US Politics

Control of the House is potentially just one race call away from being decided – assuming the winner is a Republican.The GOP has won 217 of the 218 seats needed to create a majority in Congress’ lower chamber, while Democrats have 205 seats. All it will take is one more victory for Republicans to retake the chamber for the first time since 2019. The question is: where?An obvious choice would be Colorado’s third district, where Lauren Boebert, one of the chamber’s most controversial lawmakers, is in an unexpectedly stiff battle for re-election against Democrat Adam Frisch. There are only a few ballots left to count in this race, but according to Colorado Public Radio, don’t expect the outcome to be decided today: the next results won’t be published until Wednesday.Based on this chart from the New York Times, that makes several uncalled races in California the best possibilities for learning today which party controls the House.Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation in Poland, the White House has said, and will speak with Polish president Andrzej Duda soon, Reuters reports.The US president, who is in Bali, Indonesia, for the G20 talks, is being kept up to speed on the latest alarming developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine since, earlier today, Poland raised its military readiness after two died in a blast within its borders following Russian strikes across Ukraine.Biden is apparently talking with the head of Poland’s national security bureau, Jacek Siewiera, right now.The Guardian is blogging developments in the war, live, and you can find all that coverage here.Senate Republicans are holding their leadership vote tomorrow, following House Republicans’ vote today that kept Kevin McCarthy on top.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, whose prospect of becoming majority leader next year were dashed by Democrats’ retaining control of the upper chamber in the midterm elections, is projecting confidence.This despite an apparent challenge coming from Florida senator Rick Scott.“I want to repeat again, I have the votes, I will be elected.”McConnell says issue is whether they hold elections tomorrow or not. Says they have another discussion about that pic.twitter.com/loTCjy65MJ— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) November 15, 2022
A judge overturned Georgia’s ban on abortion starting around six weeks into a pregnancy, ruling today that it violated the US constitution and US supreme court precedent when it was enacted and was therefore void.Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney’s ruling took effect immediately statewide, though the state attorney general’s office said it appealed it. The ban had been in effect since July, the Associated Press reports.It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present (even though that is a misnomer).Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a point before many people even knew they were pregnant.McBurney’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed in July by doctors and advocacy groups that sought to strike down the ban on multiple grounds, including that it violates the Georgia constitution’s right to privacy and liberty by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women in the state. McBurney did not rule on that claim.Instead, his decision agreed with a different argument made in the lawsuit that the ban was invalid because when it was signed into law in 2019, US supreme court precedent allowed abortion well past six weeks.Georgia’s law was passed by state lawmakers and signed by Governor Brian Kemp in 2019 but had been blocked from taking effect until the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, which had protected the right to an abortion in the US for nearly 50 years.The 11th US circuit court of appeals allowed Georgia to begin enforcing its abortion law just over three weeks after the high court’s decision in June.Abortion clinics remained open, but providers said they were turning many people away because cardiac activity had been detected. They could then either travel to another state for an abortion or continue with their pregnancies.Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, is exulting in the fact that Democrats have kept control of the Senate, and said Donald Trump’s Maga ideology is to blame for the GOP’s struggles in last week’s election:Sen. Schumer: “I have a plea for the Republicans and advice: If you embrace MAGA, you’re going to keep losing. You’re going to lose more.” pic.twitter.com/IcDLt5a0XI— CSPAN (@cspan) November 15, 2022
The Guardian’s US politics blog is now being handed over Joanna Walters, who will keep you abreast of the rest of today’s news.CNN has obtained a letter from Rick Scott to other Senate Republicans, in which he makes his pitch to be their leader in the chamber:Here’s the letter Rick Scott sent to his colleagues saying he would challenge Mitch McConnell for GOP leader pic.twitter.com/BP3rk4UtXz— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 15, 2022
While he doesn’t attack Mitch McConnell by name, it’s clear Scott has issues with how the Kentucky senator has led the party. For instance, Scott says that “some believe we should not make deals with Chuck Schumer”, in reference to McConnell’s occasion bipartisan agreements with the top Senate Democrat. He also notes that “some say we should work to united Republicans and not Democrats”, another indication that Scott could perhaps take a more hardline approach in negotiating with Joe Biden’s party, should he win the leadership post.There’s rancor among Senate Republicans after they failed to win a majority in last week’s midterm elections, with Florida senator Rick Scott announcing a challenge to Mitch McConnell to lead the party in Congress’s upper chamber, Politico reports.McConnell is the Senate’s current minority leader and Scott is chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is in charge of election efforts. The two men have been at odds over the GOP’s poor results in last Tuesday’s election, and Politico reports Scott was encouraged to challenge McConnell by Donald Trump.The challenge is the first McConnell has faced in his 15 years leading Senate Republicans, but the Kentucky lawmaker believes he has enough votes to beat Scott, Politico says. McConnell and Trump have a bad relationship, even though the senator has overseen some of the party’s biggest victories in the Senate, including installing the three conservative supreme court justices appointed by the former president who were pivotal in overturning Roe v Wade.The Biden administration is requesting another big infusion of aid from Congress to help Ukraine weather the Russian invasion, and also to fight Covid-19, NBC News reports:JUST IN: White House seeking $37.7 billion in supplemental aid for Ukraine, for continued military, intelligence support. Also seeks another $10 billion to fund ongoing fight against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) November 15, 2022
Lawmakers have reconvened this week for the first time since the midterm elections, which appear to have delivered control of the House to Republicans. They’re expected to tackle a number of Democatic priorities before Congress’s mandates expires at the end of the year.House Republicans have named Kevin McCarthy their candidate for speaker, should they win a majority in the chamber, Punchbowl News reports:🚨 MCCARTHY WINSKevin McCarthy of California beat Andy Biggs to become the GOP nominee for speaker of the House.He now has to spend the next seven weeks working to get 218 supporters to win the floor vote. That will be Jan. 3.— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 15, 2022
McCarthy won 188-31 https://t.co/XQ2MrPAQHc— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 15, 2022
The Californian would take over from Democrat Nancy Pelosi if the GOP gains enough seats to win a majority. While all the ballots from last Tuesday’s midterm election have not been counted, the Republicans appear to be on course to do that.McCarthy won despite a challenge from Andy Biggs, an Arizona lawmaker running to his right. Arizona’s Democratic senator Mark Kelly says his Republican opponent Blake Masters conceded in a phone call, Politico reports:Sen. Mark Kelly says he talked to Blake Masters today and Masters conceded the Arizona Senate race. Kelly says it was a “good conversation” and Masters told him “congratulations”— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 15, 2022
The Associated Press called the race for Kelly last week. The seat was considered crucial to Democrats’ goal of keeping control of Congress’s upper chamber for another two years.If Democrats lose the majority in the House, Nancy Pelosi will have to make a decision.Pelosi has been a fixture in American politics for nearly two decades, becoming the first woman to lead either chamber of Congress and to serve as speaker of the house. But she’s 82, and unless something big happens, the GOP appears to be course to take control of the House once all the ballots from last week’s election are counted.Representing deep-blue San Francisco, it’s unlikely Pelosi will ever lose re-election, but her days controling the chamber appear to be numbered. That leaves her with a number of options. She could stay in the game as House minority leader, a position she previously held from 2011 to 2019, when Democrats were in the minority. She could begin laying the groundwork for her successor, perhaps by announcing her intention to retire.Then there’s a third option, which the New York Times reports in a piece examining the issue Pelosi may be leaning towards:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Now the question of will she stay or will she go has given way to a potential third option that some people close to Ms. Pelosi, 82, argue is a serious possibility for her: stepping down from leadership but remaining in Congress in a sort of emeritus role that would allow her to offer counsel to her colleagues and support the agenda of President Biden, 79, whom she has urged to run for re-election in 2024.
Such an arrangement would allow Ms. Pelosi to manage her own exit from the political scene while passing the torch to a new generation of leaders that many Democrats have argued for years was long overdue to take over from the three octogenarians currently running the House. She has hinted at just such a possibility.David DePape, who is accused of attacking Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, last month, pleaded not guilty to federal charges today, KRON reports.He faces a charge of “assault on an immediate family member of a United States official with intent to retaliate against the official on account of their performance of official duties”, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.DePape is also charged with “one count of attempted kidnapping of a US official”, for which he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.DePape previously pleaded not guilty to state charges over the attack in the Pelosis’ San Francisco residence.In a move that won’t surprise those who never believed her to be a true Democrat anyway, the former congresswoman and 2020 presidential hopeful Tusli Gabbard has signed up to work as a paid contributor for the Republican-friendly Fox News network, just weeks after announcing her departure from the Democratic party.Fox on Tuesday confirmed Gabbard’s hiring for multiple media outlets after it was first reported on by the Los Angeles Times. Gabbard, a vocal critic of numerous progressive causes despite her prior political alignment, is scheduled to begin appearing on the network’s programs next week, the reports about her hiring at Fox added.After winning her US House of Representatives seat in 2012, Gabbard became the first Samoan-American voting member and Hindu elected to Congress. But her views often clashed with the Democratic party’s. And in 2016, she announced she was leaving the party’s national committee to endorse Bernie Sanders for president instead of Hillary Clinton, who of course won the nomination at stake before losing to Donald Trump and the Republican forces backing him. Meanwhile, Gabbard’s attitudes on foreign policy have often favored authoritarian figures disavowed by the Democrats.On 11 October, she formally resigned from the party and called Democrats an “elitist cabal of warmongers”. She later appeared at a campaign rally supporting Republican congressman Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful run to unseat New York’s Democratic gubernatorial incumbent Kathy Hochul during the 8 November midterms.The Republican party of Harris county, Texas, which includes the city of Houston, has reportedly filed a lawsuit against local elections administrators over alleged voting issues that occurred on polling day for the 8 November congressional midterms.County Democratic party chairperson Odus Evbagharu has issued a statement dismissing the suit as “political theater,” the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.According to the Chronicle, the Harris county Republican party’s attorney, Andy Taylor, alleged that double voting may have occurred and provisional ballots weren’t properly segregated when cast after 7pm in accordance with a court order that extended voting hours until 8pm. The Republicans’ gubernatorial incumbent candidate, Greg Abbott, won re-election during the midterms. But ballots cast in Harris county favored Abbott’s Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, by a margin of about 104,000, before the latest Republican attempt to cast doubt about the integrity of voting in a jurisdiction that did not support their candidate.The Harris county government’s judge – or top executive – Lena Hidalgo is a Democrat.Donald Trump may announce another presidential run tonight, but not everybody is happy about it. The former president’s brand appears to have suffered after his handpicked candidates performed poorly in last week’s midterm elections, though a poll indicates he still remains the most popular person in the Republican party.Here’s what else has happened today:
Liz Cheney had the last word in a spat with Arizona’s defeated GOP governor candidate Kari Lake, but warned of the continued threat to democracy posed by many Republicans in Congress.
Rupert Murdoch is reportedly sick of Trump and may switch his allegiance to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a development that could have big implications for the ex-president’s new White House campaign.
Only a handful of House races remain uncalled, and the GOP is one seat away from winning control of the chamber. It’s possible one of several races in California could deliver Republicans a majority today, while more results are expected in a crucial Colorado race tomorrow.
Back to Lauren Boebert’s race for a moment. While the firebrand conservative Republican appears on track to win another term in the House, it’s going to be a narrow one, and few saw that coming.Her western Colorado district has tended to vote Republican, and analysts viewed a victory by Democrat Adam Frisch as unlikely. The Wall Street Journal went to her district to figure out what was behind his unexpectedly stiff challenge. Here’s what they found:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Several supporters of Mr. Frisch, including voters registered unaffiliated and Republican, said that Mr. Frisch had won them over with his measured message, and that he has been more present than Ms. Boebert within the district. Some said they were deeply affected by the Jan. 6 attack, in which a mob of Trump supporters disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential-election victory.
Mr. Frisch said he was fed up with extremism in politics when he began considering a run against Ms. Boebert last fall.
The former Aspen city councilman and onetime financial trader sat down and began to crunch numbers on the farthest right and farthest left politicians in the country. He discovered that Ms. Boebert, who won her 2020 race by six points, was the most vulnerable, with—as a point of comparison—a far narrower margin of victory than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).
Mr. Frisch, 55, became convinced that it was possible for someone to build a coalition to beat Ms. Boebert, and his family urged him to get in the race.
Political analysts attributed Mr. Frisch’s surprise momentum to Ms. Boebert’s close alignment with Mr. Trump, her reputation for attention-getting statements and a general fatigue within her district of headlines about her. That left an opening for Mr. Frisch and grass-roots groups to cobble together an alliance of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to compete.
“If Lauren Boebert had been an ordinary Republican, this race would not be competitive,” said Laura Chapin, a Democratic political consultant in Denver.
Benjamin Stout, a spokesman for Ms. Boebert, said she outperformed other statewide Republicans within the district and said the majority of Republicans have stuck with her. He pointed to Mr. Frisch’s campaign as a conservative, emphasizing support for business and energy, as proof of support for Republican principles.
“He just copped her policies and ran on them,” Mr. Stout said.Control of the House is potentially just one race call away from being decided – assuming the winner is a Republican.The GOP has won 217 of the 218 seats needed to create a majority in Congress’ lower chamber, while Democrats have 205 seats. All it will take is one more victory for Republicans to retake the chamber for the first time since 2019. The question is: where?An obvious choice would be Colorado’s third district, where Lauren Boebert, one of the chamber’s most controversial lawmakers, is in an unexpectedly stiff battle for re-election against Democrat Adam Frisch. There are only a few ballots left to count in this race, but according to Colorado Public Radio, don’t expect the outcome to be decided today: the next results won’t be published until Wednesday.Based on this chart from the New York Times, that makes several uncalled races in California the best possibilities for learning today which party controls the House.Republican Adam Laxalt has conceded Nevada’s Senate race and acknowledged his loss to Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto:I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Tim 4:7) pic.twitter.com/5lUGKKTcRK— Adam Paul Laxalt (@AdamLaxalt) November 15, 2022
Cortez Masto’s victory in the race guarantees Joe Biden’s allies control of the Senate for another two years. However, election season isn’t quite over. On 6 December, voters in Georgia will cast ballots in a run-off election to determine whether Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock will return to the Senate, or be replaced by Republican Herschel Walker. More

Virginia McLaurin, who danced with Obamas as centenarian, dies at 113Washington woman visited White House in 2016 aged 106, and danced with president and first lady in clip that went viral Virginia McLaurin, a Washington woman who was 106 when in 2016 she visited and danced with Barack and Michelle Obama in the White House, has died. She was 113 years old.A family statement on McLaurin’s Facebook page said: “With heavy hearts we share that Ms Virginia McLaurin passed away this morning [Monday]. She had been under hospice care for a few days.“She lived an incredibly full life and appreciated all the love she received from people … everywhere she went. (Before the pandemic that is – for the past few years she largely stayed inside.)”When McLaurin visited the Obamas, footage of the joyous encounter quickly went viral. On the White House Facebook page, the video has now been viewed 70m times.When McLaurin started dancing, the then president said: “She’s dancing! Come on! What’s the secret to dancing at 106?”Speaking to CTV after the visit, McLaurin said she told Barack Obama: “‘It’s Black History Month and I’m here to represent Black history.’ He said, ‘You made our day.’ I was happy. Lord, I’m still happy about that.”Five things about Michelle Obama revealed in her new bookRead moreMcLaurin also said she was usually too stiff to dance but when she met the Obamas, “I was so happy I didn’t care.”She also told the Washington Post she wished she “could have 30 minutes alone with him”, adding: “Oh, you know how women think.”Writing about McLaurin’s visit in the Guardian, Syreeta McFadden said that for a Black woman, the sight of McLaurin’s joy at meeting the first Black president was hugely symbolic.“For Black women born early in the 20th century, when the nation suppressed the civil, social and economic liberties of African Americans, when American society actively resisted the humanity of African Americans, to be alive and witness this particular historical moment – McLaurin’s dance of joy is celebration hard earned and won. My grandmother, like McLaurin, never expected to live to see the day.”McLaurin was 99 when Obama was elected, in November 2008. In the Guardian, McFadden listed other historic moments from McLaurin’s life, from the foundation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the year of her birth, 1909, through the civil rights March on Washington of 1963, when McLaurin was 54.The family statement announcing McLaurin’s death said: “She had an extraordinary memory, sharing stories of family’s life as sharecroppers in South Carolina before traveling north in the Great Migration.”It also said that while McLaurin became “best known for her visit to the White House in 2016, she spent decades volunteering 40 hours a week at schools after she retired”.At 104, in 2013, McLaurin was honoured in Washington for her volunteer work with disabled students.According to a fundraising page set up to cover funeral costs, McLaurin also “volunteered as a foster grandparent and collaborated with other tenants in the fight for quality living conditions [and] was a devoted member of her church”.The page added: “We encourage you to look out for the other Ms McLaurins in your neighborhood. There are elders in every community who give back to the community and could use some support. They also have stories to tell.“Ms McLaurin came to the attention of the White House after she started recording short oral history interviews.”In a statement on Tuesday, Barack and Michelle Obama said: “Rest in peace, Virginia. We know you’re up there dancing.”TopicsUS newsBarack ObamaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Raphael Warnock sues Georgia over early voting restrictions for runoffState law limits early voting after state holidays, including Thanksgiving and another formerly honoring Confederate general Raphael Warnock’s campaign sued Georgia on Tuesday after the state said it would not offer Saturday early voting for the closely watched runoff in which Warnock is seeking re-election to the US Senate.The suit challenges the state’s interpretation of a law that would prohibit early voting on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is also a state holiday in Georgia, originally to commemorate Robert E Lee, the Confederate civil war general. In 2015, state officials dropped Lee’s name and started recognizing the day simply as a “state holiday”.‘This movement was rejected’: Republican election deniers lose key state racesRead moreLawyers for Warnock’s campaign argued that the voting prohibition only applies to primary and general elections, not runoffs, which have a much shorter voting period. Last year, Georgia Republicans passed a law shortening the runoff period from nine weeks to four. But the shortened runoff period is coming into conflict with the state law that bars early voting around holidays.The state “misreads” and “cherry-picks” provisions of the law that do not apply to runoffs, lawyers for Warnock’s campaign wrote in a complaint, which was joined by the Georgia Democratic party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “The secretary’s insistence that counties may not hold advance voting on November 26 therefore has no support in the law and conflicts with [the statute’s] requirement that counties begin advance voting for the December 6 runoff as soon as possible,” it reads.The suit asks a judge to declare that state law does not prohibit counties from offering early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and to order the state not to take any action blocking them from doing so.Georgia law says 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. State law also bars Saturday early voting on the Saturday before a runoff, 3 December.Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, initially said he believed some counties would offer early voting on Saturday, before his office reversed course and said it was prohibited.“It’s not our choice. It’s literally in black-letter law that the Saturday following a state holiday cannot be used for early voting,” Gabriel Sterling, an interim deputy secretary of state, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “We all thought there was going to be Saturday voting until we looked at the law really closely.”Gerald Griggs, the president of the Georgia NAACP, said a Confederate holiday should not block voting.A Confederate holiday should not prevent the protection of democracy, which is called voting. That holiday needs to be eliminated. #TakeDownHate #gapol https://t.co/FqxW4zEx7h— Gerald A. Griggs (@AttorneyGriggs) November 13, 2022
A coalition of civil rights groups separately sent a letter to all of Georgia’s 159 counties on Tuesday urging them to offer at least three additional days of early voting from 7am to 7pm, which is allowed at the counties’ discretion under Georgia law. The coalition urged the counties to offer voting on the Tuesday and Wednesday preceding Thanksgiving as well as the Sunday after the holiday.“If you only offer advance voting on the five days required by statute (which, as noted above, is limited to weekdays), there is a significant risk that many voters will be unable to participate due to obligations during the workday,” lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of Georgia wrote in the letter. “The lack of weekend or evening voting options is especially concerning for voters of color, who may be less able to take time off from work to vote.”Hillary Holley, the executive director of Care in Action, the political arm of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, tweeted on Tuesday that Fulton county, home to Atlanta and the state’s most populous county, had agreed to start early voting on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. She also said Gwinnett county, one of the largest and most diverse counties in the state, had also agreed to start early voting on Sunday.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The fight for democracyGeorgiaUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

January 6 panel considers next steps after Trump fails to attend depositionPanel chair Bennie Thompson says contempt of Congress referral ‘could be an option’ after former president skips interview The special US House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is weighing whether to issue a contempt of Congress referral for Donald Trump after the former president skipped a closed-door deposition with the panel that was scheduled for Monday.Midterm elections 2022: Republicans edge towards slim House majority as last results trickle in – liveRead moreThe committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson, said that the contempt of Congress referral targeting Trump “could be an option” – though the Mississippi congressman added that the panel would have to first address a lawsuit filed against it by Trump’s lawyers on Friday. The suit challenged the subpoena ordering Trump to appear at the deposition as a violation of executive privilege.In a joint statement with Liz Cheney, the outgoing Republican congresswoman and vice-chair of the committee, Thompson said that Trump’s lawsuit “parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year”.“The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the select committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done,” which is to testify in accordance with panel-issued subpoenas, they said.Four Trump allies have already been held in contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with committee subpoenas.The US justice department has declined to charge two who were held in contempt of Congress: former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino.Two others, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, were indicted. Navarro’s trial is scheduled for January while Bannon was found guilty by a jury and was sentenced to four months in prison as well as a fine of $6,500. Bannon earlier this month appealed the trial and sentence.With Republicans on Tuesday sitting on the cusp of getting majority control in the House after the recent midterm elections, the committee will dissolve in January.Along with the pressure from the January 6 committee, Trump has also been facing attacks from fellow Republicans over the midterm election as several of his endorsed candidates failed to win their races. Trump is expected to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race, though any signs of strong support from his party have been dim.A new poll from conservative group Club for Growth, once a Trump ally, showed Trump polling behind Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, by double digits in hypothetical runs in Iowa and New Hampshire.In an interview with ABC News released on Monday, Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, said that the US would have “better choices in the future” than Trump. Pence said that he and his family are taking “prayerful consideration” of whether he should run himself in 2024.“People in this country actually get along pretty well once you get out of politics,” Pence said. “And I think they want to see their national leaders start to reflect that same compassion and generosity of spirit.“So in the days ahead, I think there will be better choices.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

Are US politics starting to turn towards a more hopeful future?Gary GerstleWe might one day look back on this midterm – and on Biden’s first two years – and discern in them a new beginning Last week was amazing for Joe Biden. The Red Wave fizzled. The Democrats kept the Senate. Even if the House slips from the Democrats’ grasp, as it is expected to, Biden will be credited with engineering the strongest midterm showing by an incumbent president’s party since 2002, and the most impressive such performance by a sitting Democratic president since JFK in 1962. Women’s anger at the supreme court’s Dobbs decision hammered the Republicans in key states. Many of Trump’s highest-flying, election-denying candidates fell to earth, damaging the ex-president’s aura of invincibility. Fights and recriminations have now broken out everywhere in Republican ranks.And there’s more from last week to bring a smile to Biden’s face: inflation moderated, the Dow rocketed skyward, and Ukrainians pushed the Russians out of Kherson, a big win not just for Ukraine but for Biden’s European foreign policy. And, oh yes, in America, young people – the country’s future – came out in relatively large numbers and, in critical contests, broke for the Democrats in a big way.And yet, what did this past week of exceptional political success yield for Biden and Democrats? Their majority in the Senate is still razor-thin. If they lose the House, their already narrow path to passing legislation will shrink further. House Republicans are likely to use a new House majority to flood media with an investigation of Hunter Biden and other vulnerable Democratic party figures – payback for the January 6 hearings. Even the most impressively conceived legislative proposals coming from the White House may be greeted with House Republican intransigence.Nevertheless, looking ahead to 2024, there are grounds for optimism, not just that Democrats can win but that they can begin to build bigger and more enduring majorities. Most importantly, three major legislative achievements of the Biden administration to date are likely to have a greater impact on the 2024 election than they did in 2022. The most important of these is the curiously titled Inflation Reduction Act. That bill has not gotten the credit it deserves, in part because of its silly name and in part because it is much smaller than the $5tn Build Back Bill from which it is descended.Watching that original bill get whittled down and carved up across 2021 and 2022 was not a pretty sight. Yet the final version of the legislation contains truly important initiatives in multiple spheres, nowhere more so than the nearly $400bn appropriated for investments in green technology and for tax breaks and subsidies to businesses and homeowners to convert to clean energy. The bill constitutes the biggest single investment that the federal government has made in a green energy future.Of nearly equal importance in Biden’s first two years were two other bills: the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, to improve the nation’s crumbling physical infrastructure; and the Chips Act, to re-shore, in a massive way, the research, design and production of semi-conductor computer chips, those tiny, ubiquitous and indispensable components that drive every computer and virtually all of America’s (and the world’s) machines and phones.In these three initiatives, the Democrats have laid down a foundation for a program of political economy that diverges significantly from its neoliberal predecessor. This older vision of political economy, long embraced both by Republicans and Democrats, insisted on freeing markets and capital from government oversight and direction. The Biden program, by contrast, is grounded in the belief that a strong government is necessary to steer – and, in some cases, compel – markets and corporations into serving the public good. It crystallized from the extensive discussions between the Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic party across 2020 and 2021. It represents a profound departure from the last 30 of governing practice.The industrial policies being promoted by the Biden administration won’t lead to nationalization; they focus instead on incentivizing the private sector to pursue broadly agreed upon economic aims. Two of the three aforementioned bills – the Chips Act and the Infrastructure Act – passed the Senate with significant Republican support. Quietly, Biden has delivered on his promise to open a new pathway to bipartisanship. There will be opportunities to broaden this bipartisanship, especially in regard to breaking up or regulating the monopoly power of the giant social media companies. Strong support for doing so exists on both sides of the Senate aisle. One key question is whether this incipient senatorial cross-party collaboration can soften the country’s paralyzing political polarization and persuade a few House Republicans to support upper chamber initiatives. Another is whether the Democrats can use their new program of political economy to sell a broad swath of the electorate – including constituencies currently lying beyond Democratic redoubts – on the party’s vision of the good life.Judging by the midterms’ voting patterns alone, one might be tempted to say no. But there are reasons to think otherwise. For one, economic circumstances will be different in 2024 than they are now. Inflation will probably have moderated and thus may have faded as a political flashpoint. The recession that the Fed seems so determined to trigger will have occurred, and a recovery will be under way. Additionally, by 2024, corporate America (as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act) will be more deeply invested in green technology. The conversion to post-fossil fuel economy will have correspondingly accelerated, as America’s robust private sector glimpses the profits to be made in the clean energy revolution. Moreover, by 2024, the first new infrastructural projects should be nearing completion, yielding visible improvements in America’s creaking system of bridges, roads, and transportation hubs and networks. All this investment and building should generate jobs and, perhaps, the promise of a better life for many long denied it. A somnolent US labor movement is reawakening, a development that, if it continues, will help to ensure that future jobs carry with them decent wages. Perhaps word will spread that Democrats are capable of managing America’s dynamic but unruly economy in the public interest.Is this too rosy a picture? Perhaps. Biden will never be a “great communicator”. Trump’s shrinking but still ardent band of zealots will continue to threaten American democracy. The red state-blue state divide endures. House Republicans together with the US supreme court may obstruct further Democratic efforts at reform. And we don’t know what a desperate Putin might inflict on the world if he truly believed that his reign over Russia was about to end.If we take the long view, however, and concede that a progressive political order requires a long march, then we might one day look back on this midterm – and on Biden’s first two years – and discern in them the first steps toward a better future.
Gary Gerstle is Mellon professor of American history emeritus at Cambridge and a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (2022)
TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansJoe BidenBiden administrationUS CongresscommentReuse this content More

Before the shooting, the city grappled with police corruption, entrenched gun culture and the lasting wounds of segregation. Now the illusion of ‘Uvalde Strong’ has ruptured as families demand changeby More

Trump v DeSantis: Republicans split over 2024 run and predict ‘blood on the floor’ County leaders say they fear ex-president is even more divisive than he was two years ago and is therefore unelectableTerri Burl was an early member of Women for Trump. As chair of her local Republican party branch in northern Wisconsin, she twice campaigned vigorously for his election in the key swing state. By the time Trump left office, Burl rated him the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Maybe even better.But now Burl has had enough.She viewed the prospect of Trump announcing another run for the presidency – as he did in Florida on Tuesday evening – with trepidation. Burl predicts “a lot of blood on the floor” if it comes to a fight with rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination, and defeat in the 2024 election if the former US president is the candidate.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read more“I will back whoever the Republicans choose to run in 2024. That’s a given. But I want them to go through the primaries and I hope it’s not Trump. He has too much baggage now. We need new blood because it’s obvious that he can’t get to business now without doing things to make people angry. His behaviour hasn’t changed,” she said.Burl, a substitute teacher, is not alone.The Republicans’ failure to deliver the much promised “red wave” in the midterms was a significant blow to Trump’s claim to be the voice of his party’s voters, not least because of the defeat of key candidates endorsed by him. But backing from the grass roots, which gave him a tight grip on the Republicans for years and kept its hostile leadership at bay, has been eroding for months.Republican county chairs and activists say support for the former president has diminished as a result of his continued pushing of election conspiracy theories, the investigations into his businesses and political actions, and his attacks on his most threatening challenger, DeSantis. Above all, there is a deepening fear that Trump is now even more divisive than he was two years ago when he lost the popular vote to Joe Biden by more than 7m votes, and is therefore unelectable.But local Republican leaders also say that Trump retains a substantial and virulently loyal following within the party that will fight to the last and could still decide the primaries.In rural Iowa, Neil Shaffer, chair of the Howard county Republican party, said he would rather see DeSantis as his party’s candidate in two years but that the membership of his branch is split.“Honestly, Trump’s got a lot of baggage, self-inflicted. Had he taken the loss gracefully, and held his tongue, and didn’t further these conspiracy theories, he probably could have been a president again, with an interim of Biden,” he said.“People that came to the Trump bandwagon, there were a lot of independents, a lot of first-time voters, a lot of everyday people. They did overlook some of the issues. Since then, a lot of the people that I’ve talked to that were first-time Republican voters would have a very difficult time being as enthusiastic for Trump this time around just because of how he didn’t gracefully take an exit. He lost a lot of political capital between November 2020 and January 6, and unnecessarily. All self-inflicted.”Shaffer said he has faith in the electoral system and that Biden legitimately won the election.Like Burl, Shaffer wants to see other candidates challenge Trump for the Republican nomination.“I honestly am a big fan of Governor DeSantis and have been for several months just following through this last campaign. Fresh face. Has the same kind of agenda as Trump without all the baggage,” he said.But Shaffer, speaking before Trump’s announcement, said he doubted Trump could be beaten.“If Trump runs, I’m 99% sure he’ll have the nomination. I know how caucuses and primaries work. You don’t have to have that many people show up and he has a very loyal and dedicated following,” said Shaffer.Burl is not so sure that Trump would win the primaries but she predicts a bitter fight that could further damage the Republican party.“If these two guys are the ones that are left, going back and forth, I think it’s gonna be brutal. There will be a lot of blood on the floor,” she said.A YouGov poll in the days immediately after the midterms gave DeSantis a seven-point lead over Trump among Republican primary voters, including independents. That’s a shift from a month before the elections when Trump had a 10-point advantage. However, among “strong Republicans”, Trump retains a narrow lead.Burl administrates a private Facebook group, American Patriots. She polled its members and found that Trump had a slight edge in support. In other social media forums, some of his supporters say he is a “proven fighter” who can connect with the public in ways no other politician can. Others say the time has come to “dump Trump”.“I love what DJT did for America. But … is he even electable?” asked one of his supporters.Others questioned his judgment after he backed weak candidates in the midterms solely because they were loyal to his claim that the last presidential election was stolen.Trump’s deriding of his Florida rival as Ron “DeSanctimonious” days before the midterms was a last straw for some. Then he took to Fox News to warn off DeSantis from running for the presidency, saying “he could hurt himself very badly” and threatening to “tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering”.“I think he would be making a mistake. I think the base would not like it. I don’t think it would be good for the party,” said Trump.Burl said she was “shocked” by the former president’s attack on DeSantis.“Trump is starting to call him names and that really disappointed me. And then he said that if DeSantis tries to run against him, he’s got some dirt on DeSantis that he’s going to bring up. That’s not the way to do things,” she said.Burl said some Republicans were concerned that while they saw Trump as his own man, DeSantis was too much of an accomplished politician whose decisions are calculated according to what he thinks will play well with voters.“Some people are saying that they don’t trust DeSantis because they think that he will cross into the establishment side. I’m not establishment. I don’t like establishment candidates. I like people like Trump,” she said.“But even though some people might look on DeSantis as establishment right now, I think he is coming out as his own type of Republican and really doesn’t want to cavort with all of the establishment Republicans and do what they say.”Shaffer is concerned about the damage Trump will do to the Republican party, and its presidential nominee, if he loses and goes down fighting.“How does Trump run and not tarnish the other candidates?” he said.And if Trump is the nominee? Shaffer said he would still campaign for the former president, but doesn’t relish the prospect.“If Trump got the nomination it will be a much more difficult for him this time around than it was in 2020. We’re gonna have to work very hard, much harder than in 2016 or two years [ago],” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024US politicsDonald TrumpRon DeSantisRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Michelle Obama says Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016 ‘still hurts’Former US first lady rules out possibility of running for president herself in future Michelle Obama has said Donald Trump’s rise to power in the 2016 US election “still hurts” but she and her husband had “laid a marker in the sand” with his presidency.The former first lady said “leadership matters” but ruled out the possibility of running for president herself in future.In the run-up to the release of her new book, The Light We Carry, she spoke to BBC Breakfast about the political polarisation in the UK and US.Asked about the American electorate’s decision to replace Barack Obama with Trump, she said it “still hurts”, and she sometimes questioned if her husband’s time in office had mattered.“When I’m in my darkest moment … my most irrational place, I could say, well, maybe (it didn’t matter). Maybe we weren’t good enough.“But then I look around when there is more clarity … and think more rationally, I think well … today there’s a whole world of young people who are thinking differently about themselves because of the work that we’ve done. And that’s where you can’t allow great to be the enemy of the good.“You know, did everything get fixed in the eight years that we were there? Absolutely not. That’s not how change happens. But we laid a marker in the sand. We pushed the wheel forward a bit.“But progress isn’t about a steady climb upward. There are ups and downs and stagnation. That’s the nature of change. And that’s why the work that we’re doing today is about empowering the next generation, the generation that we’re handing the baton over to and making space for them to make their mark on history.”Obama said it was important to have leadership that “reflects the direction that we want to go in as a people” and that made the general public “feel seen”.“Leadership matters,” she said. “The voices at the top matter if we can continue to be susceptible to voices that want to lead by fear and division. That’s why government matters, democracy matters. Voting matters. So I think it starts with having leadership that reflects the direction that we want to go in as a people.”Asked what question she most disliked being asked, she said: “Are you going to run for president?’ I detest it.”“I’m not going to run,” she added.TopicsMichelle ObamaDonald TrumpUS politicsBarack ObamanewsReuse this content More