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      ‘Moderate’ or Roe v Wade killer: can Trump have it both ways on abortion?

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      A few months ago, the former president Donald Trump accused the Republican party of speaking “very inarticulately” on abortion. And yet, for the GOP presidential frontrunner, inarticulateness seems to be a feature, not a bug, of his own approach to abortion.Trump thinks he can run in 2024 as a “moderate” on abortion, Rolling Stone reported this week – even though he’s currently running ads in Iowa, a crucial state in the Republican primary, proclaiming himself “the most pro-life president ever”. It’s a title to which Trump has a legitimate claim: his three nominees to the supreme court not only handed the nation’s highest court a definitive conservative majority, but all three voted to overturn Roe v Wade in summer 2022.That move handed the anti-abortion movement the victory of a lifetime, but Republicans have been paying for it ever since. They underperformed in both the 2022 midterms and the 2023 Virginia state elections, losses that have been widely credited to the party’s inability to figure out a path forward on abortion. Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, won every abortion-related ballot measure of the last 18 months, even in red states. After Ohio, seemingly a conservative stronghold, voted to enshrine abortion rights in its state constitution earlier this month, abortion rights activists rushed to remind Democrats that “abortion is a winning issue” in 2024.While Republicans have flailed over how to message on an apparently toxic issue, Trump has – in typical Trump fashion – flip-flopped on it with apparent ease. Shortly after the 2022 midterms, Trump blamed “the abortion issue” for Republicans’ poor performance. He has refused to say whether he supports a federal ban and called the decision by Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, to sign a six-week abortion ban a “terrible thing”.But all the while, Trump continues to take credit for overturning Roe.“I was able to kill Roe v Wade,” he bragged on social media in May.Howard Schweber, a professor of American politics and political theory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that “Trump has what, in my experience of observing politics, seems like a nearly unique ability to maintain cognitive dissonance in ways that his supporters find untroubling.“His supporters will say, ‘Oh, well, he really means that when he says’ – and then finish that sentence with whichever position they approve of. That’s the gamble that he’s taking,” he said.Trump has not said what, if any, specific abortion policy he would support as president. DeSantis has said that he would support a 15-week national abortion ban, a position championed by the powerful anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has said that she would sign an abortion ban as president, but doubts that Republicans could muster the votes in Congress.Iowa has a reputation for conservative evangelicalism, but most Iowans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. By not letting himself get nailed down on a specific abortion policy, Trump might be approaching Iowa as though the presidential primary is already over, said Tim Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa. (Which it very well be: Trump is polling far higher than any of his competitors, who have largely cratered.) In a general election, where voters are more likely to be less dogmatic, it can pay to be vague – particularly on a charged issue like abortion.“Things that you might say a little more forcefully during the nomination process during the primaries, you back off a little bit when it comes time to time for the general election,” Hagle said. “And that’s been a strategy of candidates for decades.”Republicans in Iowa have launched an effort to amend the state constitution and clarify that it does not protect abortion rights. In order for the amendment to show up on the ballot, the Republican-controlled state legislature would have to pass it before handing the measure to voters. That could backfire, increasing turnout among abortion rights supporters who oppose Trump.“But then we’re also talking about turnout in the presidential year, which is high anyway,” Hagle said. “So if you lose turnout in a midterm year, that’s going to make more of a difference than in a presidential year.”Most Americans oppose the overturning of Roe. But that doesn’t mean voters are all that motivated by it: numerous polls since Roe’s overturning have found that Democrats are highly energized by abortion, while Republicans are less so – a reversal of the status quo while Roe was the law of the land.As long as Trump wins the primary, he’s in little danger of losing the conservative evangelicals who oppose abortion rights. While they may want him to be more forceful on the issue, it’s improbable that they would turn to a Democrat in response to Trump’s reticence.“Sometimes the option is to not vote at all, but I can’t imagine that they would want to do that either,” Hagle said. “It does create a little heartburn on the part of the pro-life folks that supported him if all the sudden he’s taking a more moderating position, but he may see that that’s more appropriate given his electoral strategy.”Even people who say that they would like to keep abortion “mostly legal” are not always that invested in doing so. A recent poll from the New York Times – which did not look at Iowa – found that, among voters who want abortion to be “mostly legal”, Biden led by only one point. Those voters are also twice as likely to say they plan to vote based on economic issues, rather than social issues like abortion.Schweber, though, is convinced that there are would-be Trump voters who will defect solely based on their support of abortion.“Women voters – particularly middle-class and upper-class, suburban women voters – do take abortion rights seriously,” he said. In 2016, Schweber said Republican women told him, “It doesn’t matter, they’re never going to overrule Roe.”“That sense of security is obviously gone,” he added. More

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      US House close to vote on Biden impeachment inquiry, speaker says

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      The US House speaker Mike Johnson signaled on Saturday that Republicans are nearing holding a formal vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.“I think it’s something we have to do at this juncture,” Johnson said during a Saturday appearance on Fox and Friends Weekend.Republicans have spent months investigating Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings, hoping to find improprieties they could use as the basis for impeachment. The full House has not yet voted to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry, as some Republicans have publicly expressed doubts about whether there is enough evidence to justify such action.The White House has rebuffed GOP efforts to force it to turn over information in part by citing a 2020 opinion from the justice department’s office of legal counsel citing the need for a full House vote before a House committee could force the production of documents or interviews.“We conclude that the House must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation and to use compulsory process in that investigation before the committee may compel the production of documents or testimony in support of the House’s ‘sole Power of Impeachment’,” the memo says.Johnson, who appeared with the GOP conference chair, Elise Stefanik, expressed confidence that there were enough votes to authorize an inquiry and said it was a “necessary step” to obtain information from the White House.“Elise and I both served on the impeachment defense team of Donald Trump twice when the Democrats used it for brazen, partisan political purposes. We decried that use of it. This is very different. Remember, we are the rule-of-law team. We have to do it very methodically,” he said.The Republican investigation thus far has not resulted in several misleading claims, but nothing substantial. At a September hearing, several of the expert witnesses called by Republicans said they did not believe there was enough evidence to justify impeachment.Hunter Biden has also offered to publicly testify before the committees investigating his business dealings. More

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      ‘To hell with this place’: George Santos sharpens attacks after expulsion

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      George Santos, the disgraced New York Republican who was expelled from the US House on Friday, spent his first hours as a former congressman railing against his former colleagues and saying he would file ethics complaints against four of them on Monday.Santos told reporters after his expulsion he was done with Congress.“Why would I want to stay here? To hell with this place,” he told reporters outside the US Capitol after the vote.By Friday evening, he was tweeting about his colleagues. He wrote on X that he would file an ethics complaint against three fellow Republicans from New York – Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis and Nick LaLota – who had long pushed to oust him from Congress. He offered no proof of wrongdoing against any of the three.He also wrote that he would file a complaint against Representative Rob Menendez, whose father, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, has been criminally charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of Egypt. Santos, again, didn’t offer specific accusations of wrongdoing.Any person can file a complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics, but that does not mean it will result in an investigation.He also urged a Republican in Congress to have the “testicular fortitude” to move to expel Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a fine for setting off a fire alarm in a congressional office building.Santos spent the week leading up to his impeachment vote railing against colleagues, accusing them of having affairs and missing votes because they were hungover.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSantos became just the sixth person to ever be expelled from Congress after a bipartisan 311-114 vote on Friday. His expulsion came shortly after a report from the House ethics committee detailed how he spent campaign funds on luxury goods, cosmetics and an OnlyFans subscription. He also has pleaded not guilty to a 23-count federal indictment related to his use of campaign funds.After being elected to Congress to represent Long Island and Queens last year, Santos quickly earned a reputation as a prolific liar. Among other things, he lied about working on Wall Street, that his mother died during 9/11, and that he was a volleyball star in college. More

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      The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory review: Trump and his evangelical believers

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      With The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, Tim Alberta of the Atlantic, author of a previous blockbuster on Republican politics and, this year, the profile that helped bring down Chris Licht at CNN, delivers another essential read. It is substantive, news-filled and personal.“I have endeavored to honor God with this book,” he writes. The son of an evangelical Presbyterian minister who came to religion from finance, Alberta lays bare his hurt over how the cross has grown ever more synonymous with those who most fervently wave the Stars and Stripes, on the right of the political spectrum.“All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.” Isaiah’s teaching stands nearly forgotten.In his prologue, Alberta takes us back to summer 2019, and his father’s funeral. The Rev Richard Alberta died suddenly, of a heart attack. Regardless, a church elder delivered to Alberta a one-page screed expressing his disapproval of the author for not embracing Donald Trump as God’s anointed. Yes, the same guy who made “Two Corinthians” a punchline. Time, place and decorum were discarded. Alberta’s sins demanded rebuke.“I was part of an evil plot, the man wrote, to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States. My criticisms of President Trump were tantamount to treason – against both God and country – and I should be ashamed of myself.”Alberta passed the letter to his wife.“What the hell is wrong with these people?” she cried.As many congregants would see it, probably nothing. The unidentified elder simply repeated sentiments that had taken root in evangelical America since Trump’s election in 2016. The letter embodied a shift that was decades in the making. Demographics were in flux. Barack Obama had occupied the White House. The spirit of Protestant dissent, which once fueled rebellion against the crown, had given way to declaring Trump a divine emissary, a modern-day Cyrus. Or Caesar.Funny how Obama never held such a place of honor. Then again, he was Black and liberal and his personal beliefs could be discounted. American evangelism had evolved into caffeinated American nationalism, white identity close to the surface.Franklin Graham, the late Billy Graham’s son, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. “The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment,” he said, on Facebook.Another famous scion, the now disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr, admonished his flock to stop electing “nice guys”. Instead, he tweeted, “the US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government”. Resentment and grievance supplanted the message of scripture and “What would Jesus do?”Alberta remembers a preacher in Colorado who conflated a Republican midterms victory with the triumph of Christ. “May this state be turned red with the blood of Jesus, and politically,” Steve Holt prayed, at a revival in spring last year.“Lauren Boebert looked right at home,” Alberta recalls, of the far-right controversialist and congresswoman from the same great state. “Boebert wasn’t bothered by this pastor praying for Jesus’s blood – His precious, sacrificial blood, shed for the salvation of sinners – to win an election, because, well, she wasn’t bothered by much after all.”Months later, Boebert won re-election in a squeaker. Her recent behaviour at a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver – singing, dancing, vaping, groping – simply confirmed what everyone had thought since she arrived on the national scene. She is profoundly unsuitable for power.Alberta grapples with the decline in evangelical affiliation and the growth of evangelical unpopularity. He is mindful of religion’s lack of purchase among younger Americans. Scandal, and the embrace of conservatism and Trump, has extracted a heavy price. “Religious nones” grow stronger at the polls. In 2020, more than one in five voters identified that way. White evangelicals made up 28%.Alberta also delivers a deep dive into events at Liberty University, the Virginia machine built by Jerry Falwell Sr and Jr.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Jerry Jr told me … the school was building a new $35m facility,” Alberta writes. “There would even be a hologram of Falwell Sr preaching.”So much for the biblical injunction against worship of idols and images.“I actually own my father’s name and it happens to be my name too,” Falwell Jr is quoted as saying. By that logic, the sordid circumstances surrounding Falwell Jr’s marriage would be stains on his father’s legacy. “I like to watch”? It doesn’t scream piety or faith.These days, Falwell Jr litigates against the school his father built. Fallen from grace, he wants back in. Among his gripes is that present management is “choosing piety over competence”, Alberta quotes him as saying. “It’s exactly what my dad didn’t want to see happen.”Alberta also captures Trump’s true feelings for the evangelical community, or at least those who sided with Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary. “So-called Christians.” “Real pieces of shit.” Seven years on, it does not seem much has changed.According to recent reports, Trump has privately derided anti-abortion leaders as lacking “leverage” to force his hand while tweaking them for having nowhere else to go after the supreme court struck down Roe v Wade. He has reportedly mocked as “disloyal” and “out of touch” those evangelicals who cast their lot with Ron DeSantis. In Iowa, Trump holds a 30-point lead. DeSantis falls, Nikki Haley nipping at his (lifted?) heels. As November 2024 draws closer, a Trump sell-out of his evangelical supporters looms large.Alberta closes his book with a verse from II Corinthians, the Epistle of Paul Trump couldn’t get right: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
      The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is published in the US by Harper More

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      Federal judge rejects Trump’s attempt to dismiss 2020 election subversion case

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      A federal judge on Friday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, ruling that he enjoyed no immunity from prosecution simply because it was based on actions he took when he was still president.The order by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan simultaneously denied two of Trump’s motions to dismiss – on presidential immunity grounds and constitutional grounds – setting the stage for Trump to appeal to the DC circuit and ultimately the US supreme court.“The court cannot conclude that our constitution cloaks former presidents with absolute immunity for any federal crimes they committed while in office,” Chutkan wrote. “Nothing in the constitution’s text or allocation of government powers requires exempting former presidents.”“Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan’s 48-page opinion added.Trump’s lawyers had always expected to lose their initial attempt to toss the charges, which is scheduled for trial in federal district court in Washington next March, and to use the appeals process as their final strategy to delay the case as long as possible.The former president has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to delay, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.Trump’s lawyers filed their motions to dismiss in October, advancing a sweeping and unprecedented interpretation of executive power that argued former presidents could not be held criminally accountable for actions undertaken while in office.The filing contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment, from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that not only was Trump entitled to absolute presidential immunity, but that the immunity applied regardless of Trump’s intent in engaging in the conduct described in the indictment.The judge emphatically rejected the presidential immunity arguments in the opinion accompanying her order, writing that neither the US constitution nor legal precedent supported such an extraordinary extension of post-presidential power.“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”The judge appeared to take particular umbrage at the Trump lawyers’ claim that it was unconstitutional to charge Trump just because no other former presidents before him had been charged, writing that while his case was unprecedented, so too were the crimes for which he has been charged.“The supreme court has never immunized presidents – much less former presidents – from judicial process merely because it was the first time that process had been necessary,” Chutkan wrote, invoking US history and the pardon conferred to Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandalThe presidential pardon to Nixon was granted and accepted precisely to prevent the possibility of criminal prosecution over Watergate, the opinion said – without which, there would have been no need for a pardon in the first place.The judge noted, however, that she was not expressing an opinion on an adjacent argument Trump had raised about whether his actions related to January 6 could be prosecuted because they fell within the so-called “outer perimeter” of his duties as president.Chutkan’s denial came hours after the DC circuit also rejected Trump’s attempt to use a similar presidential immunity argument to protect himself from several civil lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for inciting the violence that took place during the January 6 Capitol attack.In a statement, a Trump spokesperson attacked the order: “Radical Democrats, under the direction of crooked Joe Biden, continue to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.” More

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      in Elections

      Trump victory in 2024 would mean no trial in Georgia for years, lawyer argues

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      Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia would be delayed until 2029 if he won re-election next year because the US constitution prohibits states from interfering with federal government functions, his lawyer argued at a court hearing on Friday.“I believe that the supremacy clause and his duties as president of the United States – this trial would not take place at all until after his term in office,” the former president’s lawyer Steve Sadow said.The remark came during an hours-long hearing before the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the sprawling conspiracy and racketeering case connected to the efforts taken by Trump and dozens of his top allies to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the state.While that argument – that Trump would be shielded from the criminal case brought by the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis were he to become president once more – has been privately discussed for months, this marked the first time Trump’s lawyer affirmed the position in open court.The remark from Sadow came as the judge grappled with how to schedule a trial date in the case. Fulton county prosecutors had previously asked the judge to set trial for 5 August 2024, positioning it after Trump’s other criminal cases in Washington, New York and Florida.Trump’s current schedule includes: his Washington trial on federal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 election on 4 March, his New York trial on local charges over hush-money payments to an adult film star on 25 March, and his classified documents trial in Florida on 20 May.Fulton county prosecutors’ proposal envisioned going to trial after those cases were complete. But with the New York case and the Florida case are almost certain to be delayed for months, and Trump likely to be the GOP presidential nominee, McAfee put off setting a trial date at the hearing.The judge said an August trial date was “not unrealistic”, though he added he was uncertain that could be determined months in advance.McAfee gave no indication how he might rule on a trial date and tried to navigate its politically and legally sensitive nature by questioning Trump’s lawyer and prosecutors on whether proceeding in the summer, just months before the election, would amount to “election interference”.The arguments were predictable: Trump’s lawyer Sadow argued it would take Trump off the campaign trail during the most crucial time, while prosecutor Nathan Wade contended that Trump was a defendant and it was “moving forward with the business of Fulton county”.The judge then turned to the question of whether Trump’s trial could even continue should he win the election, with prosecutors anticipating the case stretching into 2025. “Could he even be tried in 2025?” McAfee asked.Sadow responded that Trump could not, because the supremacy clause in the constitution meant the state’s interest in prosecuting him would be secondary to the federal government’s interest in him fulfilling his presidential role, although how it would apply in a criminal prosecution remains untested.The situation would apply only to Trump, Sadow conceded – and the judge indicated he would break up the remaining 14 co-defendants so that they would go to trial in several groups. McAfee added that it was still too early to decide how many groups he would create.Trump and the original 18 co-defendants in August pleaded not guilty to the indictment handed up by an Atlanta-area grand jury charging them with reversing his defeat in the state, including by advancing fake Trump electors and breaching voting machines.In the weeks that followed, prosecutors reached plea deals in quick succession with the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro – all of whom gave “proffer” statements that were damaging to Trump, to some degree – as well as the local bail bond officer Scott Hall.The district attorney’s office currently does not intend to offer plea deals to Trump and at least two of his top allies, including his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Guardian reported this week. More

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      George Santos expelled: New York governor to call special election to fill seat – as it happened

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      With George Santos expelled from the House, New York governor Kathy Hochul will have to call a special election within the next 10 days, according to New York law.In a post shortly after his expulsion, Hochul said that she is prepared to “undertake the solemn responsibility of filling the vacancy in New York’s 3rd district.”She went on to add, “The people of Long Island deserve nothing less.”The special election is required to take place between 70 and 80 days later, which means an election day would occur some time next February or March.According to New York’s election law, local party leaders will be required to choose their candidates for the special election. The winner of the election will go on to complete the remainder of Santos’s term.Last month, Santos said that will not be running for re-election. In a fiery press conference on Thursday, he told reporters, “The future is endless… I’m going to do whatever I want. Whatever comes my way, I have the desire to stay very much involved in public policy and advocacy for specific issues.”Following Santos’s expulsion, House Democratic super PAC announced plans to “play a significant role in the NY-03 special election,” CNN’s Manu Raju reports.Its president Mike Smith said that the group “will do whatever it takes to flip this district blue.”Meanwhile, Anna Kaplan, a former Democratic New York state senator, has announced that she is “battle tried and tested” to take on the vacant seat.In a post on X, Kaplan wrote:
      “George Santos has officially been expelled. A special election is now right around the corner. It’s time to restore integrity to New York’s 3rd Congressional District. I am battle tried and tested. I am ready. If chosen as our party’s nominee, I will flip this seat blue. We will win.”
      It is 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      New York’s Republican representative George Santos was expelled from the House in a 311-114 vote. The vote to expel Santos, the second since his election last year, required a two-thirds majority of those present. Santos therefore becomes only the sixth member ever expelled from the US House. The first three fought for the Confederacy in the civil war. The other two were expelled after being convicted of crimes.
      Two Democrats voted against expelling George Santos. Georgia’s representative Nikema Williams and Robert C. Scott voted nays, while Democratic representatives Jonathan Jackson of Illinois and Al Green of Texas voted present.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker, has released the following statement on George Santos’s expulsion: “Long Island and Queens deserve better.”
      California’s Democratic representative Adam Schiff, who voted yes on George Santos’s expulsion, released a statement in which he called the expulsion “justified.” “George Santos misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign money, stole donor identities to fund his extravagant lifestyle, and has been indicted for fraud and financial crimes. I voted yes,” Schiff said.
      New York governor Kathy Hochul said that she is “prepared to undertake the solemn responsibility of filing the vacancy in New York’s 3rd district.” In a post on X following George Santos’s expulsion, Hochul added:“The people of Long Island deserve nothing less.”
      Hochul also said that she will announce the date for a special election in New York’s third district within the next days.” In a tweet on Thursday, Hochul added: “I take this responsibility seriously, and am committed to ensuring there will be a Member of Congress who can serve Nassau and Queens Counties.”
      The special election is required to take place between 70 and 80 days later, which means an election day would occur some time next February or March. According to New York’s election law, local party leaders will be required to choose their candidates for the special election. The winner of the election will go on to complete the remainder of Santos’s term.
      Following Santos’s expulsion, House Democratic super PAC announced plans to “play a significant role in the NY-03 special election,” CNN’s Manu Raju reports. Its president Mike Smith said that the group “will do whatever it takes to flip this district blue.”
      Anna Kaplan, a former Democratic New York state senator, has announced that she is “battle tried and tested” to take on the vacant seat. In a post on X, Kaplan wrote: “George Santos has officially been expelled. A special election is now right around the corner. It’s time to restore integrity to New York’s 3rd Congressional district. I am battle tried and tested. I am ready. If chosen as our party’s nominee, I will flip this seat blue. We will win.”
      Flowers have been laid – and picked up – from the office of George Santos following his expulsion from the House, according to photos surfacing on social media.Meanwhile, other pictures posted online showed people taking selfies outside of Santos’s office.New York’s Democratic representative Ritchie Torres said on Friday that George Santos’s “legacy lives on through a bill I named after him: the SANTOS Act.”Torres went on to say that the bill “holds Congressional candidates accountable for lying to the public.”“STOP ANOTHER NON-TRUTHFUL OFFICE SEEKER,” he added.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker, has released the following statement on George Santos’s expulsion:
      “Long Island and Queens deserve better.”
      The locks have been changed on expelled George Santos’s office on Capitol Hill following Friday’s House vote that pushed him out of his seat.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul said that she will announce the date for a special election in New York’s third district within the next days.”In a tweet on Thursday, Hochul added:
      “I take this responsibility seriously, and am committed to ensuring there will be a Member of Congress who can serve Nassau and Queens Counties.”
      With a special election due to be called within days – and election day looming early in 2024, let’s take a look at some of the likely candidates:DemocratsTom SuozziSuozzi represented New York’s third district before Santos did – and he wants his job back. The Democratic former Congressman announced in October that he wants to make a comeback. In his statement at the time, he said he wanted to bring “sanity and reason” back to Washington.Anna KaplanThe former Democratic New York state senator has announced that she is “battle tried and tested” to take on the vacant seat.Kaplan did not waste time throwing her hat in the ring. In a post on X, she wrote on Friday:
      George Santos has officially been expelled. A special election is now right around the corner. It’s time to restore integrity to New York’s 3rd Congressional District. I am battle tried and tested. I am ready. If chosen as our party’s nominee, I will flip this seat blue. We will win.”
      RepublicansAccording to the New York Times, former NYPD detective Mike Sapraicone is a top candidate.Jack MartinsThe newly elected state senator is also a potential Republican candidate, Newsweek reported. It could help that he has called Santos a fraud and called for his resignation.Mazi PilipPhilp has not said she is running but is under consideration, according to the NYT. She moved from Ethiopia to Israel as a refugee, has served in the Israeli Defense Forces. She is currently a Nassau county legislator.Santos’s expulsion from the House is the latest chapter in what has been a spectacular fall from grace for the New York congressman.The first-term lawmaker was initially celebrated as an up-and-coming star after he flipped his district from Democrats in 2022 and helped Republicans win control of the House.But he has become notorious for a series of claims that have turned out to be untrue. Here is a look back at some of those claims:The House Democratic super PAC has announced plans to “play a significant role in the NY-O3 special election,” CNN’s Manu Raju reports.House majority PAC president Mike Smith said that the group “will do whatever it takes to flip this district blue”.Santos’s victory in 2022 had flipped the district for the Republicans – now Democrats look eager to make that a blip.With George Santos expelled from the House, New York governor Kathy Hochul will have to call a special election within the next 10 days, according to New York law.In a post shortly after his expulsion, Hochul said that she is prepared to “undertake the solemn responsibility of filling the vacancy in New York’s 3rd district.”She went on to add, “The people of Long Island deserve nothing less.”The special election is required to take place between 70 and 80 days later, which means an election day would occur some time next February or March.According to New York’s election law, local party leaders will be required to choose their candidates for the special election. The winner of the election will go on to complete the remainder of Santos’s term.Last month, Santos said that will not be running for re-election. In a fiery press conference on Thursday, he told reporters, “The future is endless… I’m going to do whatever I want. Whatever comes my way, I have the desire to stay very much involved in public policy and advocacy for specific issues.”Following Santos’s expulsion, House Democratic super PAC announced plans to “play a significant role in the NY-03 special election,” CNN’s Manu Raju reports.Its president Mike Smith said that the group “will do whatever it takes to flip this district blue.”Meanwhile, Anna Kaplan, a former Democratic New York state senator, has announced that she is “battle tried and tested” to take on the vacant seat.In a post on X, Kaplan wrote:
      “George Santos has officially been expelled. A special election is now right around the corner. It’s time to restore integrity to New York’s 3rd Congressional District. I am battle tried and tested. I am ready. If chosen as our party’s nominee, I will flip this seat blue. We will win.”
      Two Democrats voted against expelling George Santos.Georgia’s representative Nikema Williams and Robert C. Scott voted nays, while Democratic representatives Jonathan Jackson of Illinois and Al Green of Texas voted present. More

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      in US Politics

      Who will replace George Santos in New York swing district?

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      The expulsion of George Santos from Congress on Friday has ramifications beyond the New York Republican’s career prospects.The historic vote has sparked a scramble among Democrats and Republicans to elect a replacement for Santos, who was found by an ethics committee to have used campaign funds for purchases. A special election is likely to take place early next year.Given Santos’s troubles – the now former congressman also faces 23 federal charges including fraud and conspiracy – several candidates had already announced they would run for his seat in New York’s third congressional district.With New York legally required to hold a special election in less than 90 days, the race for Santos’s Long Island district, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and was represented by Democrats for 10 years before swinging Republican last year, has dramatically accelerated.There will be no primary in the special election. Instead local Democratic and Republican party leaders will choose the parties’ nominees to replace Santos in a finely balanced House of Representatives – Santos’s expulsion reduced Republicans’ advantage over Democrats in the House of Representatives eight seats: 221-213. Democrats are expected to announce their nominee on Tuesday, with Republicans also likely to reveal their candidate soon.The DemocratsTom Suozzi appears to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. He was elected to the third congressional district in 2017, but declined to run in 2022, instead announcing a run for governor of New York state. Born and raised in the area, Suozzi announced a bid to reclaim his seat in October.“You know me. I’ve never sat on the sidelines,” Suozzi said in his announcement. A centrist Democrat, he added that “more common sense and compassion” was required in politics, and “less chaos and senseless fighting”.Multiple reports have said Suozzi will be chosen to run, despite a sometimes bitter gubernatorial campaign. Suozzi, 61, repeatedly clashed with Kathy Hochul, the ultimate victor, which did not endear him to Democratic leaders, but his relatively high profile as a former congressman could help.Anna Kaplan, like Suozzi, had announced she was running to replace Santos before he was kicked out of Congress on Friday. Kaplan ran for the third congressional district in 2016 – an election Suozzi ultimately won – before being elected to the New York state senate in 2019.She lost a re-election bid in 2022 amid a Republican wave in Long Island that swept Santos into the House, and in May this year Kaplan said she would run against Santos.“For me, this congressional district is very, very personal. I left a country where I saw the rightwing extremists taking over and stripped women of their rights,” Kaplan, who was born in Iran and moved to the US as a 13-year-old, told City & State New York earlier this year.Robert Zimmerman, the Democratic nominee in 2022 who lost to Santos by seven points, hasn’t announced a run for the third congressional seat, but Axios reported he “could be tapped by party leaders”.Austin Cheng, an army veteran and healthcare CEO, would be a fresher face. The City reported that as of 30 September Cheng had raised the most cash of any of the Democratic candidates – but that might be irrelevant now that party leaders will choose the candidate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe RepublicansMazi Pilip is among a reported “10 to 15” candidates being considered by the local Republican party. A local politician in Nassau county, which makes up much of the third congressional district, she has relatively little political experience and has not declared her candidacy.Pilip was born in Ethiopia and moved to Israel when she was 13, going on to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. A vocal supporter of Israel, in November she joined with other local legislators in calling for the pro-Palestinian group Students for Justice In Palestine to be banned from university campuses and potentially prosecuted.Mike Sapraicone, a former New York police department detective, is “near the top” of the list being considered by Republicans, according to the New York Times. Sapraicone, who founded a security business after leaving the NYPD, announced his run for Santos’s seat in October.“I think running a business teaches you how to understand people and work together,” Sapraicone told Fox5 NY.Sapraicone’s background as a police officer, and his deep pockets – he has lent his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars – “could be helpful in a region where public safety has been a top electoral concern and TV ads are expensive”, the New York Times reported.Jack Martins, who won his seat in the New York state senate by defeating Anna Kaplan last year, is another potential nominee. A longtime fixture in New York Republican circles, he ran for Congress in 2016, losing to Suozzi.ABC7 New York reported that Martins, who described Santos as “a fraud” earlier this year, “​​seems hesitant to run, but may be pulled into a special election to hold the seat”. More