envisioned would have included the child tax credit and a lot more.
The package being considered last fall would have topped $3 trillion, representing one of the most ambitious legislative plans in U.S. history.
What ended up passing is a lot smaller — mostly because of Manchin and Sinema, who both opposed various parts of the initial plan.
The result reflected the essential truth that Democrats couldn’t do much of anything without Manchin and Sinema, since no Republicans were going to join them on their legislation. That meant they needed complete unity in their ranks in the Senate to get anything done.
Out went the elimination of the “carried interest loophole,” a casualty to Sinema that was meant to raise taxes on hedge fund money managers.
In came language to bolster oil and gas drilling in a package that overall is meant to steer the U.S. away from dependence on fossil fuels. That was a concession to Manchin, who also whittled the size of the bill down largely because he said he did not want it to increase inflation.
Democrats essentially had to buy off Manchin and then Sinema to get the bill through the Senate, and both used their leverage to get a lot of what they wanted.
It’s another lesson in the basic politics of the Senate. If your vote is needed, you can get paid in provisions for your state and interest, something both Manchin and Sinema got in spades.
Sinema flexed her political muscle early in the negotiations when she ruled out proposals to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent and to raise the top marginal income tax rate on wealthy individuals.
Democratic colleagues were stunned by her hard line as they assumed corporate and top-bracket income tax breaks would be at the core of any budget reconciliation package.
Some other Democrats tried to use their leverage as well by threatening to derail the package if it included language that would be unpalatable to their constituents.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said he would vote against the final reconciliation bill if it included any Republican-sponsored amendments on immigration and some Western Democrats warned they might vote “no” if a drought relief provision sought by Sinema penalized their home states.
Democrats hope for some help in the midterms
The Democratic base has been down in the dumps for months — in part because of a sense that its political leaders were getting little done in Washington.
This feeling was always subjective and partly linked to expectations members of the party set.
In his first year in office, Biden saw Democratic majorities approve a massive coronavirus relief package months into his term, and later a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that will make major investments in roads and bridges across the country.
But because the Build Back Better agenda was blocked — and because a fair number of Democrats identified that as their real top priority — there was a sense the party had accomplished close to nothing.
That feeling contributed to Biden’s negative polling numbers that were already down because of frustration over inflation and high gas prices.
The expectation for much of 2021 was that Democrats would not get much of Build Back Better done. Instead, they are on the verge of passing a $740 billion chunk of it.
The party hopes it will make the base feel a little more strongly about going to the polls to back Democratic House and Senate candidates in November.
Schumer showed his mettle as a leader
Schumer faced a lot of questions about his ability to lead a razor-thin 50-50 Senate majority when he took over control over the upper chamber in January of last year.
Progressives pressed him from the start to consider tossing out the Senate filibuster to pass big, bold proposals such as election reform despite the slim Democratic majority.
Democratic senators said if they failed to pass legislation to tackle climate change the session would have been something of a disappointment.
Prospects for climate change and tax reform legislation looked bleak after Schumer and Manchin blew up at each other in a July 14 meeting but Manchin came back to the leader a few days later looking to rekindle a deal.
Schumer declared the resulting compromise “one of the most comprehensive and impactful bills Congress has seen in decades.”
Getting Manchin to agree to the most sweeping climate bill ever passed by Congress despite the strong opposition of the West Virginia Coal Association will go down in the books as an impressive example of leadership and deal making.
Getting Sinema to agree to give Medicare power to negotiate lower drug price is another impressive accomplishment. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) hailed it as a “seismic shift” in power between the government and the pharmaceutical industry.
And Schumer kept Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, from defecting, despite his loud grumblings that the bill fell far short of what the American public needs to better afford health care, child care and housing.
Democrats voted en masse to defeat several attempts by Sanders to change the bill after Schumer urged them to keep the legislation free of changes. The Vermont senator still stuck with his leader to pass the Inflation Reduction Act Sunday afternoon.
Democrats are seeing new glimmers of hope for the 2022 midterm elections amid a series of high-profile legislative and political victories that they say could reverse the longtime expectation of a so-called red wave in November.
Senate Democrats struck a deal on a sweeping tax and climate package that had long been a point of bitter contention within their own ranks. Recent polling shows Democrats making gains on the generic ballot, a key measure of voter preference in the midterms. And voters in deep-red Kansas broadly rejected a ballot question stripping abortion rights from the state constitution, emboldening Democrats to further elevate the issue.
“I think there’s a clear path to holding the majority,” said Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia who was ousted in 2010 as Republicans made sweeping electoral gains that handed them back control of the House.
“Make the contrast clear,” he advised. “Americans cannot afford the extreme — even authoritarian — Republican Party of today and there’s a choice, there’s an alternative and that’s Democrats who are welcoming bipartisanship and delivering steady, stable progress.”
“Forget ‘throw the bums out,’ ” he added. “We don’t want to bring the bums back in.”
Even for President Biden, whose approval rating has been deep underwater for months, the past week has been rife with political wins. On Monday, he announced that a CIA drone strike had killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, marking a counterterrorism win for the president after a chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
Biden was handed more good news to tout on Friday when the Labor Department announced that U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July, offering evidence that the country has not entered a recession despite other worrisome economic indicators.
But it was perhaps the failure of the ballot question in Kansas — the first such measure to go before voters since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June — that offered the biggest dose of optimism for Democrats, who have sought to turn the issue of reproductive rights into a campaign bulwark.
“It was a bipartisan surge of single-issue voters,” said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist. “The Republicans have tethered themselves now to something so unpopular and so radicalized. I think this could set up a huge backlash, or at least scramble everything that everyone thought was going to happen in November.”
All that adds up to what Democrats see as at least a somewhat brighter outlook for the midterm elections when voters will decide whether to keep the Democratic majorities in Congress or toss them out of power.
Republicans need to net just five seats in the House and only one in the Senate to recapture control of both chambers. Those narrow margins, combined with the fact that the party in power tends to lose seats in midterm elections, has led many Democrats to believe that their power in Congress — or at least their House majority — is as good as gone.
And to be sure, there are still plenty of reasons for Democrats to worry.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said that the events of the past several days are “certainly enough for Democrats to try to change the narrative” around the midterms, conceding that Friday’s jobs report and the failure of the proposed amendment in Kansas on Tuesday, among other things, should give Democrats some reason for optimism.
But Heye also noted that Democrats are still facing a major problem this year: inflation.
“How do you talk about this economy? You have unemployment at 3.5 percent, 528,000 jobs added in July but you still have runaway inflation. It’s the No. 1 thing I hear people talk about.”
“Anytime I talk to anybody, I swear the conversation goes to what they just paid for something at the grocery store, what they paid at a restaurant, filling up their gas tank.”
And even Perriello, the former congressman bullish on his party’s chances in the midterms, acknowledged some challenges for Democrats. Under the new congressional maps put in place this year, Republicans are set to net three or four additional seats thanks to redistricting alone.
At the same time, rising inflation could pose a threat to Democrats if Republicans can effectively weaponize the issue, he said.
“I think that while the maps are better than people feared, it’s still far from a level playing field,” Perriello said. “I think you have the issues of inflation out there, and if the Republicans were actually able to have a coherent economic message and tap into people’s pain, it would be there.”
There’s also the question of whether Democrats’ recent legislative victories will actually matter to voters come November. While the deal on the climate and tax bill struck by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is a milestone for the party, one Democratic strategist who works on Senate races expressed doubts that it will matter much to voters on Election Day.
“I don’t think there’s going to be anyone who votes on this bill,” the strategist said. “If you’re a partisan Democrat and you’ve been dispirited by the lack of action in Washington, this assuages that a little bit. But there’s no independent voter who can’t decide how they’re going to vote that’s looking at this bill and saying ‘a-ha!’”
For now, however, there’s at least some evidence that the midterm landscape is improving for Democrats.
A national poll from Monmouth University released on Thursday found that 50 percent of Americans say they prefer that Democrats control Congress, compared to 43 percent who want Republican control. That’s a stark change from the same poll in June, when the two parties were deadlocked at 47 percent on the generic ballot question.
In another sign that the political tides may be turning, the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, shifted three House races on Friday in Democrats’ favor, including a Michigan battleground district where Republican voters on Tuesday nominated a pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist in favor of a more moderate incumbent, Rep. Peter Meijer.
Heye also noted that, in some races, Republicans have nominated “candidates that are a real problem,” pointing to John Gibbs, who defeated Meijer in a primary this week, as one such candidate. But whether that’s enough to stop Republicans from winning back the House majority in November remains to be seen, especially given the tough headwinds that Democrats are facing this year.
“The environment still favors Republicans. The math, especially with redistricting, favors Republicans,” Heye said. “Republicans don’t have to have a great night to have a good night.”
President Biden has repeatedly talked about taking on former President Trump.
He still tells anyone who will listen that he’s the only Democrat who can defeat the former president, and he said last month that he wouldn’t be disappointed if Trump ran against him in 2024.
But some Democrats say that if Biden does run for reelection, he also needs to actively target Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and stop boxing himself into a Trump race.
Trump is all but certain to enter the race, but with the Jan. 6 hearings hammering him and potential lawsuits looming, DeSantis is the Republican to watch, some Democrats say.
“To me, DeSantis is the scarier prospect,” one Democratic strategist said. “He’s a smarter version of Trump, he’s way more strategic, and he doesn’t have a hundred lawsuits at his feet.“
“If Trump goes bust, and he very well may, he’s the main guy I’d be watching,” the strategist said of the Florida governor.
Throughout his administration, DeSantis has made it a point to use Biden as a foil, blaming the president for policies he says are taking the country in the wrong direction.
In recent days, he has doubled down on Biden’s push for vaccine booster shots to help combat COVID-19, which still rages throughout much of the country.
“We just saw Joe Biden test positive for COVID, right? And I’ve said we obviously wish him well on that, but you know, this is a guy that’s taken how many booster shots? I mean, seriously, [he’s] done all this stuff and gets it,” DeSantis told supporters late last month at an event in Tampa.
During another speech that week, he also used Biden’s diagnosis to blast him. “I want to wish the president a speedy recovery from COVID and America a speedy recovery from Biden.”
As DeSantis runs for reelection this year in a state that has been moving toward Republicans, Democrats say Biden and other national Democrats should take him on.
“What’s inexplicable to me is, why — not just Joe Biden — but the entire Democratic establishment isn’t trying to disqualify him now in the governor’s race,” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based pollster and consultant whose firm helped Barack Obama’s presidential campaign win the state in 2008 and 2012.
“He’s getting an absolute free pass,” Amandi said of DeSantis. “He has no sense of shame. … He’s acting like someone who doesn’t feel accountable to anyone.”
It’s not as though Biden has been completely silent on DeSantis. In recent months, he has taken on policies in Florida endorsed by the governor.
The Biden administration went after DeSantis after Florida was the only state in the country that didn’t preorder pediatric COVID-19 vaccines.
The president has also taken veiled swipes at DeSantis on other issues, including Disney, after the governor signed a bill into law stripping its self-government power that provides derives for its theme parks. The law was seen as payback after Disney criticized DeSantis for the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits discussion of sexual orientation in classrooms.
“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said at a Democratic National Committee fundraising event in April. “It’s not even conservative in a traditional sense of conservatism. It’s mean. It’s ugly. I mean, look at what’s happening now in Florida: Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse.”
Biden also took to Twitter to voice his opposition to the law.
“I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are,” the president wrote on the social media platform. “I have your back, and my administration will continue to fight for the protections and safety you deserve.”
Still, some Democrats say they’d like to see Biden go after DeSantis more. They say he should emulate California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who, in a rare move, took the fight to DeSantis by airing an ad on Fox News last month.
“Biden has to spend more time in Florida, taking on DeSantis, and not giving him the complete stage,” the strategist said. “We can’t be surprised when he suddenly emerges as the favorite of the party because we see this train coming.”
While Trump continues to dominate polls for Republicans, DeSantis appears to be on his heels in key states. A Detroit News poll of likely Republican primary voters found DeSantis statistically tied with Trump. A University of New Hampshire poll also found both Republicans dead even in the state.
But for now, at least, Biden remains largely fixated on Trump, Biden allies say.
“They believe strongly in the end that Trump will be the nominee,” said one ally who speaks to White House officials regularly. “That’s the governing theory, until somebody proves otherwise.”
As Martin Sweet, a professor of political science at Purdue University put it: “For Biden, using Trump as the leader of the opposition is a useful, motivating tool.”
“Trump is such shorthand for everything,” he said. “He is such a unique political figure that it would be crazy not to talk about him.”
Republicans are not yet sweating the idea of abortion issues swaying the midterm elections in favor of Democrats. But with Kansas voters decisively rejecting an anti-abortion ballot initiative, the room is getting warmer.
National GOP groups are brushing off the idea that the Kansas vote last week is a warning sign for November, confident that concerns about economic issues prevail as the driving force in the election.
“The economic mess Democrats created by ignoring their own economists and saddling Americans with record-high prices is the number one issue in every competitive district,” National Republican Congressional Committee communications director Michael McAdams said in a statement when asked about implications of the Kansas measure.
The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which works to elect state and down-ballot Republicans, commissioned a poll in 15 states just after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization striking down national abortion rights and found that 56 percent of voters named the cost of living or the economy as their most important issue, while only 8 percent named abortion.
When asked about the Kansas vote in a Newsmax interview last week, RSLC President Dee Duncan said that the economy is what is going to drive Republican wins.
Below the surface, however, Republicans are keeping an eye on how the abortion issue is affecting voter behavior, and some see risks for their candidates.
“Republicans are right to be nervous about it. But I think we still need to see more of a breakdown on the vote on, you know, who the voters were that were turning out given the margin,” Doug Heye, a veteran Republican operative, said about the Kansas election.
“In the immediate aftermath, it’s hard to take absolute lessons from this that are takeaways to project towards November,” Heye said.
The Kansas vote was the first measure testing voter response on abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the margin of the vote in a state that is reliably Republican in presidential elections surprised many observers: 59 percent voted against changing the state constitution to allow for potential future abortion restrictions, and 41 percent voted for it.
High turnout indicated a lot of voter enthusiasm on the issue. Unofficial results from the Kansas secretary of State’s office as of Friday showed 919,809 votes on the amendment, marking the highest number of primary votes since at least 2010 and a nearly 45 percent increase from the 2020 primary.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) has been vocal in opposing a proposal in her state that would ban abortions without any exceptions for rape and incest. Mace, a sexual assault survivor herself, encourages other Republicans to support abortion exceptions and make that known as the Kansas measure indicates voter enthusiasm.
“Most people … they don’t want abortion up until birth for any reason. On the other side, exceptions and having some grace period is acceptable to most people. Seventy-five percent of the country wants some guardrails, but they don’t want the extremities of both sides. And Kansas is just a great example, being a red state,” Mace said.
She said that the abortion issue is “still light-years behind inflation” in terms of the top issues in her district, but that it could make a difference.
“This is definitely a top one and could be a factor in, I guess, driving momentum at the ballot,” Mace said.
Strategists note that voter behavior on a single-issue ballot measure is different than voters choosing between two candidates with a variety of views, and that general election voters may be less motivated by social issues.
Pro-abortion rights voters are more likely to be factor for Republicans running in swing districts or competitive statewide races.
Even before the Kansas vote, however, some GOP candidates started to moderate their messaging on abortion restrictions.
Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jenson, a physician, indicated in a May radio interview that he would support abortion exceptions only for the life of the mother, and not in cases of rape of incest. But last month, he showed support for more exceptions in a video with Republican lieutenant governor candidate Matt Birk outlining a plan that proposed boosting adoption tax credits and creating a paid family leave plan.
“If I’ve been unclear previously, I want to be clear now: Rape and incest along with endangering the mother’s mental or physical health are acceptable exceptions,” Jensen said in the video.
Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, who in May told a reporter that a “baby deserves a right to life whether it is conceived in incest or rape,” in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade has called the issue of abortion a “distraction” and argued that he is not the decision-maker on the issue.
“In many ways, my personal views are irrelevant in the effect that I can’t do anything with abortion because it’s codified in law,” Mastriano said in a recent radio interview.
“I think people should be as specific on that issue as they’re able to be, because if they’re not the Democrats are just going to try and lump them into some, you know, supposed extreme category,” said a Republican campaign consultant who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If you’re in a district or a state where perhaps you’re on the wrong side of that issue, being more specific can be helpful.”
Republicans with hard-line stances on abortion bans remain prominent in the party overall.
In Indiana last week, a majority of state House Republicans voted to support banning abortions in cases of rape and incest, and around half voted in favor of removing exceptions for abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities. The exceptions remained in a near-total abortion ban bill due to support from Democrats.
Those pursuing abortion bans without exceptions could pose a risk for other candidates in the November election.
“Republicans should want the conversation to always be about those things that have driven Biden’s approval rating down, and that starts with inflation. That’s rising crime. That’s the situation at the border,” Heye said. “So when you have, you know, state legislatures or you know, ballot initiatives that take Republicans’ eye off the ball, that’s politically going to be a mistake.”
President Biden called for an investigation Sunday into recent hostilities between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip as he offered his support for a ceasefire announced earlier in the day.
The truce between the Israelis and the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group was negotiated by Egyptian officials, who said both sides agreed to the ceasefire following roughly three days of fighting.
“The reports of civilian casualties in Gaza are a tragedy, whether by Israeli strikes against Islamic Jihad positions or the dozens of Islamic Jihad rockets that reportedly fell inside Gaza,” Biden said in a statement.
“My administration supports a timely and thorough investigation into all of these reports, and we also call on all parties to fully implement the ceasefire, and to ensure fuel and humanitarian supplies are flowing into Gaza as the fighting subsides,” he said.
Tensions rose throughout the week after Israeli forces on Monday arrested Bassam al-Saadi, an Islamic Jihad leader, in Jenin, which is located in the West Bank.
Israel later sent reinforcements to the border with Gaza and closed border crossings, which interrupted the flow of supplies like fuel.
The airstrike prompted retalitory strikes from the Islamic Jihad, the smaller of two militant groups in Gaza. Hamas, the larger group that rules day-to-day affairs of the territory and engaged in a deadly 11-day war with Israel last year, has largely stayed out of the recent fighting.
On Saturday, Israel said it struck a second Islamic Jihad military leader.
“My support for Israel’s security is long-standing and unwavering—including its right to defend itself against attacks,” Biden said.
“Over these recent days, Israel has defended its people from indiscriminate rocket attacks launched by the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the United States is proud of our support for Israel’s Iron-Dome, which intercepted hundreds of rockets and saved countless lives,” he said.
The violence that erupted on Friday night has killed 43 Palestinians, including 15 children and four women. Israeli officials said many in the country were also injured.
Biden visited Israel and the West Bank last month, where he said the U.S. would “not give up” its support for a two-state solution to the conflict while meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) on Friday requested a special prosecutor investigate her opponent’s alleged involvement in a group that gained unauthorized access to voting machines.
Politico published a petition from Nessel’s office calling for the special prosecutor after her investigation into the alleged scheme found ties to Matthew DePerno, the presumptive Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, who is endorsed by former President Trump.
“When this investigation began there was not a conflict of interest,” the petition states. “However, during the course of the investigation, facts were developed that DePerno was one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy.”
The Hill has reached out to Nessel’s office and the Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, the group that received the petition, for comment.
Nessel’s investigation began after a request in February from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who said she received reports that at least one unnamed third party was able to “gain inappropriate access” to voting machines in Richfield Township and Roscommon County.
Reuters on Sunday first publicly revealed DePerno’s alleged ties in Nessel’s investigation, and Politico moments later reported on her office’s request for a special prosecutor.
Reuters cited court documents alleging DePerno led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting machines in Richfield Township.
In its petition, Nessel’s office said the special prosecutor should review charges like willfully damaging a voting machine and fraudulent access to a computer system.
Trump in September endorsed DePerno, who is a vocal supporter of the former president’s unfounded claims of election fraud.
Tyson Shepard, DePerno’s campaign manager, in a statement called Nessel’s actions “unethical.”
“Dana Nessel has a history of targeting and persecuting her political enemies,” Shepard said.
“At the same time she has refused to prosecute any crime involving Democrats including the deaths resulting from the nursing home COVID scandal,” he added.
Republican state lawmakers have grilled Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) administration for her executive order early in the pandemic that placed seniors recovering from COVID in dedicated isolation wings in nursing homes, arguing the policy led to more deaths.
