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      The California town that could hold the key to control of the House in 2024

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      When customers come in for a cut and a conversation at Miguel Navarro’s barbershop, there’s one topic they raise more than any other: gas prices.A gallon of regular goes for about $5 in Delano, a farming town in California’s Central Valley where in 1965, grape pickers staged a historic strike over bad pay and working conditions that led to the creation of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, led by Cesar Chavez. Today, everyone in the city who can afford to do so drives, which means feeling the pain of California’s pump prices, the highest in the nation.“You kind of think about it twice before you go out,” said Navarro as he cut a customer’s hair in his eponymous barbershop on Delano’s Main Street. His shop sits among a strip of tax preparers, taquerias and leather goods stores, in an area that also happens to be some of the most fiercely contested political territory in the nation.The city of nearly 51,000 is in the middle of a California congressional district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, Joe Biden won overwhelming support in 2020, but despite its apparent blue lean, voters have repeatedly sent the Republican David Valadao to be their voice in the House of Representatives over the past decade.Next year, Democrats hope to change that as part of their campaign to seize back control of Congress’s lower chamber, which hinges on flipping 18 districts won by Biden in 2020 that are represented by Republicans like Valadao, a dairy farmer who is one of just two Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump and managed to keep their seats.That battle, which will play out alongside Biden’s re-election campaign and Senate Democrats’ defense of their small majority in the chamber, may well be the easiest for the party to win in 2024.Though the numbers appear to favor Democrats in California’s 22nd congressional district, several hurdles stand between the party and victory. Nearly a year and a month before the general election, the down-ballot races that are crucial to deciding the balance of power in Washington DC are far from the minds of many in Delano.“People here are just living day by day, and if you do not remind them about elections, they might not remember,” said Susana Ortiz, an undocumented grape picker who lives in Delano and has campaigned for Rudy Salas, Valadao’s unsuccessful Democratic opponent in last year’s election.Democrats must gain five seats to win a majority in the House, and Valadao’s district – encompassing dozens of farming communities and half of Bakersfield, California’s ninth most-populous city – is one of 33 targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2024.Beyond campaigning, Democrats are expected to benefit from a supreme court decision that has forced Alabama, and potentially Louisiana, to redraw its congressional map. The party also has a good shot of gaining a seat in New York City’s Long Island suburbs, where voters are reeling after discovering their Republican congressman George Santos is a fabulist who is now facing federal charges.The GOP has its own redistricting advantages, particularly in North Carolina, where new congressional maps could knock at least three Democrats out of their seats. The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting Democratic lawmakers in 37 seats, five of whom represent districts that voted for Trump three years ago.“I think the House is going to come down to redistricting fights, candidate recruitment and, probably, most importantly, the top of the ticket and what that does to down-ballot races,” said David Wasserman, an election analyst who focuses on the chamber at the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.No race has a dynamic quite like the contest to unseat Valadao, whose spokesperson declined to comment. The 46-year-old won election to the California state assembly in 2010, and then to the US House two years later. Valadao defeated successive Democratic challengers in the years that followed, until TJ Cox ousted him in a close election in 2018, a historically good year for the party.Valadao triumphed over Cox two years later. The January 6 attack on the Capitol occurred just as he was to take his seat in the House, and a week after that, Valadao joined nine other Republicans and all Democrats to vote for impeaching Trump.“Based on the facts before me, I have to go with my gut and vote my conscience. I voted to impeach President Trump. His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent and absolutely an impeachable offense,” Valadao said at the time. The decision ignited a firestorm among Republicans in his Central Valley district.“It was ugly, man. I mean, it was really, really, really ugly,” said James Henderson, a former GOP party chair in Tulare, one of the three counties that make up Valadao’s district. Donors threatened to withhold their funds, but Henderson said arguments that Valadao was uniquely able to hold the vulnerable seat, and crucial to representing the county’s agriculture interests, prevailed.“The alternative is, if you lose this seat, you lose this seat forever,” Henderson said. It was nonetheless close: styling himself as a Trump-aligned conservative, Chris Mathys, a former city councilman in the Central Valley city of Fresno, challenged Valadao in the primary, and came within 1,220 votes of beating him.Mathys was assisted by the House Majority Pac, which was linked to the then Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi and spent $127,000 on television advertisements boosting his candidacy and attacking Valadao, according to the analytic firm AdImpact.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt was one of many instances across the country in which Democratic groups channeled dollars to rightwing Republicans in their primaries, betting that they would be easier to defeat in the general election. Valadao would go on to triumph over state assemblyman Salas, and make an unlikely return to the House.Valadao’s re-election fight is shaping up to be a repeat of what he faced the year prior. Mathys is running again, and has once more put Valadao’s vote against the former president at the center of his campaign. Trump is the current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, and California Republicans will vote in primaries for both races on the same ballot.“The big issue, clearly, is the impeachment issue. It looms very large. People remember like it was yesterday,” Mathys told the Guardian in an interview. “With President Trump being on the ballot, it’s going to even resonate stronger, because he’ll be on the same ballot that we’re on.”CJ Warnke, the communications director for the House Majority Pac, said the committee would “do whatever it takes” to defeat Valadao and Mathys, but did not say whether that would include another round of television advertisements supporting the latter.Salas is also challenging Valadao again, and another Democrat, the state senator Melissa Hurtado, is in the primary. Salas believes that next year will be when Valadao falls, due to the presidential election driving up turnout in the majority Latino district.“The fight is making sure that people actually get out to the polls, vote, or that they turn in their vote-by-mail ballots,” Salas said in an interview. “That’s what we fell victim to last year and something that we’re hoping to get correct going into 2024.”Then there is the ongoing mess in the House, which could have direct effects on Valadao. He’s referred to Kevin McCarthy, who represents a neighboring district, as a “friend”, and opposed removing him as speaker. Valadao three times voted to elect the Republican Jim Jordan as his replacement, unsuccessfully, but also supports giving the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, the job’s full powers.Jordan is a rightwing firebrand, and an advocate of Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Wasserman said Valadao’s support for him could undercut the reputation he has built for himself as an “independent-minded farmer”, while the downfall of his ally McCarthy may affect Valadao’s ability to benefit from his fundraising.Delano has a reputation as a pivotal community in Valadao’s district, and winning over its voters may come down to money and messaging.A member of the UFW, Ortiz has for several years campaigned for Salas in the spare time she has when she’s not picking grapes for minimum wage. She knocks on doors in Delano’s sprawling neighborhoods, believing Salas is the kind of politician who can bring solutions for undocumented people like herself: she has not seen her father in Mexico since leaving the country 18 years ago, and her oldest son is also undocumented but, for now, protected from deportation by the legally shaky Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy.Among the voters who open their doors for her, disillusionment is high, and there’s one phrase Ortiz hears repeatedly: “I don’t even vote because after, they do not help you.”Meanwhile, as an independent, Navarro, the barber, said he would probably vote for Trump next year, as he had in the past, citing his hope the former president would bring, among other things, lower gas prices.“I think we were a little bit more peaceful with him,” Navarro said. But he’s not sure whom to support for Congress, and would probably go for whichever candidate he hears from the most: “We’re meant to vote for whoever has more to offer.” More

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      Trump is ‘single most dangerous threat’ to the US, warns Republican Liz Cheney

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      Donald Trump is “the single most dangerous threat” the US faces as he seeks a return to the Oval Office, according to Liz Cheney, the moderate Republican whose opposition to her party leader’s presidency had cost her a congressional seat she held for six years.“He cannot be the next president because if he is, all of the things that he attempted to do but was stopped from doing by responsible people … he will do,” Cheney – the daughter of former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney – said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “There will be no guardrails. And everyone has been left warned.”Cheney’s fiery remarks come as the former president fights more than 90 criminal charges for subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, retention of government secrets after his presidency, and hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels. He is also grappling with civil lawsuits over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Though his popularity with the general public is low, he maintains substantial polling leads in the race to clinch the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.If Cheney’s remarks on Sunday are any indication, it is an advantage she can hardly fathom after serving as the vice-chair of the US House committee which investigated the deadly Capitol attack staged by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Cheney and her colleagues recommended that the justice department file criminal charges against Trump in connection with the Capitol uprising before the four indictments obtained against him since March.“After January 6 … there can be no question that he will unravel the institutions of our democracy,” Cheney said, alluding to Trump supporters’ desperate but unsuccessful attack to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 race. “So we are facing a moment in American politics where we have to set aside partisanship, and we have to make sure that people who believe in the constitution are willing to come together to prevent him from ever again setting foot anywhere near the Oval Office.”The House Capitol attack committee’s recommendation was one of Cheney’s last congressional acts before she left office in January. She lost her bid to be re-elected to a Wyoming’s sole House seat she had held since 2017 after Trump successfully supported Harriet Hageman’s run against her in a Republican primary.Hageman subsequently won a runoff election and succeeded Cheney as their district’s House representative.Additionally, Cheney on Sunday suggested to both State of the Union and CBS’s Face the Nation that she was mulling joining the crowded field of presidential hopefuls signing up to challenge Biden in 2024.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe also remarked to Face the Nation that it should not be shocking for anyone to see Republicans struggle to appoint a replacement for Kevin McCarthy after far-right members of his party engineered his unprecedented removal as House speaker on 3 October.After all, McCarthy and the first two House Republicans who unsuccessfully launched bids to succeed him – Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan – all objected to certifying Trump’s 2020 defeat.“So it’s not a surprise that we are where we are,” Cheney said. “But it’s a disgrace, and it’s an embarrassment.” More

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      Who are the Republican candidates for House of Representatives speaker?

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      After more than two weeks of failing to choose a speaker, Republicans in the US House plan to reconvene on Monday to begin the process of nominating a third candidate to try to get the 217 votes needed to secure the speakership.So far, Steve Scalise, the No 2 Republican in the House, and Jim Jordan, the far-right congressman, have both failed in their bids.Here’s a look at the nine candidates who signed up to run ahead of a noon deadline Sunday.Tom EmmerEmmer was first elected to the House in 2014 and forms part of the chamber’s leadership. He is the majority whip and responsible for counting and marshaling votes on key issues. He narrowly won that job in 2022 in a closely contested race. Kevin McCarthy, who was removed as speaker on 3 October, has endorsed Emmer’s bid for the post.He previously served as the chairman of the House Republicans’ campaign arm – the National Republican Congressional Committee – in 2020 and 2022. He helped Republicans win back control of the House in 2022 but won fewer seats than was expected.Emmer also reportedly advised candidates on the campaign trail that year to avoid talking about Trump, according to CNN. Emmer has denied he offered such advice.Donald Trump and his allies are already reportedly marshaling support against Emmer, whom the ex-president has said has not defended him strongly enough. Unlike Scalise and Jordan, Emmer voted to certify the 2020 election, though he signed an amicus brief urging the supreme court to throw out electoral votes from key swing states. He was also one of 39 Republicans who voted to codify federal protections for same-sex marriage.Emmer previously served in the Minnesota legislature for six years and lost the 2010 governor’s race by a razor-thin 9,000 votes.Mike JohnsonThe Louisiana congressman was elected in 2016 and has twice been chosen by his colleagues to serve as vice-chairman of the Republican conference, a leadership position.Johnson helped organize efforts to object to the 2020 election results, getting his House colleagues to sign on to an amicus brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out electoral votes from key swing states. The New York Times described him as “the most important architect” of the legal strategy to get members of Congress to object to the electoral college vote. Specifically, Johnson pushed the idea that changes to election rules during the pandemic gave Congress the right to second-guess the election results, the Times reported.A former lawyer for the powerful and anti-LGBTQ+ group Alliance Defending Freedom, Johnson is a close ally of Jordan.Kevin HernHern, an Oklahoma congressman, is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a powerful caucus including most GOP members in the House which helps devise conservative policies. Well-known Republicans, including former vice-president Mike Pence, Scalise and Jordan have led the group.He had no political experience before getting elected to Congress in 2018. Previously, he was an aerospace engineer and owned several McDonald’s franchises in Oklahoma. He voted against certifying the 2020 election and signed on to a supreme court brief urging the justices to throw out votes from key swing states.Byron DonaldsA second-term congressman from Florida, Donalds earned 20 votes for speaker across a few of the 15 rounds of voting earlier this year that ultimately resulted in McCarthy winning the speakership.In September, Donalds drew scrutiny when he displayed a purported screenshot at a hearing as part of Republican efforts to impeach Joe Biden that was lacking important context. The image Donalds displayed appeared to be a screenshot of a text message exchange between Hunter and the president’s brother, James Biden. But the content had been edited to omit key passages.He previously served in Florida’s legislature and has picked up support in his speakership bid from other members of the state’s delegation. If chosen by his colleagues, he would be the House’s first ever Black speaker.Austin ScottScott represents Georgia’s eighth congressional district, which stretches from the Florida border to the center of the state. He was first elected in 2010.Scott launched a last-minute bid to challenge Jordan for the House speakership earlier this month but lost. “I care more about the conference and that it’s doing our job than I care about who the speaker is. I truly do,” he said when he launched his previous effort. “If we as Republicans are gonna be the majority, we have to do the right things the right way. And we’re not doing that right now,” he said.Scott signed an amicus brief urging the US supreme court to throw out electoral votes from key swing states but ultimately voted to certify the 2020 election.Jack BergmanBergman, who represents Michigan’s first congressional district, has said he would only serve as speaker until the end of the current congress. “I have no special interests to serve; I’m only in this to do what’s best for our nation and to steady the ship for the 118th Congress,” he said in a statement announcing his candidacy. He voted against certifying the last election and signed on to an amicus brief urging the US supreme court to throw out valid electoral votes.Pete SessionsSessions, a Texas congressman, is the longest-tenured member in the speaker’s race. He served in Congress from 1997 until 2019 and then returned in 2021. He has been the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and the powerful House rules committee.Gary PalmerPalmer has represented Alabama’s 6th congressional district since 2015 and joined the race for speaker shortly before Sunday’s deadline. He is the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, a House leadership position. He was the founding member of the board of directors of the State Policy Network, a group of rightwing thinktanks backed by the Koch brothers and other influential conservatives.He voted to overturn the 2020 election and signed on to an amicus brief asking the supreme court to throw out electoral votes from key swing states.Dan MeuserMeuser is a third-term congressman from Pennsylvania who previously backed Jordan but said he would enter the race if Jordan couldn’t muster enough votes. “I’m considering it because I’m not gonna let this kindergarten continue. I’ll do it,” he told the National Review Online last week after Jordan’s first failed vote.He voted against certifying the 2020 election and signed on to an amicus brief urging the supreme court to throw out valid electoral votes. More

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      Trump fake elector scheme: where do seven states’ investigations stand?

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      As Donald Trump faces criminal charges in multiple cases across the country, several states are still investigating a scheme created by Trump allies and boosted by Trump himself to cast fake electoral votes for the Republican candidate for the 2020 election.As part of the US electoral college system, states cast a set number of votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state, the winner of which then takes the presidency. Seven states that the former president lost saw slates of fake GOP electors falsely claim Trump had won their electoral votes. These fake electors included high-profile Republicans, such as sitting officeholders and state party leaders.Two prosecutors, in Michigan and Georgia, have already filed charges against fake electors. Others have confirmed investigations but provided few details. One state prosecutor said local laws did not address this kind of crime, which is unprecedented.Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump campaign legal adviser and the supposed mastermind of the fake electors scheme, pleaded guilty in Georgia over his role in subverting the election. Chesebro allegedly created the plan in a secret memo based on Wisconsin’s electoral vote.At the federal level, the special counsel Jack Smith and his team brought charges against Trump and his allies over their attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, which include the fake elector scheme. Several states have confirmed they are cooperating with Smith’s investigation, and news reports have indicated Smith offered limited immunity to some fake electors for their testimony.Since the scheme had no precedent, some states and experts have struggled to figure out which laws may have been broken, and whether the charges should be state or federal. In some states, the fake electors also face civil lawsuits. Here’s where they stand.ArizonaThe former Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, a Republican, never publicly confirmed any investigation into the state’s fake electors, which included high-profile far-right figures such as the state senator Jake Hoffman and the former Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward. The state actually saw two separate sets of fake electors.His successor, the Democrat Kris Mayes, told the Guardian earlier this year that her office is investigating the fake electors, but has not provided any details of the investigation so far. On a recent Arizona Republic podcast episode, Mayes said she could not say much about the contours of the investigation, but that her office was taking it “very seriously” and that it was a “very important investigation”.While the cases in Michigan and Georgia are much further along, she noted that their prosecutors have been in place much longer than she has. Mayes took office in January 2023.GeorgiaThree fake electors in Georgia were charged as part of a broader case against Trump and his allies over election subversion attempts.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, brought charges against the former Georgia Republican party chairman David Shafer, the state senator Shawn Still and the activist Cathy Latham, three of the 16 fake electors from that state. They face various charges, including forgery, impersonating a public officer and attempting to file false documents.Several of the others who signed on as false electors for Trump struck immunity deals or plea agreements with prosecutors.The three fake electors charged have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys argued in September that they were not fake electors, but instead “contingent” electors who could be used should the courts overturn Biden’s win, the Associated Press reported. The three are trying to get their case moved from state court in Georgia to a federal court, arguing they were acting as federal officers who were keeping an avenue open for Trump depending on what happened in the courts.Sidney Powell, who was charged in the broader case, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. The unexpected move netted Powell six years of probation and some fines and marks a major shift in the Georgia case for Trump and his allies. Chesebro, on the day jury selection for his trial was set to begin, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents and probably will serve five years’ probation.MichiganThe Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel charged 16 Michiganders who participated as fake electors with eight felonies each, including multiple forgery charges, for their roles in the scheme. Those charged include party activists, candidates for office and state and local party officials.Attempts by two defendants to get the charges dismissed because of Nessel’s comments about how the electors were “brainwashed” were unsuccessful. The 16 people charged pleaded not guilty, and probable cause hearings are set for this month.This week, one of Michigan’s fake electors saw his charges dropped as part of a deal with the state’s attorney general. James Renner, a Republican who falsely signed that Trump had won, agreed to “full cooperation, truthful testimony and production of any and all relevant documents” in exchange for the dropped charges, filings from the attorney general’s office, obtained by NBC News, show. This includes information about how he was asked to become part of the fake slate and the circumstances of meetings among those involved in the scheme.NevadaNevada’s top prosecutor has said his office would not bring charges against the six people who signed on as fake electors there in 2020. The state’s Democratic attorney general, Aaron Ford, said current state laws did not address this kind of situation, “to the dismay of some, and I’m sure, to the delight of others”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic state senator Skip Daly attempted to solve that problem, and the state legislature passed a bill that would have made it a felony for people to serve as false electors, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Ford had endorsed the bill.But the Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, vetoed the bill, saying the penalties were too harsh, though he said he believed those who undermine elections should face “strict punishments”.New MexicoThe former New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas started an investigation into the five Republicans who signed as false electors there, then referred the matter to federal prosecutors, according to Source New Mexico.The office of the current attorney general, Raúl Torrez, confirmed there was an active state investigation into the fake electors to see if they violated state law, but details about the case have been scant. Torrez’s office said it would work with Jack Smith to get any evidence related to a state inquiry, according to KOAT Action News.Like Pennsylvania, the fake electors in New Mexico included a caveat in their documents that could help them, should charges be filed. They wrote that they signed the documents “on the understanding that it might be later determined that we are the duly elected and qualified electors”.PennsylvaniaThe 20 fake electors in Pennsylvania are unlikely to face any criminal charges because of how they worded the documents they signed. The documents say the false electoral votes would only be considered valid if the courts deemed the slate to be the “duly elected and qualified electors” for Pennsylvania.Governor Josh Shapiro, then the state’s Democratic attorney general, said the hedged language would spare the false electors from a criminal investigation by his office. His successor as attorney general, Michelle Henry, told Votebeat that the office’s position remained that charges were not warranted.“Though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery,” Shapiro said in 2022.WisconsinThe Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, has not said whether his office is investigating the state’s 10 fake electors for potential state law violations, though a civil lawsuit against the alternate slate is moving forward. Kaul has said he supports the federal investigation and that he expects to see “further developments” in that case.Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, said in August he wanted to see the Wisconsin fake electors “held accountable” via prosecution.“What those ten fake electors did was wrong,” Evers wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “People have to be held accountable for that, and I hope to hell somebody does.”Federal prosecutors, in the Trump indictment, said the fake electors scheme started in Wisconsin with the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who suggested electors meet there to sign on to a slate in case Trump’s team won in the courts. More

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      Republican victory in Louisiana signals hard-right turn for once bipartisan state

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      When Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, won the open gubernatorial primary on 14 October, it not only ended eight years of relatively productive bipartisan control of the state’s government: it marked a hard-right shift in Louisiana’s politics that could set back environmental policy and human and civil rights for decades to come.Landry’s outright victory in the jungle primary – a system unique to Louisiana, in which all voters, regardless of party, vote on all candidates at the local, state and federal levels – shocked voters and pundits in the state alike. Landry was long favored to triumph, but it was expected he would be forced into a runoff. Ultimately, the state’s Democratic party offered no meaningful resistance to Landry’s campaign, and he cruised to a win, capturing more than 50% of the votes cast in a low-turnout race.The morning after the election, Robert Mann, a political science professor at Louisiana State University and a frequent critic of Landry, announced he would be leaving his position. He said he had no confidence the school’s administration would protect him from the changing political headwinds.To outsiders, Mann’s reaction may seem dramatic. Louisianans understood fully: in 2021, Landry used his office to try to pressure LSU into dismissing the professor over his argument that the university needed to require students to test regularly for Covid-19.The incident wasn’t isolated. In February 2021, Landry filed a lawsuit against the Times-Picayune reporter Andrea Gallo over her investigation into sexual misconduct charges against one of his closest aides. Landry ultimately lost his meritless case.As Gallo noted, winning wasn’t necessarily the point.“I think that it sends a very clear message to reporters, and to the public of Louisiana, that if you request documents from the attorney general’s office you better watch out, because you might be subjected to a lawsuit,” Gallo told the US Press Freedom Tracker, a website that documents attacks on media in the United States.In 2022, Landry had a simple message for women in Louisiana who opposed the abortion ban that took effect when the US supreme court eliminated the rights Roe v Wade had once established.“If you don’t like the laws in the state, you can move,” Landry said.Of course, most people in Louisiana – where the median income is just over $27,000 a year – can’t just pick up and leave. Which means they’re all but stuck with Landry as governor for at least four years come January.In his election’s immediate aftermath, Landry moved to shore up his control of an already conservative legislature. Within three days, the state senator Cameron Henry, a hardline conservative and Landry ally, had cleared the field to become his chamber’s next president.While Republicans have controlled both chambers throughout the eight years the outgoing Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, has spent in office, the senate’s leadership in particular has been generally less hardline than either rank-and-file members or Landry.Critically, they have worked with both Edwards and Democratic lawmakers on a host of issues.Landry, of course, is having none of that. As the Times-Picayune also noted when writing about Henry’s ascension, Landry has made it clear in private conversations he wants people loyal to him in key leadership roles.That means he is unlikely to face resistance to many of his policies. For women, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community and others in the hard right’s crosshairs, that’s an ominous possibility.Landry opposes any form of minimum wage and is generally hostile to so-called “welfare net” programs designed to help lower-income and working-class people. He backed a plan to make public juvenile court records public – but only in the state’s predominantly Black parishes.Although that bill died in the senate, it faces a significantly brighter future next year with Landry in the governor’s office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIndeed, Edwards and his veto pen were able to either stall or beat back entirely a host of measures that could re-materialize.Those include a “don’t say gay” bill banning classroom discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity, anti-drag measures, additional restrictions on access to healthcare for trans people, further criminalization of abortion and contraceptives, and deeper erosion of the state’s barely existent gun control measures.Even the state house member Ray Garofalo’s widely ridiculed bill requiring schools to teach the nonexistent “good” side of slavery could be resurrected.Environmental protections will also be on the chopping block. Landry memorably heckled Barack Obama during the former president’s 2011 State of the Union address, holding up a sign that said “drilling = jobs”. With the petroleum industry still one of Louisiana’s single most powerful forces, areas like Cancer Alley – a stretch along the Mississippi River overrun by refineries and pollution – will probably be especially hard-hit as Republicans roll back the state’s modest pollution controls.“On social welfare issues, we’ll be Florida on steroids,” said JP Morrell, the New Orleans city council president and a former state legislator. Though a Democrat, Morrell’s stint as a state lawmaker saw him successfully move some legislation – and blunt some of his conservative counterparts’ worst bills – in part because he was able to establish working relationships with key Republicans.Morrell contends that will be an even more important skill for Democrats now that Landry is governor and Republicans have a stranglehold on both chambers.But with a supermajority in hand, Republicans won’t necessarily need Democrats. For instance, one area Democrats and Republicans have worked together on during Edwards’s governorship has been the annual spending bills. Edwards’ Republican predecessor, Bobby Jindal, left the state government’s books in shambles thanks to his relentless effort to slash spending on education and social services.Edwards, by contrast, will leave office with a $330m surplus.While memories of Jindal’s disastrous tenure are still fresh in Louisiana’s collective conscience, Landry and most Republican state legislators are budget hawks. In fact, Republicans are already discussing significant changes to the tax code that would reduce what wealthy people and corporations pay – even as they are contemplating a new round of cuts to education and other safety net programs.“It will be like the Jindal years, but worse” if Republicans decide to go that route, Morrell said.That means Democrats, who represent large urban areas like New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport, will be spending whatever political capital they have accumulated simply protecting their communities.Invoking his city’s status as the most culturally relevant on the global stage, Morrell said: “For better or for worse, you have to protect New Orleans from the worst of it. You’re not going to save the rest of the state.” More

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      Speaker fiasco lays bare ungovernable dysfunction of House Republicans

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      Death threats. Screaming matches behind closed doors. A futile cycle of votes that put internecine warfare on full public display. The Republican party this week sank into new depths of disarray and dysfunction – with no remedy in sight.Never before has America gone so long without a speaker of the House of Representatives and, critics say, not for a very long time has a major party appeared so broken. It has left a branch of the US government leaderless at an extraordinary moment of peril in the Middle East and Ukraine.“When you look at the damage to the party’s image, its reputation, its ability to do anything substantive or serious, this is a week of unmitigated disaster for the Republican party,” said Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy and anti-Trump group.The latest setback came on Friday when Jim Jordan, a rightwing Ohio congressman endorsed by former president Donald Trump, lost a third vote to become speaker and was then unceremoniously dumped by Republicans as their nominee. The majority leader, Steve Scalise, said they were going to “come back and start over” on Monday.This followed a week of turmoil remarkable even by the fractious standards of the Trump era, with ideological disagreements merging with personal vendettas in a combustible mix. After Kevin McCarthy was ousted on 3 October and Scalise failed to garner enough backing, Jordan, a bare knuckle rightwinger and election denier, had made an unlikely effort to unite the party.In the first floor vote on Tuesday, the House Republican conference chair, Elise Stefanik, formally nominated Jordan and aimed high by quoting the Bible (Esther 4:14) to claim that Jordan would be America’s speaker “for such a time as this”. But 20 Republicans holdouts denied him the gavel.A day later, Jordan tried again but this time 22 Republicans opposed him. There was a sense of absurdity as some called out alternative names such as John Boehner, a former speaker who quit eight years ago.Meanwhile it emerged that Jordan’s allies in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement had deployed a hardball pressure campaign. Every member who voted against him said they had received a barrage of angry phone calls and messages.Congressman Don Bacon said he received death threats and his wife slept with a loaded gun near her bedside one night. Others said their families had been threatened – indicative of dangerously violent undercurrents in American politics that Trump’s recent rhetoric has only encouraged.But the intimidation tactics had the opposite effect of that intended by hardening the resolve of the holdouts. Congressman Drew Ferguson said the death threats against his family were “unacceptable, unforgivable and will never be tolerated”. Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks added: “One thing I cannot stomach or support is a bully.”On Thursday, tragedy turned to farce. Jordan agreed to suspend his campaign in favor of a resolution that would temporarily expand the powers of the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, to get the House moving again. But that went down like a lead balloon at a closed-door meeting of Republicans where tempers flared.McCarthy yelled at Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman behind his ousting, when Gaetz tried to seize a microphone. The former speaker explained to reporters later: “I told him to sit down, and he sat down. I think the entire conference screamed at him. Listen, the whole country, I think, would scream at Matt Gaetz right now.”After the meeting, Jordan announced that the McHenry plan would be scrapped and that he would fight on after all. “I’m still running for speaker,” he declared. “I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race.” But on Friday the opposition grew to 25 Republicans, an election result that not even Jordan could deny.Soon after he lost the party nomination in a secret ballot, putting Republicans back to square one. Critics saw it as the awful spectacle of a party – held together by the glue of grievance, “owning the libs” and a cult of personality – coming apart at the seams.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “We are seeing the inevitable outcome of years of neglect, years of lack of leadership, years of lack of courage culminate with what is a completely ungovernable and dysfunctional Republican party. The fact that there isn’t a single Republican right now who can get 217 votes is illustrative of deep schisms within the party and these deep wounds that there is no healing from.”Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “Time and again the bad actors in the Republican party have been rewarded for their bad behavior. They get rewarded with television time. They get rewarded with raising millions of dollars in contributions.“They get rewarded with plum committee assignments. Whether it’s Jordan or a Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who time and again we’re told represent the fringe of the party, they continue to be elevated and empowered by the leadership that’s in charge.”Now ending its third week without a leader, the House cannot act on a $106bn national security package unveiled by Joe Biden on Friday that would bolster US border security and send aid to Israel and Ukraine. Congress also faces a 17 November deadline to pass funding to keep the government open.Jeffries has said Democrats are “ready, willing and able” to partner with centrist Republicans on a path to reopen the House. In the meantime the chaos should, in theory, present a campaign gift to Democrats in next year’s elections, contrasting Biden’s steady wartime leadership with a party at war with itself.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “It’s a slow drip. People are still going to work and living their lives so they’re not worried about it. But independent voters who have been uncomfortable with the very right wing of the Republican party, whether it’s Trump or anybody else, will get more uncomfortable because this is threatening the stability of the federal government to function at all.“It’s one thing to be chaotic if you’re Trump – but it’s another to not be able to pass any legislation at all.” More

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      ‘People are sick and tired’: the man challenging far-right extremist Lauren Boebert

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      Adam Frisch is in his second congressional campaign, crossing and re-crossing Colorado’s third US House district, a space bigger than Pennsylvania. Thirteen months out from election day, time is one thing he does not lack. But Frisch has a unique way of counting it anyway: before and after Beetlejuice.“Before Beetlejuice,” the Democrat says, of polling in his Republican-leaning district, “we were up by two points, Trump was up five.”After Beetlejuice, the thinking goes, Frisch’s position may well improve further.Frisch, 56 and a former banker who now lives in Aspen, is the Democratic candidate to challenge Lauren Boebert next year. Boebert, a former restaurant owner and proud grandmother at 36, is the far-right Republican who won the seat in 2020 and has proven relentlessly controversial since – so much so that last year, even in a conservative district, she survived Frisch’s first challenge by the skin of her teeth.Boebert won after a recount, by just 546 votes, then went back to Washington DC to stoke the usual fires.But last month a bigger blaze flared up, when the congresswoman was shown to have behaved outrageously during a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver.On security footage, Boebert sang and danced, took selfies, vaped and even appeared to grope her date as he fondled her in return. Both were ejected. For once, Boebert voiced something close to contrition. But to Frisch, the episode was just further proof that Boebert is there to be beaten.“We’re resonating with a lot of people,” he said, by phone, during another day of meeting and greeting.“In February of 22, when I first launched, there were two themes I started to work on. The Republicans laughed at me, the Democrats laughed at me, the media and the donor class laughed. But the themes are the people want the circus to stop, and they want someone to focus on the district.“And every day since then, [Boebert] has just been one of the national leaders of the circus. And obviously, it’s just gotten worse and worse … it’s just a mess and people are sick and tired.”Boebert is not the only member of Congress Frisch identifies as a purveyor of what the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips – a high-school friend of Frisch – calls “angertainment”: lucrative playing of the partisan angles in Congress, on social media and on network TV.“When I looked at the data a couple of years ago,” Frisch says, “I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs are all kind of a part of that Republican chaos crowd, and I would put [Ilhan] Omar and [Rashida] Tlaib [leftwing Democrats from Minnesota and Michigan] on the other side.“They all have safe seats. A billion dollars against them is not going to change the outcome. But I noticed that in 2020, Boebert only won by five points … and so we realised that of all these ‘brand name’ representatives, Lauren Boebert is probably the only person that has any chance and a good chance now of losing.“I thought, ‘This could turn into a big deal.’ And obviously, it’s turned into a big deal.”Frisch has attracted national attention. But the same pre-Beetlejuice poll that put him up 50-48 also said 40% of district voters felt they did not “know” him.Therefore, while Boebert plays to the cameras in Washington – Frisch hits her for having a “mini television studio in her office, where there are supposed to be benches for constituents to sit before they actually have a chance to talk to the congresswoman” – her opponent continues to tour the battleground.“The issues that we face here are a lot more in common with rural Florida, rural Pennsylvania, than with Denver and Boulder and Colorado Springs,” he says. “And I’m just very focused on how small-town America and rural America and working-class America, especially like in Pueblo, which is a very blue-collar working-class town in the district, how that whole group has kind of been left behind. And I know it’s pretty easy to call it a rural-urban divide, but it’s there. I feel it.“I went in to this race eyes wide open. But the one true surprise was, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of political views, left, right or center, everyone in CD3 is frustrated with kind of the urban-centric conversation that is happening at the state level and a little bit at the national level … there is this resentment about how urban-centric the Democratic party has become.”Colorado district three tilts conservative but Frisch sees a “very libertarian” conservatism which he, an aspirant “Blue Dog” or “Problem Solvers” moderate in Congress, can work with.“It’s more of a ‘you be you’ party. They don’t want to really get involved with who you want to love, who you want to marry. They don’t want to get involved in who should be in a hospital room talking about reproductive rights, abortion. You know, ranchers and farmers are incredibly pragmatic. I’ve yet to meet a rancher or a farmer that’s un-pragmatic, because they won’t be in business for longer than eight days if they are.”Boebert has been called many things but pragmatic is rarely one. Frisch attributes her previous wins to opportunism and a libertarianism increasingly not enough for voters turned off by her antics. He also hopes his second attempt to eject Boebert from Congress will capture national attention not just for the drama it might provide.“I want to spend a lot more time trying to figure out how a lot more districts can have competitive races,” Frisch says, “because monopolies are bad in business and they’re bad in politics. I think 85% or 80% of the districts, they’re basically cooked in the primary. And to me, our primary system is ground zero for the dysfunctionality, the yelling and the screaming that’s going on around our country.” More

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      Jim Jordan says he’s ‘going back to work’ after losing secret ballot for House speaker candidacy – US politics live

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      Jim Jordan lost a secret ballot held by House Republicans which removes him as speaker designate, said the Republican Florida representative Kat Cammack.Steve Scalise of Louisiana said that Republicans will start over on Monday.Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports that the vote margin was large, according to sources familiar with the vote.The Supreme Court on Friday kept a Missouri law on hold that bars police from enforcing federal gun laws, rejecting an emergency appeal from the state.The Associated Press reports:The 2019 law was ruled unconstitutional by a district judge but allowed to remain in effect. A federal appeals court then blocked enforcement while the state appeals the district court ruling.Missouri had wanted the law to be in effect while the court fight plays out.Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the court to side with Missouri on Friday.The law would impose a fine of $50,000 on an officer who knowingly enforces federal gun laws that don’t match up with state restrictions.Federal laws without similar Missouri laws include registration and tracking requirements and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.The court expanded gun rights in a 2022 decision authored by Thomas. It is hearing arguments next month in the first case stemming from last year’s ruling. An appeals court invalidated a federal law that aims to keep guns away from people facing domestic violence restraining orders.Long-shot Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson has announced his decision to suspend his presidential campaign.On Friday, the Michigan businessman released a statement, saying, “With no oppurtunity to share my vision on the debate stage, I have decided at this time, suspending my campaign is the right thing to do.”Johnson criticized the Republican National Committee and its “corrupt leaders” with “authoritarian powers.”“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the people should decide the next president of the United States, not the head of the RNC and her cronies,” he added.Johnson said that he is only suspending his campaign, rather than withdrawing entirely and plans to keep a small political team on staff “in the event the dynamics of the race change.”Tennessee’s Republican representative Mark Green is not runnning for speaker, Green’s office told Punchbowl News.With Jim Jordan out of the speaker race, here is an explainer by the Guardian’s Sam Levine on why he lost and what happens next:Why did Republicans oppose Jordan?Several of the members who are opposed to Jordan are members of the House appropriations committee, who are reportedly opposed to the way Jordan has embraced a hard line on spending cuts and shutting down the government.There is also reportedly bad blood over the way Jordan and his allies treated Steve Scalise. Scalise previously beat Jordan to win the conference’s nomination to be speaker, but withdrew his bid after it became clear he couldn’t get enough votes to win in the House. Some Scalise allies think Jordan didn’t do enough to rally Republicans around Scalise.What happens next?No one knows. Even as it was clear that Jordan had no clear path to becoming the speaker, no Republican emerged to seriously challenge him. Republicans currently have a Sunday noon deadline to announce their candidacy ahead of another round of speakership talks.For the full explainer, click here:Mike Pence has called on House Republicans to “decide what team you want to be on” as Republicans revert back to square one following their inability to decide on a speaker.Speaking on SiriusXM, the presidential candidate said:
      “Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined eight Republicans partnering with every Democrat in Congress to throw out a Republican speaker of the House. All roads lead back to the eight members of what I call the chaos caucus who set all this into motion.”
      “With everything that’s happening in the world … the American people are looking to Republicans in the Congress to stop fighting with each other and start fighting for them.”
      House Republicans have set Sunday 12pm as the deadline to file as a speaker candidate.A candidate forum for the speaker will be held on Monday at 6.30pm and a secret ballot leadership election will be held on Tuesday at 9am.It remains unclear when a floor vote for speaker will be.Texas’s Republican representative Chip Roy said that it was a “mistake for the Republican conference to just walk away from arguably the most popular Republican in the Republican party.”Speaking to CNN’s Manu Raju, Roy said, “We shouldn’t have done that,” adding, “I think having the American people be able to see how we are wrestling with the tough decisions and what we’re trying to do, and doing it with intensity and doing it because we care about this country.”Former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is throwing his weight behind GOP whip Tom Emmer’s bid to replace him, Punchbowl News reports:It’s a boost for Emmer, but not necessarily a decisive one. McCarthy also supported Jim Jordan, and look how that turned out. Meanwhile, Punchbowl reports that Emmer is among a fairly sizable group of Republicans running for the House speaker post, or considering it:They’ll be having a busy weekend.The judge overseeing Donald Trump and his family members’ civil fraud trial in New York City fined the former president $5,000 for a post he determined violated a gag order, but did not order him to jail – yet.Here’s more on that, from the Associated Press:
      Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt, for now, but reserved the right to do so – and possibly even put him in jail – if he continued to violate a gag order barring parties in the case from personal attacks on court staff.
      Engoron said in a written ruling that he is “way beyond the ‘warning’ stage” but decided on a nominal fine because Trump’s lawyers said the website’s retention of the post was inadvertent and was a “first-time violation”.
      Earlier, an incensed Engoron said the failure to delete the post from the website was a “blatant violation” of his 3 October order, which required Trump to delete the offending message.
      Trump lawyer Christopher Kise blamed the “very large machine” of Trump’s presidential campaign for allowing his deleted social media post to remain on his website, calling it an unintentional oversight.
      Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, wasn’t in court Friday. He’d returned to the trial Tuesday and Wednesday after attending the first three days in early October, but skipped the rest of the week.
      Speaking of people who are running for office, Donald Trump has made it clear he won’t be at the third Republican primary debate in Miami on 8 November.But he will be in the city in his role as spoiler, hosting an open-air rally at the same time that his rivals for the party’s presidential nomination are taking the stage.Trump’s campaign announced Friday that the former president would be appearing at Ted Hendricks stadium in Hialeah, 10 miles from the Adrienne Arsht performing arts center in Miami where the Republican National Committee debate will take place.The former president is the runaway leader for the nomination, despite his worsening legal problems. He skipped the first debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in August, and last month’s second event in Simi Valley, California, although he still emerged as the most-talked-about candidate despite his absence.Trump has called for the RNC to cancel the Miami debate, arguing that he’s so far ahead of his challengers as to make it meaningless, and that a failure to do so would be an admission that “national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden”.Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman who is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, will run for speaker, Punchbowl News reports:Before Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the speaker’s post, the Washington Post reported that conservative hardliners were in favor of nominating him for the chamber’s top job.Jim Jordan started out the day by hinting that the House would have to stick around through the weekend to vote on his candidacy for speaker.Hours later, the GOP stripped him of the party’s nomination in a closed-door meeting. No more weekend votes for them.As CNN reports, the next phase of the speaker’s race will play out starting Monday with a candidates’ forum, but you can bet that Kevin Hern and other Republicans who throw their hat into the ring will spend this weekend campaigning within the party:Republican majority leader Steve Scalise, who was briefly the party’s nominee for speaker before withdrawing when he concluded he would not win majority support, will not run for the post again, Punchbowl News reports:Oklahoma’s Republican representative Kevin Hern has announced he will run for House speaker.Hern, the chair of the Republican study committee (the House’s largest caucus among Republicans), said:
      I just voted for my good friend Jim Jordan to stay as our speaker designate, but the conference has determined that he will no longer hold that title. We just had two speaker designates go down. We must unify and do it fast.
      I’ve spoken to every member of the conference over the last few weeks. We need a different type of leader who has a proven track record of success, which is why I’m running for speaker of the House.
      Following the secret GOP ballot, Jim Jordan said on live TV, “I’m going to go back to work.”In reference to who the next speaker would be, Jordan said, “Let’s work out who that individual is,” and added, “It’s time to unite.”White House spokesperson Andrew Bates has commented on the latest House speaker vote, urging House Republicans to “end their chaotic infighting and their competitions to out-extreme one another.” “While Joe Biden fights to advance bipartisan legislation that will protect our national security interests – including in Israel and Ukraine – provide humanitarian assistance for innocent civilians in Gaza, deliver critical border funding, compete with China, and grow our economy, House Republicans are somehow still fighting with each other,” said Bates.He went on to call upon House Republicans to “join President Biden in working on urgent priorities for American families shared by both parties in Congress.”The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy said that Republicans will now “have to go back to the drawing board”.“I’m concerned where we go from here,” added McCarthy. More