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      House and Senate negotiators reach agreement to prevent shutdown – report

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      With government funding set to partially expire on Friday, House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement to prevent a shutdown, Politico reported.Funding for some federal departments was previously set to expire after Friday, while the rest faced an 8 March deadline. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress met with Joe Biden yesterday at the White House, where all sides expressed their desire to avoid a shutdown that the president warned would damage the economy.More details soon … More

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      Senate Democrats to force vote on protecting IVF access across the US

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      Senate Democrats are moving to push through a bill that would protect Americans’ access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, after an Alabama supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are children led to the closure of a number of infertility clinics in the state.The Democratic Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth said she would try to force a vote on the legislation on Wednesday which would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are at risk in the post-Roe era. Duckworth’s two children were conceived through IVF.“I’m headed to the Senate floor to call on my colleagues to pass via unanimous consent my Access to Family Building Act, which would ensure that every American’s right to become a parent via treatments like IVF is fully protected, regardless of what state they live in – guaranteeing that no hopeful parent or doctor is punished,” Duckworth said at a news conference on Tuesday.Duckworth’s move comes as Democrats vow to make IVF a campaign issue as they look to squeeze Republicans and highlight the continuing fallout of the overturning of Roe v Wade.“I warned that red states would come for IVF. Now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse,” Duckworth added.The bill would require unanimous consent in order for it to pass, meaning that any one senator can block its passage. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said it was unlikely to receive unanimous consent from the chamber to rush the bill through.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile many Republican lawmakers registered disappointment over the Alabama ruling, at least one conservative senator was expected to object.Blumenthal said Democrats would not be deterred. He would not say what the next legislative steps would be, but he said Democrats, who control the Senate, would look for other ways to protect IVF and reproductive healthcare.“The IVF dilemma for Republicans is they are down a path that is not only unpopular, it’s untenable as a matter of constitutional law and basic moral imperative, and we’re going to pursue it vigorously,” Blumenthal said.“Today’s vote, the effort to seek a unanimous consent, we know is unlikely to be successful. Failing today is only the prelude to a fight ahead on women’s reproductive care centered on IVF and other steps that have to be taken to protect basic rights.” More

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      Marianne Williamson ‘un-suspends’ campaign after Michigan primary

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      The self-help author Marianne Williamson “un-suspended” her quixotic, all-but-certainly doomed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying she did so because Joe Biden could not defeat Donald Trump, who she called a “fascist” and a “juggernaut of dark, dark vision”.“I am un-suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States,” Williamson said, in a social media video the morning after a Michigan primary in which despite having suspended her campaign she finished third, way behind Biden and “uncommitted” but slightly ahead of the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, another rank outsider.“I had suspended it because I was losing the horse race,” Williamson said, though she is still clearly losing the horse race. “But something so much more important than the horse race is at stake here. And we must respond.“Right now we have a fascist standing at the door. Everybody’s all upset about it. Well, we should be upset about it. But we’re not going to defeat the fascist by, well, by what? What is President Biden offering? He says, ‘Let’s finish the job.’ Well, I hope you realise we’re talking about millions of voters [who] can’t even survive unless they work two or three jobs.”Williamson, who also ran in 2020, had suspended her campaign on 7 February, after failing to make an impact in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.“I hope future candidates will take what works for them, drinking from the well of information we prepared,” she said. “My team and I brought to the table some great ideas, and I will take pleasure when I see them live on in campaigns and candidates yet to be created.”She changed her mind after Michigan. Citing economic difficulties faced by many Americans including medical debt and an insufficient minimum wage, she also quoted a bygone Republican president Abraham Lincoln.“We the people basically don’t own this country right now. Abraham Lincoln said that people who died in the civil war for the union had died so that a government of the people, by the people and for the people would not perish from the earth. It’s perishing now on our watch.”Promising to end “government of the corporations by the corporations”, and to achieve an “economic U-turn”, Williamson said America needed a response to Trump’s “dark vision” better than that offered by Biden.“We need to say to the American people, ‘We see your pain.’ And we need to say to Donald Trump, ‘We see your BS.’ Let’s do this. Thanks so much. Spread the word.”The campaign now moves on to 5 March, Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory will vote. The territory, American Samoa, may offer Williamson hope, given that in 2020 it was the sole prize claimed by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor whose campaign also went nowhere fast.Still, in national polling averages, Williamson lags about 70 points behind Biden. More

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      ‘Uncommitted’ vote in Michigan a warning shot over Biden’s support of Israel

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      Standing before shimmering gold curtains on Tuesday evening, the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, spoke with pride about his city.“We had the audacity to choose people over political party,” he said. “We had the damn audacity to put people over president.”For many gathered at this sprawling banquet hall in the heart of America’s most concentrated Muslim population, the outcome of last night’s Democratic primary in Michigan was beyond even the boldest of predictions.Although Joe Biden took the state, it was the hastily organized but committed grassroots campaign against the president’s support for the Israeli government’s war with Gaza that took the night. Organizers with Listen to Michigan, a group that urged voters to withdraw support for Biden and instead vote uncommitted, had hoped for a showing of 10,000 votes. They returned more than 100,000 – a clear demonstration of the growing fractures among the diverse coalition that brought Biden to power in 2020.It is a warning shot to the Democratic party, and shows more signs of expanding than diminishing as the primary season wears on.In just four weeks, the uncommitted campaign mobilized a cohort of progressives concentrated in the suburbs of Detroit, a region that saw a significant rise in Democratic turnout four years ago.“This is a humanitarian vote,” said the campaign’s manager, Layla Elabed, a 34-year-old lifelong Democrat, as she sipped coffee at a Yemeni cafe on a frigid Sunday morning, two days before the vote. “Right now, Joe Biden sits in a place of power where he can actually change course and save lives.”Elabed, the sister of the US representative Rashida Tlaib – the first Palestinian American to serve in Congress – met Biden last year at the White House during Eid celebrations. The president has heard personal stories of their grandmother’s struggles living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she said. “But it feels a lot like it’s falling on deaf ears.”Her next stop was a rally in the city of Hamtramck, where those assembled underlined not only the movement’s diverse collective of ages and race, but also the divergent outlooks on how the campaign could or should affect the general election in November.“I’m very focused on the moment,” said Dima Hassan, a Palestinian American who would be voting in her first presidential election in 2024. “What is happening right now is an active genocide so thinking about November honestly feels silly.”Yet Tuesday’s result should send alarm bells ringing for that vote, given the thin margin of Trump’s victory in 2016, which saw him swing the state red by just more than 10,000 votes. Organizers say the group is also representative of the large Democratic disapproval ratings of Biden’s handling of the war, the death toll in which is likely to surpass 30,000 in Gaza by this week.Although hastily convened, Listen to Michigan is well organized, with an effective phone banking operation making more than 500,000 calls in just a matter of weeks, according to the campaign. But with no official headquarters, meetings are held in cafes and living rooms. Elabed’s car is laden with boxes of flyers that she hauls alone, darting between locations.Although Biden sent campaign representatives to meet with members of the Arab-American community here earlier this month and on Monday expressed hope of a ceasefire, recent comments from the state’s Democratic governor that equated an uncommitted vote to effective support for Donald Trump were met with scorn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMuslim communities in Dearborn and elsewhere endured rising rates of hate crimes during the Trump presidency, following a campaign laced with Islamophobia. Trump implemented a travel ban for several Muslim majority countries, which he has pledged to reinstate if he wins in 2024.With just a few hours left to vote on Tuesday afternoon, polling stations in Dearborn were still welcoming a steady flow of primary voters. At an intersection by the McDonald elementary school, Linda Sarsour, the New York-based organizer, was handing out flyers to those who trickled through. Most had already decided to cast their ballot uncommitted.Sarsour, who co-chaired the Women’s March in 2017 and became a prominent activist during the Trump era, expressed contempt at those within the party making the Trump equation.“Shame on them for gaslighting this community,” she said. “This is a presidential primary, this is democracy and people should be able to vote for whoever they want. Donald Trump is not part of the Democratic primary.”She continued: “But also the ball is in Joe Biden’s court. Why start pointing fingers at the voters when they should be pointing fingers at Joe Biden. They should be demanding that Joe Biden do better in order to keep these voters within the Democratic party.”Sarsour was one of a handful of volunteers from outside Michigan who had come to support the campaign on Tuesday. Others had arrived from Florida, Illinois and Washington, as the grassroots effort looks to expand beyond Michigan.Efforts are already under way for an uncommitted vote in Minnesota and also in Washington, while other states that do not offer an uncommitted ballot option may see new write-in campaigns.“This is becoming an opportunity to translate protest in the street to protest at the ballot,” Sarsour said. More

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      McConnell upbeat on avoiding government shutdown after White House talks – as it happened

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      In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was noncommittal after the meeting on if or when he’d do that.Here’s what else happened today:
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Johnson’s demands for tougher border security, saying, “I don’t even think he knows what he wants.”
      Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
      Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
      Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF.
      Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said she was voting “uncommitted” in her state’s primary tonight in protest of Biden’s policy towards Israel.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has long pressed the Biden administration to take actions to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the southern border. Yet he also helped kill a bipartisan compromise that would have tightened border security while also approving aid to Ukraine and Israel.Nonetheless, Johnson reiterated his demand that Biden get tougher on immigration today after meeting at the White House with the president. At her press briefing later in the day, Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked what exactly Johnson wants.“I appreciate the question. I don’t even think he knows what he wants,” Jean-Pierre replied.The press secretary continued:
      You had a bipartisan group of senators coming out of the Senate, working for four months with the White House to put forward a bipartisan piece of legislation that dealt with a … important challenge that we see at the border in immigration. And then so we did that, we’ve moved that forward, we presented it. And we were told no no, we don’t want the border security, we want just the national security supplemental without border security.
      Then, the Senate goes back and they pass the national security supplemental without border security, 70-29 … and the speaker refuses to put that to the floor. So what is it that he really wants here? If you look at the border security deal, that proposal, it has components of what the speaker has been talking about for years. So the question is really for him.
      The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell also told reporters he supports holding a trial for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who House Republicans impeached earlier this month.Convicting Mayorkas requires approval by a two-thirds majority of senators, which is probably impossible, since Democrats, who have a majority, have rejected the charges against him. They also have not said if they will even bother holding a trial of Mayorkas, or find a way to dismiss the charges without considering them.McConnell was asked for his thoughts on the matter, and here’s what he had to say:In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:Americans consider immigration to be the most important issue facing the US, according to a new Gallup poll.The survey found that 28% of respondents cited immigration as the top issue facing the country, up from 20% who said the same a month ago.It marks the first time immigration has been the most cited problem since 2019, and come as Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to make separate visits to the US-Mexico border on Thursday.A separate question in the survey found that a record-high 55% of respondents said that “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” is a critical threat to US vital interests, up eight points from last year.Here’s a clip of Republican House speaker Mike Johnson speaking to reporters after meeting with Joe Biden and top congressional leaders at the White House.Johnson called the talks “frank and honest” and said his primary concern is addressing migration along the US-Mexico border.A top Republican in Virginia has apologized for misgendering a state senate Democrat in a row that caused legislative activity in the chamber to be temporarily suspended.“We are all equal under the law. And so I apologize, I apologize, I apologize, and I would hope that everyone would understand there is no intent to offend but that we would also give each other the ability to forgive each other,” the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, said in an address to the state senate on Monday.It all started when Danica Roem, 39, a state senator from Prince William county and the US’s first openly transgender person to serve in any state legislature, had asked Earle-Sears, 59, how many votes were needed to pass a bill on prescription drug prices with an emergency clause.“Madame President, how many votes would it take to pass this bill with the emergency clause?” Roem asked Earle-Sears, who was presiding over a legislative session at the time.Earle-Sears responded: “Yes, sir, that would be 32.”Roem walked out of the room after being misgendered. Earle-Sears initially refused to apologize for the mistake but finally did so after two separate recesses.Congressman Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democrat of Michigan, said she was “proud” to cast a ballot for “uncommitted” in her state’s Democratic primary today.Progressive Democrats in Michigan have urged supporters to vote “uncommitted” as a means of protesting against the war in Gaza, calling on Joe Biden to do more to bring about a ceasefire.“We must protect our democracy. We must make sure that our government is about us, about the people,” Tlaib said in a video shared to social media.Tlaib noted that a recent poll showed 74% of self-identified Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire in Gaza, and she accused Biden of “not hearing us”.“This is the way we can use our democracy to say: listen. Listen to Michigan. Listen to the families right now that have been directly impacted, but also listen to the majority of Americans who are saying enough. No more wars, no more using our dollars to fund a genocide. No more,” Tlaib said.“So please, take your family members. Use our democratic process to speak up about your core values [and] where you want to see our country go.”Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was reportedly noncommittal after the meeting on whether he’d do that.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
      Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
      Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF care.
      CNN reports that Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave a similar recounting of his meeting with Joe Biden, Congress’s top Democrats and the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell.The biggest question, which Johnson still has not answered, is if and when he will allow a vote on new aid for Ukraine, and what House Republicans might want in return. Here’s more, from CNN:The congressional leaders who met with Joe Biden at the White House made “good progress” on avoiding a government shutdown, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said after the meeting.The group, which also included Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, also pressed the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to support further aid to Ukraine, a discussion Schumer noted was particularly “intense”.“We’re making good progress and we’re hopeful we can get this done quickly,” Schumer said, adding that Johnson “said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown”.McConnell along with Biden and Congress’s top Democrats are all supporters of aid to Ukraine, but Johnson has waffled, even turning down a package of hardline immigration policy changes Democrats had agreed to in order to win Republican support for Kyiv.“The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Schumer said. “We said to the speaker, ‘get it done.’”While the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is at the White House to negotiate with Joe Biden, a member of his party is trying to get Joe Biden declared too old to serve, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:A Colorado Republican introduced a congressional resolution calling for Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th amendment to the US constitution and remove Joe Biden because he is too old.The resolution from the US House member Ken Buck has little chance of success.John Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon, the president who resigned under pressure from his own party, said: “Just when you think there may be a few normal Republicans, you discover they are all crazy.“This man [Buck] is leaving public office. He is the person with the cognitive problem not Joe Biden.”Section four of the 25th amendment provides for the replacement, by the vice-president, of a president deemed incapable. It has never been used. Calls for its use intensified in 2021, after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to stay in the Oval Office. More

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      Biden and Harris meet congressional leaders to try to avert government shutdown

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met congressional leaders on Tuesday in hopes of striking a deal to try to avert a government shutdown.“We’re making good progress, and we’re hopeful we can get this done quickly,” the top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said after the meeting, adding that the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, “said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown”.While the debacle over the government shutdown has been brewing for months, the 1 March deadline is different from the many similar instances that came before, in that it would herald only a partial government shutdown, with the legislation funding departments including agriculture, transportation and veteran affairs expiring on Friday. The rest of the shutdown is scheduled for 8 March.The meeting was scheduled for late morning with Johnson, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer and the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.At the top of the meeting, Biden warned that a government shutdown would “significantly” damage the nation’s economy, which saw strong growth last year despite tenacious inflation and high interest rates.The group pressed Johnson to support further aid to Ukraine, a discussion Schumer noted was particularly “intense”.McConnell along with Biden and Congress’s top Democrats are all supporters of aid to Ukraine, but Johnson has waffled, even turning down a package of hardline immigration policy changes Democrats had agreed to in order to win Republican support for Kyiv.“The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Schumer said. “We said to the speaker, ‘Get it done.’”Johnson, meanwhile, told CNN the meeting was “frank and honest” and focused on the need for an immigration and border plan. This comes after House Republicans tanked bipartisan legislation that included border funding, alongside Ukraine and Israel aid – a move that has been attributed to Donald Trump’s pressure to not allow Democrats any wins in an election year.The House reconvenes on Wednesday. More

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      Top Virginia Republican apologizes for misgendering Democratic state senator

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      A top Republican in Virginia has apologized for misgendering a state senate Democrat in a row that caused legislative activity in the chamber to be temporarily suspended.“We are all equal under the law. And so I apologize, I apologize, I apologize, and I would hope that everyone would understand there is no intent to offend but that we would also give each other the ability to forgive each other,” the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, said in an address to the state senate on Monday.It all started when Danica Roem, 39, a state senator from Prince William county and the US’s first openly transgender person to serve in any state legislature, had asked Earle-Sears, 59, how many votes were needed to pass a bill on prescription drug prices with an emergency clause.“Madame President, how many votes would it take to pass this bill with the emergency clause?” Roem asked Earle-Sears, who was presiding over a legislative session at the time.Earle-Sears responded: “Yes, sir, that would be 32.”Roem walked out of the room after being misgendered. Earle-Sears initially refused to apologize for the mistake but finally did so after two separate recesses.The lieutenant governor maintained that she did not mean to upset anyone.“I am here to do the job that the people of Virginia have called me to do, and that is to treat everyone with respect and dignity,” Earle-Sears said.She added: “I myself have at times not been afforded that same respect and dignity.”Earle-Sears herself also made history as the state’s first Black and first female lieutenant governor.Roem has served in Virginia’s state senate since 2023. She was previously a member of the Virginia house of delegates, to which she was elected in 2017.The bill about which Roem inquired, HB592, ultimately passed the Virginia senate.Roem’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      California’s Orange county was once a conservative bastion. Can it swing the balance of the US House in 2024?

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      In the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the US House of Representatives, one region could hold the key to victory – Orange county, California’s historically conservative heartland.For decades, the region – perhaps most famously described by Ronald Reagan as the place “where the good Republicans go before they die” – was a Republican stronghold and a hotbed for radical conservatives.But the county has undergone dramatic changes both politically and demographically. The region has shifted from the largely white center of conservative politics in California to a far more diverse place and one of the few true purple counties in the US, the effects of which have reverberated nationally.Today the county of 3.1 million people is home to some of the most competitive congressional elections in the US. Four of Orange county’s six congressional districts, including the seat vacated by congresswoman Katie Porter as she runs for the Senate, are ranked among the most competitive races, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.Recent polling from UC Irvine suggests that Asian Americans and Latino voters could play a key role in the upcoming races as potential swing voters. Orange county is far less white than it once was and its growing diversity has helped fuel its political transformation, said Jon Gould, who launched the poll.It’s a stark contrast to years past when Asian Americans were an afterthought in county political campaigns, said Andrew Ji, the managing director of the Orange county office for Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “In certain regions where there’s tight races, Asian Americans are gonna be the swing voting bloc,” Ji said.Orange county was conservative even for conservatives, a place that embraced the John Birch Society, a far-right political group that opposed the civil rights movement and spread conspiracy theories that Republican president Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.The region was overwhelmingly Republican into the 1990s, said Jim Newton, a UCLA lecturer and veteran journalist who covered the region. Demographic trends suggested it wouldn’t remain so forever, he said, but the political shift came far sooner than anticipated.In 1990, Orange county was 65% white while Latinos comprised 23% of the population and Asian Americans 10%, according to the US census. By 2020, Latinos accounted for 34% of county residents, the Asian American population climbed to 22% and white people made up 37% of the population.Greater ethnic and racial diversity fueled change, but other demographic changes played a role too, said Gould, the dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. There’s been a rise in college-educated county residents – and there is a link between higher education and less extreme Republicans, he said.“When I was younger this was the home of the John Birch Society, this was … the place Ronald Reagan was king,” said Gould. “The transformation has been remarkable.”The changes in the political landscape were evident in 2016, when Orange county favored a Democrat for president for the first time in nearly a century – giving more votes to Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. In 2018, Democrats flipped four seats and the county sent an entirely blue delegation to Congress.The shifting political winds came as California as a whole was becoming more blue, and the far-right shift in the Republican party and Donald Trump alienated voters, particularly suburban women.View image in fullscreenThe GOP’s association with downplaying or outright denying the climate crisis also didn’t play well in a state where people take the environment seriously, Newton, the UCLA lecturer, argues.“The fact that we talk about Orange county as potentially a swing place is really bad news for Republicans,” Newton said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic voters have a slight lead in the county today, but it remains firmly purple. Republicans won two House seats back from Democrats in 2020 with the election of Young Kim and Michelle Steel – two of the first Korean American women to serve in Congress.Purple counties – where congressional and presidential contests are truly competitive – are increasingly rare, said Gould, who recently conducted a poll of county voters.The poll published by UC Irvine suggests that the county will swing left in this year’s election due to independent and “modestly partisan Republicans”. The latter group has become a political anomaly in a sharply divided America, but could play a strong role in the races in the region. That demographic is less supportive of Trump, does not dislike Biden as much as other Republicans and is generally more diverse, Gould noted.“They tend to be more educated, wealthier and compared to the strongly attached Republicans, they are much less likely to be white,” he said. “That is where there is a Latino and Asian group of modestly attached Republicans who may very well have a strong influence on the presidential race and congressional races in 2024.”They may not necessarily vote for Democrats, he said, and the question is whether they will vote, and if so will they vote for Republicans in every race.The outcome of the congressional races could have major implications nationally and determine which party controls the House.“If Democrats can’t keep this seat, they have no hope of winning the House majority, because demographically this is exactly the type of district that is coming into the Democrats’ coalition,” David Wasserman, with the Cook Political Report, said of Porter’s seat in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.For Ji, the election is another sign of how much has changed in Orange county and there is an excitement to see it transform from a mono-political white place, into somewhere known for diversity – ethnically and politically.“I’m very excited for the future of Orange county,” Ji said. “We are pivotal. We can be seen as an inflection point and we are very important nationally in the way we vote.” More