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2024: A nightmare scenario

With every passing day, two things about the next presidential election are becoming clearer. One is that Democrats are unlikely to nominate Joe Biden for another term. The other is that Republicans are unlikely to nominate Donald Trump for another term. The reason is the same in both cases: Both men look like losers.  

What is not becoming clearer is what candidates the parties are likely to nominate. Trump may try to pre-empt the process by declaring his candidacy before this year’s midterm election, which traditionally marks the start of the presidential campaign. Trump is clearly annoyed by the fact that other Republican candidates — most conspicuously Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — are showing an interest in running for the 2024 GOP nomination. But an early Trump declaration may not have the effect of pre-empting other contenders. It could very well give a “Stop Trump” campaign more time to find a candidate.

Look at the polls. The New York Times-Siena College national poll shows President Biden with an overall negative favorability rating: 58 percent unfavorable and 39 percent favorable. And Trump? Just as bad: 57 percent unfavorable and 39 percent favorable. A race between the two of them right now would be very close: Biden 44 percent, Trump 41.

Only 26 percent of Democratic primary voters want to see Biden win their nomination; 64 percent of Democrats want their party to nominate “someone else.” (Among Democrats under 30, 94 percent want “someone else.”) On the Republican side, fewer than half of Republican primary voters (49 percent) want to see Trump win the Republican nomination. Right now, the only other potential Republican contender in double digits is DeSantis, with 25 percent. 

Joe Biden is a professional politician. Normally, American voters don’t like professional politicians. That’s why they support term limits. But a professional politician was exactly what the country wanted in 2020 after four years of Donald Trump, who has contempt for professional politicians — including professional Republican politicians like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom Trump has called a “dumb son of a bitch” and an “old broken down crow.”   

You hire a professional because they know more than you do about solving a problem. You go to a professional doctor because he or she knows more than you do about what ails you. You go to a professional accountant because he or she knows more than you do about the tax code. A professional politician is supposed to know more than you do about solving policy problems. 

Professional politicians are good at making deals. That was seen as Biden’s strength after 36 years in the U.S. Senate. But deal-making is proving to be impossible in an intensely polarized political environment. Deal-making requires compromise, and hard-line partisans don’t go for compromise.

What Democrats are looking for now is a fighter. Under Trump, the Radical Right has taken over the Republican Party. Democrats aren’t looking for a leader to make deals with the Radical Right. They want a leader who will punch them in the face. 

After a shooter killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) thrilled Democrats when he said on television, “If you’re angry today, I’m here to tell you: Be angry! I’m furious!” California Gov. Gavin Newsom instantly became a contender for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination by asking an angry question: “Where the hell’s my party?” Newsom even ran an attack ad against DeSantis in Florida warning that state’s voters, “Freedom, it’s under attack in your state. Your Republican leaders? They’re banning books. Making it harder to vote. Restricting speech in classrooms. Even criminalizing women and doctors.”

As Democratic strategist Matt Bennett put it, “Whoever we nominate, whether it’s the president or somebody else, is going to have to be ready to fight.”

Want a nightmare scenario for 2024? How’s this: Trump runs and loses the Republican nomination to, say, DeSantis; Trump claims the nomination was stolen by the Republican establishment. So, he decides to run as an independent “MAGA party” candidate.

Normally, that would mean splitting the Republican vote and ensuring a Democratic victory. But with the Democrats looking so weak under Biden and with Trump having the legitimacy of a former president, all three candidates could carry states and win electoral votes. You get all of a state’s electoral votes by winning a plurality of the state’s popular vote — still, you need a majority of the electoral college to win the election. What happens if none of the three candidates wins a majority of the electoral college?

Then the election goes into the House of Representatives, something that hasn’t happened since 1824. Each state gets one vote. Alaska, with one House member, one vote. California, with 52 House members, one vote. Implication: What happens in upcoming congressional elections — like the one this year — could very well determine the outcome of the next presidential contest.

Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable” (Simon & Schuster).

Source: TEST FEED1

HHS could consider declaring monkeypox a public health emergency: WH official

The Department of Health and Human Services is considering whether to declare monkeypox a public health emergency if current management tactics don’t get the virus under control, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said Sunday. 

“In the US right now, we’re looking at public health emergency as something that HHS might deliver but I mean, might invoke but, you know, it really depends on what does that allow us to do,” Jha told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan.

“Right now we have over 2000 cases, but we have ramped up vaccinations, ramped up treatments, ramped up testing, and we’re going to continue to look at all sort of policy options. Right now, we think we can get our arms around this thing, but obviously, if we need further tools, we will invoke them as we need them,” he added.

Jha also applauded the World Health Organization for declaring monkeypox a public health emergency.

“We are seeing outbreaks that are out of control in many, many parts of the world. It’s very important that we get our arms around this thing.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports 2,891 cases in the U.S. as of July 22. As many as 80,000 tests can be administered weekly, Jha said Sunday, and over 300,000 vaccines have been distributed.

Jha emphasized that U.S. public health falls often to the states, and that CDC action is only well-informed when states cooperate and share data on monkeypox and also COVID-19.

The White House official pushed back against criticism of the federal government’s monkeypox response — from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the mayors of New York and San Fransisco — saying that the response has strengthened since monkeypox was first noticed in the U.S. two months ago.

The Biden administration has gotten a hold of a significant number of vaccines, “probably more than every other country combined,” Jha said. 

“The plan here is very straightforward. We – the plan is to eliminate this virus from the United States. I think we can do that. We’ve got the vaccines, and we’ve got the diagnostic tests. And we’re gonna- you’re gonna just see more and more action from the administration.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Dmitry Rogozin’s firing will not save the Russian space program

The news that Dmitry Rogozin had been dismissed as director of Roscosmos, the state corporation that runs the Russian space program, was universally acclaimed in Western space policy circles. Rogozin’s history of making bellicose statements concerning Russia’s space partners has been a sore point even before his tenure at Roscosmos. However, his departure will not save the Russian space program from the systemic problems afflicting it.

That Rogozin was prone to undiplomatic statements became apparent in 2014 when, in the wake of economic sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Crimea, he threatened Western access to the International Space Station (ISS), which were hitching rides on Russia’s Soyuz rocket. Rogozin, then a deputy prime minister in charge of space and defense for the Russian Federation, suggested that NASA might need to access the ISS with a trampoline if the West did not back off on sanctions. Rogozin had personally been a target of those sanctions.

The threat turned out to be a hollow one. However, the trampoline remark came back to haunt Rogozin in 2020 when, finally, the NASA commercial crew program came to fruition and astronauts began flying to and from the ISS on board the SpaceX Crew Dragon, no longer relying on Russia for a ride. The Russian monopoly on access to the orbiting lab was broken. Russia lost a great deal of revenue it had enjoyed because of that monopoly, which had lasted since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

Fast forward to 2022. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West has imposed further sanctions and provided Ukraine with arms, training and money. The war quickly devolved into a bloody quagmire for Russia. Rogozin, by this time having been demoted to being director of Roscosmos, darkly hinted that he might send the ISS crashing into the United States or Europe, given that Russian cosmonauts control aspects of the space station’s propulsion to keep it in orbit.

Apparently, on Rogozin’s orders, the Russian cosmonauts on the ISS allowed themselves to be photographed wearing the colors of two puppet regimes that Russia had carved out of Eastern Ukraine. This blatant use of the space station for propaganda purposes earned a sharp rebuke from NASA.

According to Ars Technica, after a number of belligerent statements, “Rogozin’s behavior seems to be getting worse. The recent actions by Rogozin suggest that he is increasingly unhinged, isolated, desperate, or some combination thereof as rumors about his future circulate.”

Now that Rogozin has been dismissed, the current Deputy Prime Minister for Space and Defense Yuri Borisov has been named his replacement. No one knows what sort of director of Roscosmos Borisov will be. However, it should be noted that practically the moment Rogozin got the boot, NASA and Roscosmos sealed a deal that will have a Russian cosmonaut fly on a Crew Dragon in exchange for an American astronaut flying on a Soyuz. We can at least expect no mean tweets from Borisov and a little more spirit of cooperation from Moscow.

However, a change of leadership at the top of Roscosmos is not going to save the Russian space program from a steady decline. Roscosmos is still beset with inadequate funding, corruption and quality control issues that may be insurmountable, at least in the short to midterm.

One source of the problem is that civil space is not a priority with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Military space is another matter and is of some concern in the West. Like China and the United States, Russia is developing an arsenal of hypersonic missiles, according to the UK Express, designed to evade missile defense systems. In turn, this development has led to calls for the revival of space-based missile defenses as envisioned by President Reagan’s SDI program.

In any case, Putin’s war in Ukraine has foreclosed any major Russian civil space initiative, aside from the ISS partnership. Putin’s dream of restoring the Russian Empire is taking up too many resources. The war has also made Russia a pariah state, barring any new space cooperation with the West. It may well cause Russia to be ejected from the ISS if the carnage continues for too much longer.

Only regime change in Moscow and a change in direction from imperial conquest to economic development will alter the decline of the Russian space program. But when and if that development will ever occur is beyond anyone’s ability to predict.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. 

Source: TEST FEED1

The Memo: Jill Biden, Mayra Flores shine light on Dems’ Latino problem

Two recent controversies are exposing the way the political ground is shifting around Latino voters.

The change isn’t yet catastrophic for Democrats. But it’s giving them cause for alarm.

In short, expectations that Latino voters would be a solid Democratic bloc in perpetuity, buoying the party’s fortunes as the nation becomes ever more diverse, have been dashed. 

Although Latinos still lean heavily Democratic overall, Republicans have made significant inroads.

This is the backdrop against which the two recent furors played out.

Earlier this month, first lady Jill Biden apologized after comparing Latinos with “breakfast tacos” during a speech to an advocacy group in San Antonio. 

Though Biden was supposedly trying to demonstrate her knowledge of the diversity of the Latino community, her terminology was clumsy at best. She didn’t help her cause by mangling the pronunciation of “bodegas.”

Republicans made sure her gaffe would not be easily forgotten, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeting sardonically that “personally, I’m a chorizo, egg & cheese” followed by three taco emojis. 

More seriously, Cruz asserted during his podcast that Democrats “look down on minorities.” He added:

“The fact that this White House wrote this into a speech…I think it is indicative of just how badly Biden and the Democrats are doing with Hispanics nationally — and I think we are going to see a real sea-change in this election.”

The first lady’s spokesman duly issued an apology, saying that her words had been intended only to convey “pure admiration and love for the Latino community.”

The gaffe was a head-scratcher even inside the White House, not least because the first lady has a number of Latinos among her senior staff.

Then another row erupted that was less high-profile, but just as telling.

In Texas, a blogger who had received money from the campaign of Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) attacked the recently elected Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) in racist terms.

NBC News reported that the blog had referred to Flores as “Miss Frijoles” no fewer than 21 times in less than a month, right after Gonzalez’s campaign had cut it a check for $1200.

Flores, a 36-year-old, staunchly conservative Latina, won a special election last month in Texas’s 34th District. In doing so, she became the first Mexican-born congresswoman ever.

Redistricting has nudged Gonzalez, who represents an adjacent area, to contest the 34th district in November, setting up a relatively rare incumbent-versus-incumbent race.

The congresswoman accused the Gonzalez campaign of running “racist ads against me” while the congressman’s campaign manager told NBC that “of course” he was against referring to her in derogatory terms.

The Biden and Flores issues may not have enduring impact, but they have roiled waters that were already unsettled.

“They are not huge, determining factors,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic operative who served as a senior adviser on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign. “But do they make my job as a Democratic operative harder? Sure. Should we think about where we advertise more, or about our speech more? Sure.”

Daniel Garza, the president and founder of the conservative Libre Initiative, said the Flores row was especially potent. 

Biden’s “tacos” comment, he said, felt well-intentioned but awkward.

“But the part about Miss Frijoles? That was intentional, that was deliberate, that was meant to demean and debase. And by using ugly stereotypes, that brought back feelings of ‘otherness’ and that you are treated as something different than fully American. That’s why the blowback was so intense.”

This all comes at a time when the Latino vote appears to be in flux. 

Wind the clock back six years, and then-candidate Donald Trump was predicted to do dismally with Latino voters. 

He had, after all, launched his campaign with the accusation that Mexico was sending “rapists” across the southern border. The core of his migration policy was his famous promise to “Build the Wall!”

Yet, in the end, Trump did better with Latino voters in 2016 than a far more conventional GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, had done four years prior. In 2020, Trump improved his share of the vote again in almost four-fifths of the nation’s 100 most Latino counties.

Democrats were chagrined not just by Trump’s performance but by disappointing performances for their party generally with Latinos, especially in South Florida and Texas’s Rio Grande Valley.

An in-depth report by Democratic firm Equis late last year acknowledged that the pandemic and the economy had played a part. 

The report found that Trump and the GOP’s greater resistance to COVID-related lockdowns played well with Hispanics who are, as a whole, less likely than white non-Hispanics to have jobs that can be performed from home.

But it also suggested that Democrats had been hurt by the suggestion they had gone too far left, toward socialism, and were too lax on border security.

The “socialism” attacks were said to be especially effective with communities that have a collective memory of fleeing hard-left regimes, notably Florida’s Cuban Americans, but also Nicaraguan and Venezuelan Americans.

The border issue was said to have resonated particularly strongly in south Texas where Tejanos — Hispanic people who have lived in the same area for generations, in some case dating back to when the region was part of Mexico — are not themselves immigrants.

Democrats being Democrats, the report’s findings were themselves controversial.

Rocha pushes back against the idea that the “socialist” label is a millstone, pointing to Sanders’s strong performance with Latinos in the 2020 Democratic primary as a rebuttal.

Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi argued that the idea of a major realignment among Hispanic voters was being exaggerated.

In November’s midterms, Amandi insisted, “Democrats are going to win the Latino vote and win it overwhelmingly. The question is, do Democrats have the ability…to replicate the historical support levels they had with Latino voters in 2012 and 2018.” 

Yet even Amandi noted that the nature of the Latino community — fast-growing, disproportionately young and internally diverse — left no room for complacency for those courting its political support.

“It is a vote that is in a constant state of renewal,” he said. “Democrats cannot afford to take their foot off the accelerator because at every election there are lots of new voters, and they don’t have those long-held perceptions of the party brand.”

The problem is the Biden and Flores rows aren’t about taking a foot off the accelerator.

They’re about grinding the gears and lurching into reverse at a time when Democrats can ill afford such errors.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden has upper respiratory infection but ‘doing just fine’ says White House pandemic coordinator

President Biden is “doing just fine” as of last night as he weathers COVID-19, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said Sunday. 

“I checked in with his team late last night. He was feeling well. He had a good day yesterday. He’s got a viral syndrome, an upper respiratory infection, that is, and he’s doing just fine,” Jha told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The president tested positive for the virus Thursday. The White House has said he is experiencing mild symptoms in the days since, according to his physician Kevin O’Connor. 

The White House announced in a letter Sunday morning that Biden was likely infected with Omicron subvariant BA.5, which Jha explained now accounts for around 80 percent of infections.

Jha said medical officials are unable to determine if Biden’s infections with have longer-lasting effects on his health. At 79 years old, Biden is at a high risk of severe illness from the virus. Some of his medications have been halted while he is administered Paxlovid to treat the virus.

“Obviously, if he has persistent symptoms, obviously, if any of them interfere with his ability to carry out his duties, we will- we will disclose that early and often with the American people,” Jha said. 

“But I suspect this is going to be a course of COVID that we’ve seen in many Americans who have been fully vaccinated, double boosted, getting treated with those tools in hand. You know, the President has been doing well, and we’re gonna expect that he’s going to continue to do so,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Cheney says Jan. 6 committee prepared to consider subpoena of Ginni Thomas

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Sunday that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot is “fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena” for Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, if she won’t testify before the committee voluntarily.

“The committee is engaged with her counsel. We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not,” Cheney told CNN “State of the Union” co-host Jake Tapper. “I hope it doesn’t get to that. I hope she will come in voluntarily.”

Thomas has been under scrutiny for her political affiliations and communications with the Trump administration about overturning election results.

She attended the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rally just before rioters stormed the capitol, and she communicated with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and and Trump attorney John Eastman to talk overturning the 2020 presidential election results.

Cheney said Sunday that the committee has heard from “numbers of people who are similarly situated in terms of the discussions that she was having,” and stressed the importance of hearing Thomas’ testimony. 

Thomas reportedly said in early June that she was eager to appear before the panel, but her lawyer later said he didn’t see a need for her testimony.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump’s credibility shredded; Secret Service purge imperative

The Jan. 6 select committee continues to wreak havoc on former president Donald Trump’s credibility in trying to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes to President Joe Biden. The latest salvo was delivered during the committee’s eighth hearing Thursday night. The testimony and evidence pointed to virtually all members of the White House staff opposing the rioters’ march on the Capitol, and many pleaded with Trump to call off the dogs. He wouldn’t — and Trump staffers have now come forward to testify against their former boss.  

In coming forward, they’ve demonstrated Trump’s lost credibility. They seem not to have bought into his canard that the riot was an unplanned, spontaneous response to an unfair election. Not only would Trump not put out the conflagration he’d ignited, he poured gasoline on it, according to more than one of the former White House witnesses. Trump’s tweet at 2:24 p.m. that day saying that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to aid and abet Trump’s scheme to stop the certification was, for some, the final straw.

Credibility has long been the currency in Washington for determining one’s ability to govern.

What militates against credibility is political chicanery and illicit acts. Since the spring before the 2020 election, Trump had already begun a self-inflicted erosion of his credibility when he started saying if he lost the upcoming election it must be rigged. When it came time to prove the rigging in courts of law, his outside band of misfit lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani whiffed 60 times out of 61; their only victory pertained to “curing” ballots with proper identification in Pennsylvania and affected few votes in a state Biden won by 81,660 votes.

Despite batting near zero in court, Trump and his misfits continued the claims of fraud as he set in motion what the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), described as a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the election.

During the earlier hearings, the committee revealed evidence and testimony of six of the seven schemes. Thursday’s hearing revealed the final one — that Trump ignored multiple pleas to stop the violence.

The accumulated evidence marshaled by the committee has provided a road map for federal prosecutors, but it has also shown that the elements of credibility have been totally stripped away from Trump’s efforts. Those in his administration and his own White House who have credibility are testifying against him. Trump had already lost the confidence of his DOJ brass, the military brass, the former vice president and his staff, and his own campaign’s legal staff — but now it’s clear he’d also lost his entire White House staff, including the White House Counsel’s office.

All Trump has left on his side are a bunch of misfits and “crazies” with a demonstrated lack of credibility and a zealous willingness to join the grift.

As the committee moves forward, there is clearly a need for more hearings. One issue just begging for attention is the behavior of Secret Service agents and the agency itself.

Reports are abundant of agents being part of a pro-Trump faction, currying favor with Trump and dividing the service, causing morale problems. At least two of the pro-Trump agents, Tony Ornato and Bobby Engel, have reportedly lawyered up following the DHS inspector general’s revelation that its investigation into missing Secret Service text messages is now a criminal investigation. That should be a red flag for the committee. Lawyering up like that — when DOJ lawyers are available to defend them — could be a sign that they intend to resist providing testimony.

Ornato was loaned out from the service to the White House as deputy chief of staff for operations in the Trump White House, a political appointment. He would later return to the service as an assistant director. This is a bad conflict and a prescription for controversy, as it injected an industrial strength shot of politics into an otherwise apolitical agency. How did this unprecedented and ill-advised arrangement come about? 

James Murray, the current director of the Secret Service, reportedly was close to Ornato and reportedly was Ornato’s choice to be director when the position became vacant in 2019. At the time, Ornato was the head of Trump’s security detail. Eight months later, Ornato — who’d moved to Secret Service headquarters — became a political appointee at the White House in the eyebrow-raising move.

Other reports say former vice president Mike Pence and his staff were acutely aware that Ornato and Engel were pro-Trump. That awareness may have played a role in Pence’s deep suspicion on Jan. 6 that the service might be trying to send him on a frolic and detour, away from his constitutional duties at the Capitol.

Meanwhile, the DHS inspector general might give the committee pause for concern. The IG, Joseph Cuffari, himself a Trump appointee, has come under fire from career investigators for interfering in investigations of the Secret Service. He is also being investigated by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s (CIGIE’s) Integrity Committee. With Cuffari under a cloud, the committee might want to ask CIGIE to appoint a “disinterested,” or independent IG to conduct the investigation instead.

That investigation needs to probe pro-Trump political connections within the service and root it out. And the Biden White House may want to consider replacing Murray with someone from outside the service when he retires on July 30. 

There’s still plenty of work to be done by this select committee if accountability is to be had.

Kris Kolesnik is a 34-year veteran of federal government oversight. He spent 19 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Kolesnik then became executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. Finally, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.

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Commerce secretary says Biden weighing 'potential labor implications' before deciding whether to lift China tariffs

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that one of the things holding up President Biden from making a decision whether or not to lift Trump-era tariffs on China that some economists say could help ease inflation are the impacts such a move would have on labor unions.

Despite an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics that lifting tariffs on some Chinese-made products would save households hundreds of dollars, Biden is concerned about the support of unions in making this decision. 

“There are potential labor implications. One thing about this president is he will never do anything that he thinks will hurt workers in America, or union workers in America,” she said. 

“He’s being appropriately deliberative to make sure that, yes, he wants to reduce inflation and he wants to make it easier for consumers but he wants to be certain that when we do it, or if we do, that it won’t have any impact on American workers.”

Labor unions are actively campaigning against dropping tariffs on China, with multiple groups filing an official comment to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this month to advocate for the tariffs to stay in place.

Trump imposed numerous tariffs on China during his time in office, saying trading practices with the country were unfair to the U.S. The Biden administration has kept many of the tariffs in place despite indicating some of the policies need to be changed. 

The commerce secretary herself advocated for dropping some of the tariffs, but there is no clear timeline on when the president will make a decision on the issue. 

Biden’s thinking could also be impacted by the midterm elections, where union support is a big help to Democrats in a year where Republicans are expected to pick up multiple seats.

Source: TEST FEED1

Cardin says he hopes Electoral Count Act is passed before November midterms

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said on Saturday that he hopes the newly proposed Electoral Count Act is passed through Congress and enacted before November’s midterm elections. 

During an appearance on CNN’s “Newsroom,” Cardin told host Pamela Brown that he hopes the proposed legislation will be brought up the Senate floor by September, lauding the bipartisan effort.

“We do hope that it’ll be brought up before November’s election. We’re hoping that Leader [Chuck] Schumer will bring it to the floor in September. We have bipartisan support. We think we have enough support to pass this bill,” Cardin told Brown. “We’ve already talked to our colleagues in the House and I think they’re ready to take it up as soon as we pass it in the Senate.” 

“So we do hope that this bill would be enacted prior to the November elections. Let’s get this done. Let’s make it very clear. And I am very proud of the fact that this is bipartisan,” Cardin added. “We have Democrats and Republicans working together that recognize that Electoral Count Act particularly needs to be enacted immediately.” 

The Electoral Count Act, unveiled by a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday, intends to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887 by making sure that the sitting vice president doesn’t have the power to overturn a presidential election and make it harder for lawmakers to object the Electoral College vote.

The proposed legislation came is in response to the Jan 6, 2021 attack at the Capitol, where a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in an effort to stop the certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory. Former President Trump had pressured his Vice President Mike Pence to overturn results in certain states in order to hand Trump a win but Pence said it was not within his authority.

The purpose of the act is to reiterate the vice president’s ceremonious role in Congress’ counting of Electoral College votes after a presidential election.

Cardin, one of the co-sponsors of the proposed legislation, added that the Capitol insurrection played a role in the creation of the Electoral Count Act, saying that lawmakers want to make sure that something like this never happens again.  

“So the laws that are in effect before the election are what used in order to, who certifies the electors, and how that process moves forward,” Cardin told Brown. “So clearly, these most recent hearings, point out what happened on January 6, we want to make sure that never happens again, and one of the things we can do is clarify our election laws.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Republican candidates should be met with skepticism in the ‘Show-Me State’

The origin of Missouri’s self-image as the “Show-Me State” has been traced to a comment made by Congressman Willard Vandiver in 1899: At a banquet in Philadelphia, Vandiver declared, “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Widely used throughout Missouri, the motto appears on the state’s license plates.

These days, Missouri no longer raises all that many Democrats — and the run-up to the Republican primary for the United States Senate on Aug. 2 provides lots of froth and little evidence of “show me” skepticism or a demand for facts.

Here’s what the three leading candidates are selling:

Vicky Hartzler has represented Missouri’s 4^th Congressional District since 2011. On Jan. 6, 2021, Rep. Hartzler characterized the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “thuggery, plain and simple … behavior one would expect to witness during a third world coup … [and] one of the darkest days in our history.” Violators of the law, she emphasized, “must be punished.”

That evening, after acknowledging that Trump’s “unpresidential remarks” made her decision more difficult, Hartzler voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. These states, she insisted, “blatantly violated their own election laws” and “usurped power from their state legislatures to change voting procedures.”

Remembering, no doubt, her criticism of him and the Jan. 6 mob, former president Trump recently told Missouri Republicans to “forget about Vicky Hartzler for Senate” because she “doesn’t have what it takes” to confront “the Fake News Media and, of course, the deceptive and foolish RINOs.”

In comments that seem more “for show” (in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020) than “show me,” however, Hartzler now praises Trump for “backing his words with action. That’s what Missourians expect.” Maintaining that “We’ll never know if the election was stolen,” she does not mention that Trump’s own attorney general and White House counsel told the him it wasn’t.

Hartzler voted against bi-partisan legislation to create an independent commission, composed of equal numbers of House Republicans and Democrats, to investigate the Capitol riot. She now maintains that the current investigation is being conducted by “an illegitimate committee weaponized solely to attack former president Trump.”

Throughout his campaign, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has boasted about how he “stood up for President Trump” by filing an amicus brief supporting the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. Schmitt does not mention that the Supreme Court declared that Texas lacked standing to challenge the management of an election by another state. Asked if President Trump bears any responsibility for Jan. 6, Schmitt replied: “No. Look: People make their own decisions.”

Schmitt, it turns out, has himself used rhetoric that condones violence: “If the Left wants to remake America,” he told CPAC in February 2022, “they’re going to have to take it from our cold, dead hands.”

And yet, he seems reluctant to weigh in on other issues.

Schmitt has filed 47 suits against school district COVID mandates. But he won’t indicate whether he believes people improve their odds of staying healthy by freely choosing to be vaccinated. Asked directly if vaccines work, Schmitt begged the question: “I think people can make the decision themselves.”

Eric Greitens, the third Republican candidate for the Senate nomination, resigned as governor in 2018 as the Missouri General Assembly prepared to begin impeachment proceedings. Since then allegations against him — supported by photographs, telephone logs, and documents — have continued to pile up: an extramarital affair with a hairdresser, who said he tied her up, blindfolded her, stripped her naked, photographed her, and then blackmailed her to prevent her from testifying against him; his ex-wife claims he knocked her down, took her cell phone, keys and wallet to keep her from calling for help or leaving with the children; she also says he threatened to kill himself, and assaulted his son, who allegedly returned from a visit with his father in November 2019 with a swollen face, bleeding gums, and a damaged tooth which had to be removed surgically.

Insisting that allegations of blackmail, spousal and child abuse are “fabricated, baseless,” Greitens now explains that resigning “was the thing I had to do for the people who I love the most, particularly my boys.” His lawyer has accused Greitens’ former wife of working with his political opponents to destroy his campaign.

Greitens has also asserted that there are “strong and unanswered questions about the statistically impossible election results.” He has blamed Jan. 6 on the Left’s “full-scale war on the law.” In a video shared on his social media accounts, Greitens addressed Karl Rove and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): “You are disgusting cowards — and we are coming for you.”

In late June, 2022, Greitens, whose claims about his service as a Navy SEAL have been disputed, appeared in a campaign video armed with a long gun, urging his supporters to get “RINO [Republican In Name Only] hunting permits”: “There’s no bagging limit, tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we secure our country.” Accompanied by men dressed in SWAT team camouflage fatigues, Greitens breaks down the door of a house labelled “RINO’s den” and detonates an explosive device.

“Eric is tough and smart,” proclaimed former President Trump, who has not yet named the candidate he favors. “A little controversial, but I’ve endorsed controversial people before.”

It’s a safe guess that most Missouri Republicans use different words to characterize Mr. Greitens. And — if candor, consistency, common decency, and fidelity to facts remain the standard in “The Show-Me State” — they may also conclude that none of the leading candidates in the GOP primary is fit to represent them in the United States Senate.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”

Source: TEST FEED1