US Politics

Democrats issue fresh calls for assault weapons ban after shooting tragediesQuestions also raised about the funding of law enforcement agencies in places that refuse to enforce so-called red flag laws Gun control returned as a leading topic over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats issuing fresh calls for a ban on assault weapons for the general public.At the same time, questions were raised about the funding of law enforcement agencies in places that refuse to enforce so-called red flag laws, after shooting tragedies in Virginia and Colorado in the last two weeks.“If you passed an assault weapons ban you would see less mass shootings in this country,” Connecticut’s Democratic US Senator and leading gun control advocate, Chris Murphy, said on Sunday.He added: “You are not going to magically eliminate mass-shootings, but an AR-15, or AR-15 style weapon, is generally the choice of mass shooters.”Such a military-style rifle was used in the shooting at an LGBTQ night club in Colorado last weekend, although different firearms were used in the shootings of University of Virginia football team players earlier in the month and at a Walmart store, also in Virginia, two days before Thanksgiving, in a tragic spate of violence.‘It’s the guns’: violent week in a deadly year prompts familiar US responsesRead moreThe Democrat lawmaker pointed to a “dramatic decline” in mass-shootings after the decade-long assault weapons ban passed in 1994. “It wasn’t until the expiration date of the ban that we started to see mass shootings spiral up”.With Biden returning to the White House on Sunday afternoon after spending the Thanksgiving break with his family in Nantucket, the gun issue returned to prominence.On Thursday’s Thanksgiving day itself, Biden spoke about the “scourge” of gun violence, saying he wants to sign into law a ban on high-powered guns that have the capacity to kill many people quickly.“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” Biden said. “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”The Democratic-led House passed legislation in July to revive the 1990s-era ban on assault weapons, following the passage of a landmark bipartisan bill on guns, strengthening background checks and red flag laws, which allow authorities to remove firearms from those posing a danger.Colorado Springs shooter had allegedly threatened his mother with a bomb. Why could he still get a gun?Read moreBut the legislation is going nowhere in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass and Democrats lack Republican support.House majority whip Jim Clyburn admitted that an assault weapons ban and other gun restrictions would not get through Congress, even in the lame duck session while Democrats still control the House, but that did not mean it was not worth pursuing.“Just because it’s legal [to buy a gun] doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. Slavery was legal but it was not right,” he said.Murphy, who has been the Senate’s leading advocate for stronger gun control since at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, also told CNN on Sunday that one avenue Democrats might pursue is to restrict federal funding for law enforcement in counties that declare themselves gun sanctuaries.“We learned in Colorado that the county in which the shooting happened was a so-called second amendment sanctuary state,” Murphy said. “The majority of counties in this country have declared that they’re not going enforce state and federal gun laws.”“It’s a growing problem in the country and we’re going to have to have a conversation about that in the Senate. Do we want to to continue to supply funding to law enforcement in counties that refuse to implement state and federal gun laws?”Red flag laws, Murphy added, had proved wildly popular across the county but “we have to do something” about the refusal by 60% of counties to enforce gun control laws.On NBC, Kentucky Republican congressman James Comer said in respect of any additional gun regulations: “We already have many gun laws on the books … the number one priority with respect to crime in America for Republicans is going to be the fentanyl crisis” with respect to the traffic in illicit drugs across the US-Mexico border.NBC’s Meet the Press host, Chuck Todd, noted to Comer that “the states that have the most gun [control] laws have the least amount of per capita gun crime, and the states with the least amount of gun laws seem to have the most … so there is a correlation here, if you have more gun-related laws on the books as a state you have … fewer gun-related deaths. That’s been proven statistically.”Comer responded that in rural America most households had guns and “there aren’t a lot of crimes” because criminals know people are armed.TopicsUS gun controlColoradoUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Republican says Trump ‘empowering’ extremists by having dinner with white supremacist ‘It’s very troubling,’ says Arkansas governor who condemned Trump’s meeting with anti-semite Nick Fuentes The Republican governor of Arkansas on Sunday joined a chorus of criticism of Donald Trump for having dinner with American white supremacist and anti-semite Nick Fuentes, accusing the former US president of effectively “empowering” such extremists.“It’s very troubling and it should not happen,” Asa Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday morning, becoming the most senior Republican politician to condemn the meeting.Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas since 2015, has previously said he is “very seriously” considering a run for president in 2024, competing with Trump, who announced his candidacy in the wake of the midterm elections.He added that: “I hope someday we won’t have to be responding to what former president Trump has said or done.”Then Hutchinson addressed the latest controversial meeting at Mar-a-Lago.“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with an avowed racist or anti-semite … we need to avoid empowering the extremes … you want to diminish their strength not empower them, stay away from them,” Hutchinson said.After details emerged of Fuentes being hosted by the former president, Trump admitted he met him, but has not condemned his stances.Fuentes is open about his extreme racist and anti-semitic views on his podcast and on the visit to Trump accompanied Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has been under fire for antisemitic comments.Trump said he did not know Fuentes was going to be present at the dinner and had no idea who he was.One person present, however, said Trump was impressed by Fuentes. “He was impressed with Nick and his knowledge of Trump World. Nick knew people and figures and speeches and rallies and what surrounded the Trump culture, particularly when it came to the base,” Karen Giorno, a former Trump aide and senior adviser, told the Washington Post.The meeting has been harshly criticized by human rights groups and former New Jersey governor and one-time close Trump ally Chris Christie, but Hutchinson turned up the heat on Sunday.“This was not an accidental meeting,” Hutchinson said of Fuentes sitting down with Trump. “It was a set up dinner with Kanye. Every occasion that the question of white supremacy or neo-Naziism or denying the Holocaust comes up you have got to be absolutely clear in your communication that this is not acceptable…and you have to disavow it.”In addition, congressman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, said Trump needed “better judgment [on] who he dines with.”“I would not take a meeting with that person,” Comer told NBC’s Meet the Press, of Fuentes.TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

‘They will bend the knee’: Lincoln project cofounder cautions against dismissing TrumpRick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist, suggests the ex-president still holds sway despite multiple crises Donald Trump, the former US president, is all washed up. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is poised to dethrone him. This is the view currently in vogue among many in Washington.Not so fast, argues Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group that shot to prominence with go-for-the-jugular advertisements before becoming mired in scandals of its own.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read more“The greatest danger in American politics is not recognising that there are great dangers,” Wilson, who lives in Florida, says in a phone interview. “The same people in 2015 and 2016 were confidently asserting Donald Trump could never, ever under any circumstances win the Republican nomination, and there were never any circumstances where Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton, and then he could never have almost a million people die because of his mishandling of Covid and on and on and on and on.“I know that the Republicans who right now are acting very bold and the donors who are acting very frisky – as Trump starts winning primaries, they will bend the knee, they will break, they will fall, they will all come back into line.”When Trump scheduled his announcement of a third run for the White House this month, he had hoped to ride a “red wave” of midterm election successes and sweep aside potential rivals within the Republican party. But the red wave ebbed and his anticlimactic campaign launch had the opposite effect.With Trump at arguably his weakest point since last year’s January 6 insurrection, senior Republicans are criticising his losing habit, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is ridiculing him and big money donors such as Ken Griffin and Stephen Schwarzman are deserting what they perceive as a sinking ship.The new conventional wisdom – or wishful thinking – among numerous pundits is that, after surviving crisis after crisis, Trump has finally met his Waterloo. A slew of federal, state and congressional investigations and opinion polls showing DeSantis ahead or level lend credence to this view.Some have noted, however, that Trump maintains an iron grip on his base and, just as in 2016, that might be enough to win a Republican primary race in which the anti-Trump vote is split among several candidates.Wilson, 59, author of the books Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against The Devil: A Plot To Save America from Trump and Democrats From Themselves, says: “He controls a quarter, at the minimum, of the Republican base. Even if it’s 15% and he goes into Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and he wins primaries because he has 15% going in, that’s the ballgame. It’s over. It’s done. Everybody else, it’s all over bar the crying.”He adds: “Right now they’re all talking so much shit: ‘I’m not going to get with Trump. I’m going to be with the hot new number, DeSantis.’ When DeSantis gets his ass handed to him, when he gets his clock cleaned in a debate or forum or just by Trump grinding away at him, eating him alive mentally for weeks on end, and suddenly Donald Trump’s numbers start posting up again, all the conservative thinkers who are right now like, ‘We will never vote for Trump again, we have integrity!’ will find themselves some excuse. ‘Well, you know, we don’t like Trump’s tweets, but otherwise it’s pure communism!’“It’s all bullshit, it’s all a fucking game, and that game is going to play out in a way that does not result in the outcome that the donor class thinks they’re going to get.”Wilson, who began his career on the 1988 presidential campaign of George HW Bush, worked as a consultant and political ad maker for numerous candidates and state parties. In December 2019 he and other Republican operatives founded the Lincoln Project, a political action committee that assailed Trump with a punch-in-the-mouth brio eschewed by “when they go low, we go high” Democrats.Some of the co-founders have acknowledged their part in the Republican party’s descent into bloodsport, hypocrisy and extremism. Wilson told an audience at the group’s launch event: “We have, as the great political philosopher Liam Neeson once said, a particular set of skills. Skills that make us a nightmare for people like Donald Trump.”He produced slick advertisements that got under the president’s skin and helped make the Lincoln Project the best known of the so-called Never Trump groups, raising tens of millions of dollars.But its meteoric rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall. The group’s co-founder John Weaver was revealed to have sent sexually charged messages to multiple men, sometimes with offers of employment or advancement. There were allegations of opaque accounting and financial impropriety that Wilson and others adamantly deny. A glut of high-profile figures resigned.But the Lincoln Project has survived in slimmed down form and continued to wage war on Trump and Trumpism in the midterms. Paradoxically, its continued relevance partly depends on Trump’s own; without him, it loses the principal reason for its creation. It has already launched attacks on DeSantis as a “new ultra-Maga megastar” who poses his own threat to American democracy.Living in the Florida state capital, Tallahassee, Wilson is ideally placed to take stock of the governor, a former US navy lawyer and congressman whose own brand of conservative populism and “anti-wokeness” helped him win re-election by nearly 20 percentage points over the Democrat Charlie Crist.He says: “Ron DeSantis won an election in Florida against a three-time loser, a campaign that was run by the best Republican party in the country, and I mean that because I’m a guy who helped over many years elect many people in the great state of Florida. The quality of our operation here made it look easy.“Has Ron DeSantis been to the rodeo? Has he been out there in the fight? Has he actually faced up against a full campaign of the brutality and the cruelty that Donald Trump will level against him? He has not. It’s like he’s walked on to the field on to third base and thought he hit a grand slam home run. It’s easy for Republicans to win in Florida. It’s how it’s supposed to be: we built it that way. In a Republican primary against Trump, even Trump in a weakened state still has an innate feral sense of cruelty and cunning that Ron DeSantis does not have. How does Trump know that? He watched the debate.”Wilson is referring to a gubernatorial debate in which Crist asked his opponent to commit to another full four-year term in the governor’s mansion; like a rabbit caught in headlights, DeSantis, 44, struggled to answer directly.“It was nine seconds of the gears moving in his head and you could see the agony on his face, like ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Trump never has a doubt. He may be an asshole but he never has a doubt. Ron is over-intellectualising it and I’m telling you: this guy has a glass jaw.”This, Wilson predicts, will become apparent on the debate stage, a setting where Florida Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio struggled against Trump in 2016. “All of a sudden, all that donor money is going to go, ‘Oh, fuck,’ and then they’re going to call Ron’s people and go, ‘Hey, listen, we love Ron but we’re worried. We’re gonna have to sit this one out for a little while. Let’s see what it looks like in a month.’“And then a month will pass and all of a sudden Donald Trump is the nominee. That’s how it’s going to go and I don’t say this out of any joy; I say this because I’ve just been to this fucking party too many times now.”Wilson also suggests that DeSantis may lack the personal touch and knack for retail politics that is crucial in a Republican primary. A recent New Yorker magazine profile noted several people describing “his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids”.Wilson opines: “You’re telling me you’re going to send Ron DeSantis to New Hampshire where he has to go and sit in a diner with the Merrimack county GOP chairman and that 79-year-old codger is going to want to talk to Ron DeSantis about the gold standard or whatever and Ron DeSantis is going to sit there and get bored and restless and leave or be angry? I’m sorry. Sell me another fantasy of Ron DeSantis the perfect candidate.”TopicsRepublicansRon DeSantisDonald TrumpFloridaUS politicsHillary ClintonUS elections 2016featuresReuse this content More

Layoffs, low ratings and a lurch closer to the right: is CNN in crisis?New management outlines a course to cut costs and return to political middle ground, but there may be no easy fix in sight At some time in the next couple weeks CNN will begin to lay off staff, part of a slimming down strategy that is affecting the whole media sector but also a move that has shocked many at one of the household names in US news which now seems to be in crisis as it adjusts to new owners keen to slash costs.The original cable news network – and still a well-known name across the globe – has been shedding viewers, coming in last in ratings of US cable news networks during the recent midterm elections.The changes at CNN look politically motivated. That should concern us all | Robert ReichRead moreAt the same time, the cost-cutting new corporate management under the umbrella of Warner Bros Discovery has also indicated it wants to reel in a perceived left-leaning political bias in CNN’s coverage. Welcome to the painful cable news reset of late 2022, a TV drama freighted with questions about democracy, bias and the role of commercial journalism in what is supposed to a post-Donald Trump realignment of values – a premise that may itself be premature given the former US president is running for the White House again.Over the past year, incoming management at CNN outlined a course to return to a political middle ground and to the spirit of founder Ted Turner, who sought to “make news the star”. The course would be steered by CNN’s chairman and CEO, Chris Licht, and supported by Warner’s chief executive, David Zaslav, and libertarian cable king and shareholder John Malone.“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said last year. That seemed to conform to what public polls indicate many viewers claim to want – unbiased news. But few can agree on what that looks like or if it exists. Nor is it clear they would tune in if it did.Add to that a splintering of audiences that shows no signs of abating, staffing dramas that saw some of CNN’s best known talking heads – Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, Jake Tapper – fired, dropped or shuffled, reduced cable carrier income and advertising revenue, $47.5bn in Time Warner-Discovery merger debt to help service, and a stock price that’s halved since April. CNN and Licht are now in an unenviable position.“I hate to say it but when I look ahead, I see problems without end,” one CNN executive told the FT last week.Licht, a former late night showrunner for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, looked to shore up confidence in his vision at an all-hands meeting with staff last week.“I own the vision for this place,” he said, according to Insider. Under questioning from employees, Licht rejected the view that he is under guidance of CNN’s corporate parent. “I did not take this job to take dictation from anybody,” he said.But in an interview with the FT, Licht appeared to push back on that previously enunciated vision of seeking a middle ground. “One of the biggest misconceptions about my vision is that I want to be vanilla, that I want to be centrist. That is bullshit,” he said. “You have to be compelling. You have to have edge. In many cases you take a side.”New ‘objective’ CNN appears to be making itself objectively rightwingRead moreIt’s a debate that courses through newsrooms in search of audiences that may no longer exist in the way they once did. In this absence are arguments about where they would stand if indeed they did. “There is a mighty fine line between avoiding partisan hype, and journalism as difference-splitting, centrist triangulation,” noted Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review over the summer.Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, believes Licht’s vision of serving a hypothetical news-consuming family – “everyone’s network” – is not easy to achieve.“Chris Licht believes that CNN devoted too much time to Trump coverage and politics, and in looking for short-term ratings CNN became over-dependent, like a sugar-high, on Trump, politics generally and punditry. A lot of people would agree with that.”But the reality may be that it’s hard for any media organization to turn away from an era of political discord because it has been so good for ratings and profits. Also, in the short-term at least, the discord does not appear to be going anywhere.Projections by S&P Global Market Intelligence in August forecast that CNN’s profitability is on a pace to decline to $956m this year. That is still a hefty sum but it marks the first time it has fallen below a billion since Trump was elected.An easy fix might be to ramp up opinionated content again but that is not the vision that Licht has enunciated. “He thinks of CNN as a powerful news brand and wants to protect it,” Rosen believes.Sexy khakis and giant graphics: how US TV pundits spent election nightRead moreBut what could be broken is an old view of news and particularly political coverage. Standing between two parties, similar in structure but standing for different ideologies, was only possible when both had similar aims – acquiring power on agreed terms of play. With the rise of Trump and the embrace by large swathes of the Republican party of election denialism, that model no longer works.“The picture doesn’t fit the world if you have a candidate running against the system and trying to blow up what the other party is doing as a normal party. The press can try to say we’re in the middle between a war of extremes, but it isn’t that and it’s produced a crisis for consensus practice,” Rosen said.And that’s what Licht, CNN and others in the media may now be facing. “The press has to decide how to do journalism in the presence of a threat to the democracy that permits the journalism we do,” Rosen said. TopicsCNNTV newsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Uniting America review: how FDR and the GOP beat fascism home and away Charles Lindbergh casts a shadow over Peter Shinkle’s new book, which ends with a warning about Trump and his partyThe subtitle of this remarkable popular history is “How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans together to Win World War II”, Stimson being the Republican Franklin Roosevelt chose as secretary of war on 19 June 1940, the same day he chose another Republican, Frank Knox, for secretary of the navy.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreThose appointments came five weeks after the king asked Winston Churchill to form a unity government in Great Britain, two weeks after 338,000 French and British troops were rescued at Dunkirk, and four weeks before Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented third term, all events featured in this compelling volume.But Peter Shinkle’s book is a great deal more than a celebration of the bipartisanship that was a key factor in American success. It also offers brisk accounts of all US campaigns in Africa and Europe, a detailed description of how Pearl Harbor happened, and the best explanation I have read of why the government pursued its disastrous policy of interning Japanese Americans.Besides all that, there is terrific social history of the ways the war changed the status of women and African Americans. Practically the only important social impact Shinkle omits is the war’s effects on gay and lesbian Americans, a subject covered best by Allan Bérubé’s definitive book, Coming Out Under Fire.Shinkle is a veteran reporter who has written another fine book, Ike’s Mystery Man, about Robert Cutler, the closeted gay man who was Dwight Eisenhower’s right-hand man for foreign policy in the White House. That book also combined political and social history. But his new volume is broader and more important.There are probably more books written about the second world war than any other 20th-century event, but every generation needs to be reminded of its triumphs and tragedies. Shinkle does a splendid job mining for new nuggets of information and fresh perspectives.There are two big reasons for focusing on Stimson. Not only did he play a vital role in practically every important military decision from 1940 to 1945, he also kept an extremely detailed diary, which makes it possible for Shinkle to tell us exactly what he was thinking.Besides canny portraits of Roosevelt, Stimson and George Marshall, the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there are a host of subsidiary characters. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Black activist A Philip Randolph are two of the most important heroes while Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated solo pilot to Paris who became a fierce isolationist and a virulent antisemite, is one of its principal villains.There has been a raging debate for decades about how the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor came about, and whether Roosevelt and his aides ignored information from Japanese diplomatic cables because they wanted to bring America into the war.It turns out almost all of the answers are in Simpson’s diary, including this key sentence: “The question was how we should maneuver [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot, without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”One of the biggest problems Roosevelt faced in 1940 and 1941 was how to counter isolationists like Lindbergh, whose affection for the Nazis and hatred for the Jews made him as popular in some quarters as he was despised in others.Before Congress, Lindbergh denounced the bill that gave Britain resources to survive the Blitz. There was much he didn’t like in the world, but “over a period of years [on both sides] there is not as much difference in philosophy as we have been led to believe”. After the House approved the extension of the draft by a single vote, Lindbergh declared “the greatest danger to this country” posed by its Jewish citizens “lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government”.While Roosevelt’s White House denounced that speech for resembling “the outpourings of Berlin”, former president Herbert Hoover “readily defended Lindbergh, a sign of the enduring political power of both the aviator and isolationism”.That power of these isolationists explains why Stimson did not record “shock, horror or anger” after Roosevelt informed him of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, he wrote, “my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite our people … For I feel this country united has practically nothing to fear while the apathy and visions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging.”Roosevelt refused to desegregate the armed forces, largely for fear of alienating southern Democrats. But Shinkle reminds us that Roosevelt’s civil rights record was much more complicated than that failure suggests.Ike’s Mystery Man review: astonishing tale of a gay White House aideRead moreRandolph, who was president of the first important Black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, used the threat of a March on Washington by 100,000 citizens to pressure Roosevelt into signing a landmark executive order prohibiting discrimination and segregation by military contractors. One activist wrote that the Fair Employment Practice Committee Roosevelt impaneled led to “more progress” against “racial and religious discrimination than [in] any other period in American history”.Three million women were employed in the defense industry by the end of 1942, as well as new divisions of the army, navy and coast guard, similarly transforming their status.Jacqueline Cochran commanded the Women Airforce Service Pilots, which graduated 1,100 women training inspectors and test pilots. “Menstrual cycles didn’t upset anyone’s cycle,” Cochran wrote. Women flew “as regularly and for as many hours as the men”.Shinkle ends with all the ways history is repeating itself today, including a description of “Trump’s fascism”. The resurgence of that hateful ideology, and the budding isolationism of many Republicans eager to end support for Ukraine, are two reasons why this vivid volume is so timely and important.
Uniting America: How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans together to Win World War II is published in the US by St Martin’s Press
TopicsBooksHistory booksFranklin D RooseveltSecond world warUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

Early voting begins in Georgia Senate runoff after state supreme court rulingCourt allows early voting on a Saturday as polling shows Democrat Raphael Warnock with a lead over Herschel Walker Thanks to a Georgia supreme court ruling, a week of early voting on Saturday began in nearly two dozen counties in the state for a contentious runoff between Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and Republican opponent Herschel Walker.Recent polling commissioned by AARP shows Warnock with a four point lead over the Donald Trump-endorsed Walker ahead of the December 6 election.Republican voting law poses hurdles in Georgia Senate runoffRead moreThe survey by Fabrizio and Associates found that Warnock had 51% of support from respondents – the first time Warnock secured a majority this year –compared to 47% for Walker. That’s higher than the 49.4% of the vote Warnock received in the initial contest on 8 November.The poll found that Black voters and voters under 50 drove support for Warnock in particular, as well as a growing support from independents.A week after the election, Warnock’s campaign sued Georgia over its election integrity law that restricted early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is also a state holiday in Georgia, originally to commemorate Robert E Lee, the Confederate civil war general.The state’s law notes that counties may start early voting “as soon as possible” after the state certifies results from the general election, with a mandatory period from 28 November to 2 December. On Wednesday, the Georgia supreme court allowed early voting to take place.The stakes are still high in this year’s runoff, even as Democrats managed to already win 50 Senate seats on 8 November.For Democrats, a Warnock win would mean they would secure an outright majority in the US Senate, allowing them to hold majority control of committees and making it easier for Joe Biden’s appointees to advance.It would also give Democratic lawmakers more security when it comes to passing legislation and allow them to rely less on adjusting to more conservative Democrats like Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who have repeatedly blocked legislation.Most recently, Manchin’s opposition played a crucial role in shaping the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping $739bn domestic spending and climate change package signed into law in August following negotiations. Still, Congress remains divided as Republicans wrested control of the US House.Federal Election Commission filings show that Warnock’s campaign holds more than $29m in cash on hand ahead of the runoff, three times more than Walker does ($9.8m). The ad tracking firm AdImpact noted that Democratic-aligned groups have pumped $25m into television ads for the runoff while Republican groups spent $16m.Notably, while other Republican allies have rallied behind Walker and as Republican groups like the Senate Leadership Fund have spent more than $10m since the general election, Trump has not announced a trip to Georgia to back Walker.Trump’s standing within the Republican party has taken a hit since the midterm elections when Democrats performed far stronger than expected, holding the senate and restricting Republicans in the House to just a narrow majority. Trump-backed candidates in particular mostly performed poorly.Walker deflected when asked about Trump’s endorsement, telling Fox Business: “This is not Trump’s race. This is Herschel Walker’s race.”Barack Obama plans to travel to Atlanta next week to speak at a rally in support of Warnock. Biden has yet to announce a trip.TopicsGeorgiaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

AnalysisWhat can Democrats push through Congress in the lame-duck session?Lauren Gambinoin WashingtonLegislation on the debt ceiling, civil liberties and elections is still possible before Republican House majority kicks in As a new era of divided government looms in the US, Democrats are rushing to complete a lengthy legislative to-do list that includes landmark civil liberties legislation, a routine but critical spending package and a bill to prevent another January 6.Trump is now effectively in control of the US House of Representatives | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreThere are only a handful of working days left before the balance of power in Congress shifts and Democrats’ unified control of government in Washington ends. In January, Republicans will claim the gavel in the House, giving them veto power over much of Joe Biden’s agenda.Meanwhile, Democrats will retain – and possibly expand, depending on the outcome of a runoff election in Georgia – their majority in the Senate, allowing them to continue confirming Biden’s judicial and administrative nominees.With a narrowing window to act, Democrats intend to use the end-of-year “lame duck” session to leave a legislative mark while they still control all the levers of power in Washington. But they are also under mounting pressure to act to raise the statutory debt limit, staving off a partisan showdown next year that many fear could lead to economic calamity.“We are going to try to have as productive a lame-duck session as possible,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said at a post-election press conference. “It’s going to be heavy work, long hours to try and get much done.”Among the unfinished business is enacting legislation to keep the federal government funded past a 16 December deadline. Failure to do so would result in a government shutdown. Lawmakers must also reauthorize the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass bill that sets US military policy for the coming year.Democrats must also decide whether to confront the debt limit. House Republicans have threatened to use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract deep spending cuts, a prospect that has raised alarm among economists and policymakers who are pleading with Democrats to defuse a dangerous fiscal standoff.In an interview with CNN, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to succeed Nancy Pelosi when she steps down as the House Democratic leader in January, said raising the debt ceiling before Republicans take control of the House was probably “the right thing to do” as a way to prevent conservatives “from being able to hold the American economy hostage”.The debt ceiling now stands at $31.4tn, a level that will need to be addressed by the third quarter of 2023, according to projections.Yet Democratic leaders have suggested that it is unlikely Congress will address the borrowing limit in the next few weeks.Schumer said last week that he would like to “get a debt ceiling done in this work period” but insisted that it would require Republican support, effectively ruling out a go-it-alone approach that would allow Democrats to unilaterally raise the debt limit. Speaking to reporters on the same day, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he didn’t think Congress would take up the issue until “sometime next year”.In a Washington Post op-ed, Peter Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, implored Democrats to prioritize the issue, even if it takes up precious floor time to accomplish.“Any Democrats averse to taking such a painful vote now should consider how much leverage their party will lose once Republicans control the House – and how much higher the risk of default will be then,” he wrote. “It’s generally not a good idea to enter a negotiation with a ticking timebomb and a counter-party willing to let it go off.”While fiscal matters are at the center of negotiations on Capitol Hill, there are many more legislative items on the agenda.Schumer said the Senate will take a final vote on legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriages when the chamber returns after the Thanksgiving recess. Earlier this month, 12 Republicans joined all Democrats to clear a major procedural hurdle that put the historic measure on track to passage.“Passing the Respect for Marriage Act is no longer a matter of if but only of when,” he said in recent remarks. A version of the bill passed the House earlier this year, with support from dozens of Republicans.Meanwhile, the Senate also hopes to enact reforms to a 19th-century elections law that Donald Trump attempted to exploit to reverse his defeat in 2020, which led to the insurrection at the Capitol.A bipartisan proposal would overhaul the Electoral Count Act, clarifying that the role of the vice-president, who presides over the certification of the electoral votes as president of the Senate, is purely ceremonial. That means the vice-president could not unilaterally throw out electoral votes, as Trump and his allies pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to do. If the bill passes, it would be the most substantive legislative response to the events of January 6.The White House is also eager for Congress to approve additional financial support for Ukraine, as the nation defends itself against a Russian invasion. The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, who could be the next speaker if he can survive a revolt among hardline conservatives in his caucus, signaled that Republicans would use their majority to limit – or possibly oppose – future spending on the war.Previous aid packages to Ukraine have been approved with overwhelming bipartisan support, and the president and Democratic leaders are hopeful that a new package can be achieved. Fears that Republicans could cut off aid just as Ukraine forces Russia into retreat with the assistance of US weaponry may motivate lawmakers to authorize vast new spending for Ukraine. The White House has also asked for additional funding to prepare for a possible winter surge of coronavirus infections, though Republicans are unlikely to back the request.Constrained by the calendar and their narrow majorities, a host of other Democratic priorities will probably remain out of reach as the sun sets on their power in Washington.A group of Democrats is urging Congress to pass immigration reform and ensure legal protections for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, while efforts are under way to reach an agreement on cannabis-related legislation. Senator Raphael Warnock, whose Georgia runoff election will determine the margin of Democrats’ control next year, has continued his push to cap the cost of insulin.TopicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS domestic policyanalysisReuse this content More

Record number of Muslims elected in US midterms: ‘We should lean into who we are’ Advocates cite desire ‘to create social change’ as candidates win seats at the national, state and local levelsAs a woman, a millennial, a progressive – and a Muslim – Nabilah Islam faced long odds in her bid for elected office in Georgia. Two years ago, she ran for Congress but lost in the Democratic primary, despite a high-profile endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This year, she ran for state senate to represent parts of the Atlanta metro region and won.“People thought it was unthinkable that in the south, someone would vote for a woman with the last name Islam,” she said. “I’m like: they did. Fifty-three per cent of this district did.”Islam, 32, is among a record number of Muslims elected to local, state and national office in November. A new analysis by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), a civil rights and advocacy group, and Jetpac, a non-profit focused on increasing Muslim political representation in the US, found that Muslims won at least 83 seats nationwide, up from an estimated 71 in 2020.“I ran because I wanted to make sure that we had representation in the halls of power,” said Islam, a Bangladeshi American who is the first Muslim woman and the first South Asian woman to be elected to the Georgia state senate. “It’s so important that we don’t run away from ourselves and we lean into who we are. I think that’s what inspires folks to go out and vote for people, because they trust them.”Muslims also won seats in Texas, Illinois, California, Minnesota, Maine, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These newly elected officials come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including Somali, Pakistani, Afghan, Indian and Palestinian, but tend to be young and Democratic.The path to these wins was paved in part by higher-profile Muslim politicians, including Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in Congress, who is now Minnesota attorney general; André Carson, a congressman from Indiana; and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. But Mohamed Gula, national organizing director at Emgage, a Muslim civic engagement non-profit, said the phenomenon was also fueled by the community’s desire “to create social change, to create a culture shift and the systems that are supposed to represent us”.California legislature is 10% LGBTQ+ in record-setting year nationwideRead moreAisha Wahab, the first Muslim and the first Afghan American elected to California’s state senate, said her run was about paying it forward to the next generation. “We need to see what else we can do for our community or country that we live in,” she said.Wahab, who first served on city council for Hayward, in the San Francisco Bay Area, will represent a majority Asian American and Latino district that has one of the largest Afghan populations in the US. As the only renter in the California legislature, Wahab, who grew up in the foster system, ran on a platform of affordable housing, supporting small businesses to ensure local job creation and expanding Medi-Cal coverage.Meanwhile, the Democrats Salman Bhojani and Suleman Lalani won state House races in Texas, becoming the first Muslim lawmakers for the state. Bhojani had become the first Muslim to hold elected office in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Euless when he served on the city council. He said bipartisanship was one reason for his success: even though he was the only Democrat and person of color on the city council, his colleagues elected him as mayor pro tem for the city in 2020. During this time, he worked on programs to educate youth about local government and encourage large-scale development.“That meant a lot to me and how I’ve been able to work across the aisle and pass legislation that’s common sense and kitchen table as opposed to partisan rhetoric,” he said.In addition to winning over Republicans, Bhojani, who is Pakistani American, also reached out to constituents often ignored by other politicians. He built relationships with his district’s sizable Tongan and Nepalese communities, often meeting them in their own community spaces.Islam, too, reached out to diverse constituencies during her campaign, drawing on her background from a working-class, immigrant family to connect with members of her district, which is 65% Black and brown, she said.“People see themselves in my candidacy, in my story,” she said. “And that’s why I think a lot of people were inspired to go out and vote.”Growing Muslim political participation is also happening at the voting booth. A 2020 study by EmgageUSA showed significant gains in the number of registered Muslim voters in several states compared with 2016: 39% in Georgia, 35% in Texas and 46% in Wisconsin. Even though Muslims make up just 1.3% of the US population, large communities in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Minnesota mean they can play a role in determining key races. In Pennsylvania, for instance, Emgage’s Gula said the state’s large population of African American Muslims had helped the Democrat John Fetterman defeat the Republican Mehmet Oz. (Oz, who is of Turkish descent, has described himself as a secular Muslim.)“When you’re looking at where a large number of the Muslim community is, it allows for us to ensure that we are able to have a certain level of bargaining power,” Gula said.US corporations gave more than $8m to election deniers’ midterm campaignsRead moreMuslims are also serving in government in non-elected positions, Gula said, as well as on campaigns and as community organizers, which has helped energize political participation in the community. More than 70 Muslims serve in the Biden administration, he said, including Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission; Sameera Fazili, national economic council deputy director; Reema Dodin, White House Office of Legislative Affairs deputy director; and Rashad Hussain, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.Shafina Khabani is one of these community organizers, who is now executive director of the Georgia Muslim Voter Project (GAMVP), founded in early 2016 in response to Islamophobic rhetoric during Trump’s presidential campaign and the local Muslim community’s low level of civic engagement.“One of the issues that we grapple with within our community is a lack of trust, especially when there are outsiders coming into the community, and our history of Islamophobia and surveillance,” Khabani said.Through conversations, Khabani learned that many Muslims were not registered to vote. “It wasn’t because our communities didn’t care, it was because politicians were not paying attention and reaching out to our communities,” she said. “It’s because organizations that were on the ground doing voter engagement and voter registration work were not reaching out to our communities in culturally competent ways.”By showing up at places of worship, halal restaurants, grocery stores, cultural and religious festivals, the GAMVP resonated with Georgia Muslims because community members saw that it was an organization run for and by Muslims.Muslim political engagement will only continue to grow. “They want to be a part of the American social fabric, but they also want to be a part of building the future for America in general,” Gula said.TopicsUS politicsIslamReligionUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More