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      US midterms 2022: Democrats’ hopes of keeping House fade as counting continues – live

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      If a president’s party can only keep one chamber of Congress, the Senate is the one to have.The Senate is tasked with approving the White House’s nominations, including cabinet secretaries, federal judges and most crucially, supreme court justices. With Democrats holding the majority for the next two years, Joe Biden is once again guaranteed the ability to get his cabinet secretaries and judges confirmed to post across the government. That will increase the chances Biden’s legislative accomplishments – and those of future Democratic presidents – survive court challenges.But if the House falls to Republicans, Biden’s days of big legislating may have come to an end, at least for now. The chamber’s GOP leadership has shown little interest in working with the president, and it’s unlikely any of their bills make it through the Senate and to the president’s desk. Control of the House also gives the GOP the ability to conduct investigations and issue subpoenas. Expect them to do that to officials involved in the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, and to Hunter Biden. Prosecutors say criminal charges not expected from Giuliani raidNew York prosecutors said in a letter to a judge on Monday they do not plan to criminally charge Rudy Giuliani following a probe into his dealings with Ukrainian associates – a development Giuliani’s called “a total victory”. Prosecutors had been investigating whether Giuliani should have been registered as a foreign agent due to his dealings with figures in Ukraine in the run-up to the 2020 election.The investigation, which resulted in raids on his residence in April 2021 and seizure of a number of electronic devices, has concluded, and that criminal charges would not be forthcoming.“In my business, we would call that total victory,” Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, told the Associated Press. “We appreciate what the US attorney’s [office] has done. We only wish they had done it a lot sooner.”Read the full story here. Kari Paul here taking over for the next couple hours, stay tuned for updates. Trump wasn’t keeping all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago for the money, The Washington Post reports.Rather, the motivation for his alleged retention of government secrets at his south Florida resort was more about Trump’s desire to hang on to keepsakes from his time in the White House, according to the Post, which cited federal investigators. That doesn’t mean he won’t face charges in the case, which is one of many inquiries the former president is involved in nearly two years after he left office. Here’s more from the Post:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell, or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.
      Several Trump advisers said that each time he was asked to give documents or materials back, his stance hardened, and that he gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires. Trump repeatedly said the materials were his, not the government’s — often in profane terms, two of these people said.
      The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the investigation is ongoing, no final determinations have been made, and it’s possible additional information could emerge that changes investigators’ understanding of Trump’s motivations. But they said the evidence collected over a period of months indicates the primary explanation for potentially criminal conduct was Trump’s ego and intransigence.
      A Justice Department spokesman and an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not return a request for comment Monday.
      The analysis of Trump’s likely motive in allegedly keeping the documents is not, strictly speaking, an element of determining whether he or anyone around him committed a crime, or should be charged with one. Justice Department policy dictates that prosecutors file criminal charges in cases in which they believe a crime was committed and the evidence is strong enough to lead to a conviction that will hold up on appeal. But as a practical matter, motive is an important part of how prosecutors assess cases and decide whether to file criminal charges.The Guardian’s Kari Paul is now taking over the live blog, and will take you through the latest politics news over the remainder of the day.Another notable Republican has reiterated his support for Donald Trump, Politico reports.Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville said he will back Trump for president in 2024, if he announces:Sen. Tuberville says he will endorse Trump for president when he announces. He also says he’ll support McConnell as GOP leader— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 14, 2022
      He also announced that he would back Mitch McConnell as Senate minority leader, the top office available for the GOP in that chamber after they failed to win control in the midterms.CNN reports that the bipartisan group of senators pushing a bill to codify same-sex marriage believes it has enough support to pass the chamber:Multiple sources say the bipartisan group working on legislation to codify same-sex marriage has the votes needed for the bill to pass and is urging leadership to put it on the floor for a vote as soon as possible.w/ @alizaslav— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) November 14, 2022
      The Respect for Marriage Act passed the House earlier this year with some Republican support. Assuming all Democratic senators vote for it, it will need the votes of at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster, but it’s previously been unclear if that support exists.Ahead of the release of his memoir tomorrow, former vice-president Mike Pence sat down with ABC News to talk more about his experience on January 6.Here was his reaction when asked about Trump’s tweet lashing out at Pence on the day of the attack:”It angered me. … The president’s words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem.”— Former Vice President Mike Pence, in an ABC News exclusive as he promotes his new book, rebukes Trump’s tweet attacking him on Jan. 6th as the mob stormed the Capitol pic.twitter.com/PqnqUH7vbQ— The Recount (@therecount) November 14, 2022
      In their quest to understand why they performed so poorly in the midterms, some Republicans are pointing the finger at Donald Trump, arguing he has outlived his usefulness to the party.Writing in The American Conservative, JD Vance, a Republican who just won a seat in the Senate representing Ohio, attempted to dissuade the GOP from casting blame on the former president. He argues that Trump serves as a unifying force for Republicans and can offset Democrats’ advantages in fundraising and voter turnout that are going to make it more difficult for the GOP to win House and Senate races.Here’s more from his piece:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In the long term, the way to solve this is to build a turnout machine, not gripe at the former president. But building a turnout machine without organized labor and amid declining church attendance is no small thing. Our party has one major asset, contra conventional wisdom, to rally these voters: President Donald Trump. Now, more than ever, our party needs President Trump’s leadership to turn these voters out and suffers for his absence from the stage.
      The point is not that Trump is perfect. I personally would have preferred an endorsement of Lou Barletta over Mastriano in the Pennsylvania governor’s race, for example. But any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term. Indeed, one of the biggest changes I would like to see from Trump’s political organization—whether he runs for president or not—is to use their incredible small dollar fundraising machine for Trump-aligned candidates, which it appears he has begun doing to assist Herschel Walker in his Senate runoff.
      Blaming Trump isn’t just wrong on the facts, it is counterproductive. Any autopsy of Republican underperformance ought to focus on how to close the national money gap, and how to turn out less engaged Republicans during midterm elections. These are the problems we have, and rather than blaming everyone else, it’s time for party leaders to admit we have these problems and work to solve them. Meanwhile in Georgia, the midterms are very much not over.The Senate race is headed to a run-off election on 6 December, with Republican Herschel Walker challenging Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock for the seat.In a speech today, Walker attacked Warnock for using campaign funds to pay for childcare – as US election law allows:Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R) criticizes Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D) parenting:”He paid himself for childcare, all that stuff — why don’t he keep his own kids? Don’t have nobody keep your kids. … I keep my own, even though he lied about me.” pic.twitter.com/C41IJUbA0F— The Recount (@therecount) November 14, 2022
      Left unsaid were reports that Walker paid for two women to have an abortion, even though he supports a nationwide ban on the procedure, without exceptions. He also did not mention one of his son’s claim that he has not been much of a father.It’s just one pollster in one state, but take a look at who CWS Research found was leading among Republican candidates for the White House in 2024.Florida governor Ron DeSantis topped Donald Trump in the poll of Republicans and independents, with 43% support against Trump’s 32%. The survey was conducted from 12 to 13 November, after the midterm elections, and represents a change from a previous poll conducted in mid-October before the vote. Then, Trump led, with 46% support compared to DeSantis’ 29%.Trump is widely expected to announce another campaign for office tomorrow, but DeSantis had a far better midterm election. The Florida governor resoundingly won another term on a day when Republicans performed well in the state overall. Trump, meanwhile, saw several of his handpicked candidates for office rejected by voters in states across the country.Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student debt has lost again in court and will remain on hold, Politico reports:NEWS – 8th Circuit has blocked Biden’s student debt relief program, siding with GOP states in a 3-0 decision. pic.twitter.com/6gn7UyxmLa— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 14, 2022
      The panel of two Trump appointees & a GWB appointee ruled unanimously that Missouri has standing to challenge debt relief program based on injury to the state via MOHELA. pic.twitter.com/FixeqTSmAa— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 14, 2022
      But the 10-page decision doesn’t discuss the merits of the case much — other than to say the GOP states have raised “substantial questions of law which remain to be resolved”https://t.co/2WkRX1ozkd pic.twitter.com/0Qs03zL7qh— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) November 14, 2022
      The Guardian’s community team wants to hear from Americans about what they think of the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Be you Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, independent or something else, let them know your thoughts:US voters: share your reaction to the midterm results so farRead moreThe dust is settling from Tuesday’s midterm elections. Control of the House is still up for grabs, but the GOP appears on course to eke out a majority, while Democrats have won themselves the Senate for another two years. The 2024 presidential race may very well kick off tomorrow, when Donald Trump is expected to announce another campaign for the White House.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Joe Biden doesn’t believe the House is winnable for Democrats, nor that there’s enough support for a measure to codify abortion rights into law.
      The Senate plans to vote on a measure to codify same-sex marriage rights this week, after a conservative supreme court justice raised the possibility of the court reconsidering its ruling establishing the rights.
      The January 6 committee is cleared to access the phone records of Arizona’s Republican party chair after the supreme court quashed a challenge to the lawmakers’ subpoena.
      Mo Brooks was once one of Donald Trump’s closest allies, but has since joined the ranks of those who have fallen out with the former president.The Alabama Republican congressman will retire at the end of this year, and in an interview with AL.com called on the party to dump the former president.“It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” said Brooks, who was the first congressman to object to the certification of the 2020 election. “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”The bad blood between the two men stems from Trump’s withdrawn endorsement of Brooks for Alabama’s Senate seat, which was won last week by Republican Katie Britt. Brooks said Trump asked him to remove Joe Biden from office and elevate the ex-president back to power, which the congressman told him was illegal. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports on a new justice department filing in the Mar-a-Lago case, which claims Donald Trump kept classified documents at the resort, even after he left the White House:Donald Trump retained documents bearing classification markings, along with communications from after his presidency, according to court filings describing the materials seized by the FBI as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into whether he mishandled national security information.The former US president kept in the desk drawer of his office at the Mar-a-Lago property one document marked “secret” and one marked “confidential” alongside three communications from a book author, a religious leader and a pollster, dated after he departed the White House.The mixed records could amount to evidence that Trump wilfully retained documents marked classified when he was no longer president as the justice department investigates unauthorised possession of national security materials, concealment of government records, and obstruction.Court files show evidence Trump handled records marked classified after presidencyRead moreMike Pence will on Tuesday release a memoir detailing his time in the Trump White House, and Martin Pengelly takes a look at what the former vice president reveals:In his new book, Donald Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, protests his loyalty to his former boss but also levels criticisms that will acquire new potency as Trump prepares to announce another presidential run and the Republican party debates whether to stay loyal after disappointment in last week’s midterm elections.According to Pence, Trump mishandled his response to a march staged by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, a costly error that Pence says could have been avoided had Pence called Trump before a fateful press conference in which Trump failed to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”.Also in Pence’s judgment, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour” early in his term while beset by investigations of Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf and links between Trump and Moscow.“Acknowledging Russian meddling,” Pence writes, would not have “somehow cheapen[ed] our victory” over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Pence does not stop there. Among other judgments which may anger his former boss, he says Trump’s claimed “perfect call” to Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine in 2019, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment after he withheld military aid in search of political dirt, was in fact “less than perfect” – if not, in Pence’s judgment, impeachable.Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookRead moreThe January 6 committee can access the phone records of the chair of Arizona’s Republican party after the supreme court turned down an attempt to block the lawmakers’ subpoena:NEW: Supreme Court rejects bid by Ariz GOP Chair Kelli Ward to block a Jan. 6 committee subpoena for her phone records. Thomas and Alito dissent. pic.twitter.com/g3IoSuuRuk— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) November 14, 2022
      Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are two of the court’s most conservative justices, and objected to the court’s order.Arizona was one of the states targeted by Donald Trump and his allies in the weeks after the 2020 election, as part of their effort to tamper with Joe Biden’s election victory.Later this week, Republicans in the House and Senate are set to vote on who their leaders will be for the next two years, but the party’s weak showing in the midterms has sparked calls to delay the election.It appears rightwing lawmakers are trying to punish top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell for failing to retake the chamber, and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy for the party’s weak showing there. According to Axios, conservative figures outside of Congress will soon release a letter backing the calls for a delay: Per source: collection of prominent conservative movement figures — incl Heritage President Kevin Roberts — will be releasing a letter calling for delay to House and Senate leadership elections. pic.twitter.com/ON8c1dvIyl— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) November 14, 2022
      Among the signatories: Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. She’s a prominent denier of the facts surrounding Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, and was interviewed by the January 6 committee earlier this year. Lawmakers on the panel said she didn’t have much to offer, and there wasn’t evidence she played a significant role in the insurrection. More

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      Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens

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      Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepensAlabama congressman Mo Brooks, a once-zealous Trump ally, comments after party fails to retake Congress in midterms Alabama congressman and once-zealous Trump supporter, Mo Brooks, has a remarkable new stance on the political future of his former hero. “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” he said.Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookRead moreThe stark judgment from Brooks was indicative of the deepening and brutal blame game among Republicans which continued on Monday, nearly a week after the party failed to retake Congress in the midterm elections and a day before Trump’s expected announcement of a new presidential campaign.Speaking to AL.com, Brooks, an Alabama congressman, added: “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”That was a reference to Joe Biden and his precautions against Covid in the 2020 election the Democrat won by more than 7m votes and 306-232 in the electoral college.Brooks did not accept that result. On 6 January 2021, he donned body armor and spoke to Trump supporters at a rally near the White House. Repeating Trump’s lie about electoral fraud, he said: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” The mob then attacked the Capitol, a riot now linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.The election subversion Brooks supported is under investigation by the House January 6 committee, the Department of Justice and state authorities. But Brooks broke with Trump earlier this year, when the former president rescinded his endorsement for US Senate, because Brooks publicly urged him to stop re-litigating 2020.Trump’s eventual endorsee in Alabama, Katie Britt, won a Senate seat. But elsewhere last Tuesday high-profile Trump-endorsed candidates failed, ensuring Democrats held the Senate and stayed on course to hold the Republicans to a tight House majority.Trump is almost certain to announce his 2024 run at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday. But the fire from his own party keeps coming, the barrage widening to include shots at leaders in both houses of Congress.In the Senate, Marco Rubio of Florida, who retained his seat against a highly-rated Democrat, Val Demings, tweeted: “The Senate GOP leadership vote next week should be postponed.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential challenger to Trump in 2024, added: “Exactly right. I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished.”That was a reference to the runoff for the last Senate seat to be decided, in Georgia and between the Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker, a controversial former NFL star, and the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock. Warnock won a tight vote last Tuesday but did not pass 50%, teeing up the runoff.Victories in Pennsylvania – the only Senate seat to flip so far – Arizona and Nevada mean the Democrats will control the Senate even if Warnock loses, thanks to the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris.The other Florida senator, Rick Scott, is under pressure after leading the Republican election effort. The party leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is also feeling the heat.On Tuesday, Josh Holmes, a Republican operative who was formerly chief of staff to McConnell, told the Wall Street Journal the Senate campaign “was run basically as a Rick Scott super Pac, where they didn’t want or need to input any Republican senators whatsoever. That’s a huge break from recent history where members have been pretty intimately involved.”Democrats seized on an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” Scott issued earlier this year, in which the senator, widely thought to have presidential ambitions of his own, proposed that more Americans pay federal income tax and said Congress could “sunset” social security and Medicare within five years.Holmes said McConnell told Scott: “When you are in leadership you don’t have the ability to do something like this without other people carrying your water.”In the House, the defeat of the Trump endorsee, and election-denier, Joe Kent in Washington state quickly came to seem symbolic of Republican failures.In the primary, Kent defeated a six-term incumbent, Jamie Herrera-Beutler, who suffered for being one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol attack. Kent went on to lose the seat, to the Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez.‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Read moreThe House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, faces a growing threat from the far-right of the party, jeopardising his hopes of becoming speaker should Republicans take control of the House.Andy Biggs of Arizona, another congressman investigated for his support of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, is reported to be teeing up a challenge to McCarthy.Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, like Herrera-Beutler a Republican who voted to impeach Trump, announced his retirement rather than face a primary defeat then went on to sit on the House January 6 committee.Amid post-election recriminations on Capitol Hill, he tweeted: “To GOP’ers: if Kevin McCarthy had not gone to Mar-a-Lago, had the Senate convicted, or had any more congressmen actually stood on principle, likely we would have no Trump, the alt-right would be a sick memory, and you could look in the mirror.“Just FYI. Maybe start now.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new book

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      Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookIn memoir, former vice-president protests loyalty but hits out over Charlottesville, Russia, both impeachments and more In his new book, Donald Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, protests his loyalty to his former boss but also levels criticisms that will acquire new potency as Trump prepares to announce another presidential run and the Republican party debates whether to stay loyal after disappointment in last week’s midterm elections.‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Read moreAccording to Pence, Trump mishandled his response to a march staged by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, a costly error that Pence says could have been avoided had Pence called Trump before a fateful press conference in which Trump failed to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”.Also in Pence’s judgment, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour” early in his term while beset by investigations of Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf and links between Trump and Moscow.“Acknowledging Russian meddling,” Pence writes, would not have “somehow cheapen[ed] our victory” over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Pence does not stop there. Among other judgments which may anger his former boss, he says Trump’s claimed “perfect call” to Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine in 2019, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment after he withheld military aid in search of political dirt, was in fact “less than perfect” – if not, in Pence’s judgment, impeachable.Pence also says that in January 2021 he urged Trump to make a farewell address to the nation and to encourage unity after the deadly Capitol attack he says Trump incited, the subject of Trump’s second impeachment. Trump remains unrepentant.Pence, famously devout, writes that he prayed for Trump throughout his presidency, and after urging a farewell address as given by “every president since George Washington … urged him one more time to take time to pray”.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thrice-married, genital-grabbing, greed-worshipping Trump does not appear to have taken the advice to pray or be prayed for. A few days after the conversation about a farewell address, Pence writes, he “reminded” Trump “that I was praying for him”.“Don’t bother,” Trump said.Trump’s reluctance to be told what to do, to be told he is wrong or to credit advisers for anything mean Pence’s book would risk provoking attacks as Trump prepares to announce his next presidential campaign even if Pence were not a potential rival.Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God, will be published in the US on Tuesday. It has been trailed in the US media, including in a column published by the Wall Street Journal which presented the former vice-president’s version of events before, on and after January 6, when supporters incited by Trump attacked Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Pence did not do as Trump demanded and reject electoral college results from key states while performing his ceremonial role in Congress. The House January 6 committee has presented Pence as something of a hero, but his reward on the day itself was a rampaging mob, members of which called for him to be hanged as a gallows was erected outside.In excerpts of an interview due to be broadcast on Monday, Pence told ABC News: “The president’s words [on 6 January 2021] were reckless and his actions were reckless. The president’s words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.”Until last week, Pence’s book seemed likely to read as something of a balancing act, between loyalty to the president to whom in his own words he “always deferred” – and to that president’s supporters – and the service of ambition which has seen Pence visit early voting states and address conservative groups.Pence writes that after Biden’s victory, he advised Trump to follow a path to the 2024 nomination, treating his defeat as not “a loss – just an intermission”.“Thirteen days after the 2020 election,” Pence writes, “I had lunch with President Trump. I told him that if his legal challenges came up short, he could simply accept the results, move forward with the transition and start a political comeback, winning the Senate runoffs in Georgia, the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, and the House and Senate in 2022. Then he could run for president in 2024 and win. He seemed unmoved, even weary: ‘I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.’”Republicans lost the Senate runoffs in Georgia, won the Virginia governor’s race in large part by distancing their candidate from Trump, then missed their midterms target. Last Tuesday, an expected “red wave” failed to show.Instead, Democrats are celebrating while Republicans find themselves contemplating a narrow and unruly majority in the US House, the far right ascendant, and at least two more years in the Senate minority thanks to Democratic victories in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the only seat flipped so far.A Republican backlash against Trump has formed quickly, particularly over his endorsements of election-denying candidates who lost Senate races and contests for governor and other state posts.01:41To make matters worse for Trump, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, enjoyed a landslide re-election, a rare bright spot for the GOP, and has shot to the fore in polls of the nominal field for 2024.Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoirRead moreRegardless, aides to Trump have indicated that he will plough ahead and announce his 2024 campaign – his third consecutive run – at his Mar-a-Lago resort in DeSantis’s state on Tuesday.Trump has repeatedly attacked DeSantis. But regarding the governor, at least, Pence keeps his own powder dry. In his book, the former vice-president and Trump coronavirus taskforce chief mentions his potential primary rival just once, praising him for his handling of the pandemic.Pence doggedly claims the Trump administration passed its Covid test with flying colours, even praising government scientists including Anthony Fauci – “a great source of comfort to millions of Americans” – who are now likely targets for investigation by House Republicans.Under DeSantis, more than 82,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Florida, the third-highest state total. The national death toll is close to 1.1m.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpMike PenceTrump administrationUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022US elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      US midterms: no sign of 'red wave' as Democrats take Senate – video report

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      The Democrats have kept control of the Senate after the crucial race in Nevada was announced in their favour. The party’s midterm election performance widely beat expectations after pundits predicted a ‘red wave’ across the US for the Republicans. Since voting began on 8 November, Republican circles have been speculating over who to blame following Democrat wins. Donald Trump has been at the centre of the storm after he backed rightwing candidates in several key races who lost, including Mehmet Oz, defeated by John Fetterman in Pennsylvania

      Democrats retain control of Senate after crucial victory in Nevada
      New generation of candidates stakes claim to Democratic party’s future More

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      Democrats’ triumph may be miraculous but US is still split down the middle | Michael Cohen

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      Democrats’ triumph may be miraculous but US is still split down the middleMichael CohenThe midterms are a win for democracy but many Republicans await a third Trump bid Midterm elections in the United States are where the hopes and dreams of governing parties go to die. Since 1932, the party in power has lost on average 28 seats in the House of Representatives and four seats in the Senate. In 2018, two years after taking the White House and both Houses of Congress, Republicans lost 40 House seats and control of the chamber. In 2010, Democrats lost 63 seats. In 1994, it was 54 and eight Senate seats. Every two years, after electing a new president, voters, generally speaking, go to the polls with buyer’s remorse.But not this year. In a truly stunning outcome, Democrats reversed the historical trend lines and, at least for the time being, protected American democracy from the worst excesses of the Donald Trump-led Republican party.While all the votes still need to be tabulated, it appears that Democrats will keep control of the Senate and have an outside chance of maintaining their narrow majority in the House of Representatives. At the beginning of the year such a scenario was virtually unimaginable. Democrats were facing not only historical headwinds but also rising inflation, a teetering economy and an unpopular incumbent president. Traditionally, these are the kinds of political dynamics that portend a Republican-wave victory in November.But then in June the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, removed a 50-year constitutional guarantee protecting reproductive health rights and virtually overnight turned American women into second-class citizens. Over the summer, congressional Democrats achieved a host of notable legislative successes and President Biden announced billions in student loan forgiveness, fulfilling a promise he’d made during the 2020 presidential campaign.By the autumn, the political winds shifted in the Democrats’ direction – and no issue loomed larger than abortion. In August, a referendum in ruby-red Kansas, which would have made it easier for Republicans in the state legislature to outlaw the procedure, lost by a whopping 18 points.Democratic campaign advisers took their cues from Kansas and made abortion the centrepiece of the autumn campaign. And in the states where Republicans’ victories could have led to potentially greater abortion restrictions, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, Democrats won decisive victories. In suburban districts, the new linchpin of the Democratic coalition, white female college graduates, outraged by the supreme court decision, propelled House Democratic candidates to victory in toss-up races.Republicans compounded the problem by nominating a host of Trump-endorsed first-time Senate and gubernatorial candidates. The closer a Republican was to Trump, the worse they did on Tuesday.Indeed, for months, political commentators had portrayed the 2022 election as potentially the end of democracy in the US. In state after state, election deniers, parroting Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, appeared poised to take office. Yet across the board they lost. On an even more positive note, while Trump still refuses to accept that he lost the presidency to Joe Biden, his enablers and sycophants in the GOP (“grand old party”) refused to follow the same script. Virtually every Republican who lost their election – including the election deniers – has conceded defeat, in the best sign for the strength of American democracy in quite some time.How the fall of Roe shattered Republicans’ midterm dreamsRead moreThat’s the good news, but like everything these days in American politics it’s virtually impossible for us to have nice things. While Trump is arguably the biggest loser of the 2022 campaign, his stranglehold over the Republican party is not ending just yet. This week, he will announce his third bid for the White House and, while plenty of Republican leaders wish he would go away, a great many rank-and-file Republicans don’t feel the same.It’s easy to criticise Trump for his lousy record of endorsements, but it’s not as if he held a gun to the collective head of Republicans and forced them to vote for his preferred candidates. These are still the types of politicians that Republican voters want and there is little reason to expect that they are prepared to jettison Trump.What makes matters even worse for Republicans is that no matter how the presidential nomination contest turns out, it’s a no-win situation. Democrats have won the past three US elections, in large measure by running against Trump. If he is again the Republican nominee there is no reason to expect that 2024 would play out any differently.What if Trump loses? That might actually be a worse outcome because if there’s one thing we know about the former president, it’s that he is a thin-skinned narcissist who doesn’t care about anybody but himself. If he loses the GOP presidential bid, say to the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who just won a landslide re-election victory, one can expect that he will not respond well. There will not be a moment at the Republican national convention with Trump and DeSantis, their hands clasped together in party unity. Instead, Trump will handle himself probably no differently from the way he did after losing to Biden – again claiming fraud and denigrating DeSantis to his supporters. Indeed, Trump would probably prefer Biden wins re-election than watch DeSantis accomplish a feat that he could not.But beyond all that, the final numbers in the House and Senate tell a crucial story. Democrats will probably either maintain their 50-50 edge in the Senate or add one seat (the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, is the tie-breaking vote in the Senate). In the House, the most likely result is an incredibly narrow Republican advantage – somewhere between one and three seats. Governorships could be split evenly 25-25.America is almost perfectly divided between Democrats and Republicans and neither party can cobble together an effective majority. The 2022 midterms are, on the surface, a win for Democrats, but from a deeper perspective they have simply ratified the status quo of the US as a divided and divisive country.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansJoe BidenDonald TrumpcommentReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?

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      Analysis‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Chris McGreal in Columbus, Ohio and David Smith in WashingtonAfter the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leader Sitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill.“We fight the woke in the legislature,” DeSantis declared as his photogenic young family looked on against a stars and stripes backdrop. “We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”‘Ron DeSanctimonious’: angry Trump lashes out at Republican rival Read moreAs the jubilant crowd chanted “two more years!”, suggesting that DeSantis, not Trump, should run for US president in 2024, was this the moment that power slipped inexorably from one to the other – that the Republican crown passed from old king to young pretender?Some in the party are ready to declare it so. David Urban, a longtime Trump ally, told the Washington Post: “It is clear the center of gravity of the Republican party is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago.”If such a shift has taken place, it did so gradually, then suddenly. Since he descended an escalator at his New York headquarters in June 2015, Trump has dominated and defined the Republican party, crushing rivals in the Republican primary then eking out a victory over Hillary Clinton to seize the White House.But the party of Trump suffered drubbings at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020. And despite forecasts of a “red wave” in 2022, it fell short again. From Michigan to Pennsylvania, novice candidates endorsed by the former president proved they were unready for prime time and too extreme for a wary and weary electorate.Finally, some Republicans admitted what everyone else could see: Trump is an albatross around the party’s neck. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, once a vocal supporter, told the Fox Business channel: “The voters have spoken and they have said that they want a different leader. And a true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage. It is time to move on.”Rupert Murdoch already has, it seems. “Trumpty Dumpty”, boomed the front page of his tabloid the New York Post. “Trump is the Republican party’s biggest loser” was the verdict of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. A column on the Fox News website proclaimed: “Ron DeSantis is the new Republican party leader. Republicans are ready to move on without Donald Trump.”Indeed, if Trump was the big loser of the night, DeSantis was the big winner. His victory by nearly 20 percentage points was a personal vindication that appeared to put Florida, once the quintessential swing state, beyond Democrats’ reach for a generation.His stunning wins in big, majority Latino counties, including Miami-Dade and Osceola, set him up to make the case that, as a presidential candidate, he could repeat the formula in states such as as Arizona, Nevada and Texas. “We have rewritten the political map,” he told supporters.A DeSantis 2024 campaign would also promise generational change. At 44, the former navy lawyer and congressman would be similar in age to John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama when they ran for the White House, a sharp contrast from 76-year-old Trump or Joe Biden, who is turning 80 this month.Crucially, DeSantis could sell himself as Trump 2.0, an upgrade committed to the same “America first” policy agenda, media sparring and liberal-baiting (he recently flew Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard) but without the liability of multiple federal, state and congressional investigations.He could also break from Trump over the coronavirus pandemic, contending that he kept Florida open while the then president was urging lockdowns. Tim Miller, former communications director for Jeb Bush 2016, said: “He would try to paint Trump as somebody that lost, is a loser and is costing the party. He’d probably criticise Trump for not being stronger on Covid and say he should have fired [Dr Anthony] Fauci.”DeSantis is especially popular with conservatives for taking the lead on “culture war” issues related to race and gender. Last year he got into a spat with the Walt Disney Company over his support of the controversial law, nicknamed “don’t say gay” by opponents, prohibiting the teaching of gender identity concepts to young children.But if you come at the king, you best not miss. Trump has spent months preparing to strangle the DeSantis campaign at birth. At a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, last weekend, he casually rolled out a nickname, “Ron DeSanctimonious”, hoping to brand his opponent as he has so many before.On Tuesday, menacingly, he told Fox News: “I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly. I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering – I know more about him than anybody – other than, perhaps, his wife.”And on Thursday, with DeSantis buzz reaching a crescendo, Trump lashed out in a lengthy and angry statement berating Fox News and other Murdoch-controlled media for going “all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious DeSantis”, whom he called “an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations”, as he again took credit for DeSantis’s 2018 win.“Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” he wrote, comparing the race to his winning 2016 campaign. “We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Soon after, he invited reporters to a “Special Announcement” at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, presumably confirming that he is mounting a third consecutive bid for the White House. Some allies were quick to offer pre-endorsements, with Elise Stefanik, the Republican chair in the House of Representatives, declaring herself on team Trump.JD Vance, who won a Senate senate race in Ohio with Trump’s backing, did likewise. And at a rally for Vance in Dayton the night before the elections, many supporters sporting Make America Great Again hats and T-shirts were hoping for Trump to announce his candidacy there and then.But even within a crowd of enthusiastic fans there were those who had doubts. Mandy Young said: “I think Trump was a great president but I don’t think he can win again. He is too divisive. The independents who voted for him before won’t vote for him again because of all the investigations.“Also, I don’t like the way he called DeSantis ‘DeSanctimonious’. I think DeSantis would be a great president. It makes me think Trump doesn’t care about the Republican party winning, only himself. He should step back. He would still have a lot of influence as a respected godfather giving advice.”On election day, Jeffrey Weisman, a consistent Republican supporter because he says the party is better for the economy and his jewellery store business, voted at the biggest Greek Orthodox church in Columbus, Ohio.Weisman supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections but would prefer the former president stayed out of the next one. “I like DeSantis. Having Trump going out there as well I think will hurt DeSantis’s chances. So for that reason, I do not want Trump to run,” he said.The strengths and weaknesses of Trump’s influence were on display in Ohio’s election for US senator. The former president’s endorsement of Vance pulled the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy and venture capitalist from the back of the field in the Republican primaries and won him the nomination. But Trump’s backing then dragged down support for Vance in Tuesday’s general election, even if he won.Mark R Weaver, a Republican strategist in Columbus, who has worked on several hundred state and national campaigns, said that has implications for any challenge from DeSantis both in Ohio and across the country.“Trump’s ability to improve a candidate’s chances is weakening. He’s no longer able to guarantee or even predict someone he endorses is going to win. Whatever charm he had has worn off, certainly in the general elections. In the primaries, he can still be a big factor. In Ohio he was.”Weaver said that while Trump would still win a Republican contest for the presidential nomination against DeSantis if it were held today, that may not be true by the time the primaries actually begin in early 2024.He said: “I have noticed a slow descent of Donald Trump’s popularity amongst Republicans. I’ve noticed a rapid ascent of Ron DeSantis’s popularity.“If those two trajectories continue, Trump slowly getting weaker and people looking for better options, and DeSantis quickly getting stronger and having more people support him, the trajectory lines could cross right about March of 2024. That sounds like a crazy statement right now but if those trajectories cross, Ron DeSantis can beat Trump in the primaries in 2024.”Trump’s political obituary has been written by Republican elites countless times before only to prove wishful thinking. An Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted about groping women’s private parts couldn’t do it. His half-hearted condemnation of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, couldn’t do it. His proposal that injecting bleach might cure coronavirus couldn’t do it. Even his incitement of a coup attempt at the US Capitol couldn’t do it. Can DeSantis do it by appealing to the bottom line: electability?Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “I’ve always said that the Republican party would not fully respond to offloading Trump until they lost enough elections. Political actors are single seekers in re-election, and once their power is threatened, that is usually where a course correction happens.“But they’ve gotten themselves into quite a quagmire with Donald Trump because he still has a solid 30%, at least, base of support, and that is large enough to still create headaches for the party if they try to offload him.”Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, added: “They also do not have a formidable enough heir apparent. It is not Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is a paper tiger who was created and propped up by Donald Trump. He does not have the political talent, the charisma or the toughness to take on the onslaught coming his way from Trumpworld. It’s already beginning.”Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, agreed. “Trump would eat him alive,” he said. “Right now Trump is still the dominant player in the Republican party. Most of the base is still with him. DeSantis is utterly untested. He’s weird. He has zero charisma. He’s thin skinned. He can’t think on his feet. He’s never been tested and he’s easily offended. Trump will do and say anything.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, added: “Trump’s the king. If you try to slay the king and you don’t, your career is over. That’s a huge, huge risk a 44-year-old guy like DeSantis would be taking.”They are not alone in arguing that, while DeSantis is like Trump without the chaos, he is also Trump without the charisma. The former president’s rallies are rollicking, knockabout affairs that give his fans community, entertainment and laughs. DeSantis is said to be unskilled in retail politics and somewhat humourless.Jennifer Mercieca, a professor in the communication and journalism department at Texas A&M University, said: “Donald Trump is an authoritarian PT Barnum. He’s able to keep our attention and curiosity. He’s got great comedic timing. He has a good sense of drama and Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that kind of easily translatable appeal for media audiences. His affect is flat. He’s not as entertaining.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he’s really entertaining. He’s good at keeping our attention and primarily he does that through outrage and things that are very negative for politics and political problem solving. But in terms of a matchup between those two, I would put money on Trump.”Trump has shown himself perfectly capable of going scorched earth and burning the whole party down. A ferociously nasty bareknuckle primary fight between him and DeSantis will have Democrats reaching for the popcorn. At a valedictory press conference at the White House, Biden seemed amused at the prospect. “It’ll be fun watching them take on each other,” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpRon DeSantisRepublicansFloridaUS elections 2024US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?

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      Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?Biden and DeSantis are on the up, but Donald Trump and some of the Republicans’ more unhinged candidates flopped After months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent on advertising, the message from America’s midterm elections could essentially be boiled down to: “Not as bad as Democrats feared.”There were big wins for Republicans in Florida, and the party still seems likely to take the House, but elsewhere candidates endorsed by former president Donald Trump flopped, and there were key victories for supporters of reproductive rights.As Trump licks his wounds after being compared to an egg on legs by a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, and as Democrats celebrate avoiding a predicted “red wave”, here’s a look at who did well, and who suffered.WINNERSJoe Biden, US presidentMuch of the talk ahead of last Tuesday’s elections was about how Biden might tank the Democratic party’s candidates. Republicans across the country ran ads tying their opponents to Biden, banking that the unloved president would turn off voters. It didn’t work, as Democrats performed much better than expected across the board. Biden remains very unpopular – his approval rating dropped to 39% in a Reuters poll this week – but that doesn’t seem to be hindering his party. The results prompted Biden, who turns 80 later this month, to repeat his recent assertions that he will run for a second term as president in two years’ time.Ron DeSantis, Republican Florida governorIt’s not just that the Florida governor won re-election, in what is supposed to be a swing state, by almost 20 points. In the process, DeSantis, 44, has also found himself anointed by the rightwing media as the future of the Republican party – in the case of the New York Post, quite literally: “DeFuture”, blasted the front page of the tabloid on Wednesday morning. DeSantis, an anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ rights Republican, is seen as a more palatable, less hysterical version of Donald Trump. He has been cagey about whether he will run for president in 2024, but if DeSantis does want to launch a campaign, then this was a pretty good way to start.John Fetterman, Democrat Senate candidateThree years ago John Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, a town of fewer than 2,000 people. On Tuesday he was elected to the US Senate, and will represent 13 million Pennsylvanians. It has been a remarkable rise, made all the more astonishing by the fact Fetterman had a stroke days before the Democratic primary in May. The 6ft 8in, tattooed, permanently hoodie-clad senator-elect is still recovering – he relied on closed captioning to process questions in a debate in October – but overcame a stiff challenge from Trump-backed Mehmet Oz to win relatively easily on Tuesday. Fetterman, who has previously said he owns only one suit, is going to have to do some clothes shopping.Reproductive rightsAway from the noise and intrigue about Republican and Democratic candidates and races, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure to secure a constitutional right to abortion, blocking the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban in the state. In Kentucky, voters rejected a measure which would have denied constitutional protections for abortion. North Carolina Republicans failed to secure a majority which would have enabled them to ram through restrictive abortion bans, and it was a similar story in Wisconsin, where the re-elected Democratic governor, Tony Evers, will have the power to veto abortion laws proposed by the state legislature.LOSERSDonald TrumpThe one-term, twice-impeached president had a shocker of an evening, as one after another, many of his endorsed candidates flopped in key races across the country. The fact that many of the Republicans Trump had backed lost isn’t the only thing that will sting. Several of Trump’s people underperformed in states – including New Hampshire and Georgia – where Republicans who had not been anointed by Trump triumphed. To top it all off, Rupert Murdoch seems to have turned on Trump. On Thursday the New York Post, a Murdoch-owned tabloid, mocked up an image of Trump as Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall – can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” read the accompanying text.Republicans – outside Florida and New YorkWith an unpopular Democratic president, soaring inflation, high gas prices and widespread doom and gloom about the economy, this was supposed to be the night that Republicans swept through Congress in a “red wave”. They didn’t. By Friday, with votes still being tallied in some states, the Republican party was still short of a majority in the House and the Senate, as Democrats out-performed expectations across the country. There were some exceptions. In Florida both DeSantis and Marco Rubio, the state’s incumbent senator, cruised to victory, and Republicans flourished in state-level races too. It was, the Tampa Bay Times declared, “an electoral catastrophe for Democrats”.(Some of) the unhinged candidatesIn Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist state senator who paid for buses to take people to what became the January 6 insurrection and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was swept away in the governor’s race. Matthew DePerno, a fellow election conspiracy theorist who had branded Democrats “radical, cultural Marxists” lost his bid to be Michigan’s attorney general, and his ideological counterpart Kristina Karamo failed to become secretary of state. Tina Forte, a Republican who attended the January 6 rally and has dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, was crushed in her attempt to defeat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman, in New York.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsAbortionJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez wins key House seat in Washington state

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      Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez wins key House seat in Washington stateGluesenkamp Perez’s win over Trump-backed far-right candidate Joe Kent helps buoy party hopes of keeping a majority in the House

      US midterm election results – live
      Democrats have won a second key House race in Washington state – an open seat in a conservative region that long evaded the party.Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-shop owner who describes herself as an independent-minded Democrat, pulled off a victory against Joe Kent, a far-right “America First” ex-Green Beret who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump, in south-west Washington’s third congressional district on Saturday.Combined with Rep Kim Schrier’s reelection to what Democrats feared was a vulnerable seat, Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory helped buoy party hopes of keeping a majority in the House.Democrats retain control of Senate after crucial victory in NevadaRead more“I am humbled and honored by the vote of confidence the people of South-west Washington have put in me and my campaign,“ Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement.The third district, which narrowly voted for Trump in 2020, had been represented for more than a decade by Republican Rep Jaime Herrera Beutler. But she failed to make it through the state’s top-two primary after angering conservatives with her vote to impeach Trump after the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.Schrier survived a challenge from Republican Matt Larkin to win a third term in the eighth district, which stretches from Seattle’s wealthy eastern ex-urbs across the Cascade Mountains to the orchard country of central Washington. Schrier, a pediatrician, in 2018 became the first Democrat to win the seat since its creation in the early 1980s.“I don’t know which party will control Congress, but it’s races like mine – the ones that are sitting on a razor’s edge – that flip one way or another,” Schrier told the Associated Press. “If more of them flip in this direction, that may mean we have the majority and set the agenda.”By flipping the third district, which Democrats had not held since former rep Brian Baird retired in 2010, the party will now have eight of Washington’s 10 congressional seats. Herrera Beutler won 22% of the vote in the primary, and how her voters split between Gluesenkamp Perez and Kent may have been the deciding factor in the race.Gluesenkamp Perez, who co-owns an auto shop with her husband just across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon, said that as a small business owner who lives in a rural part of the district, she was more in line with voters than Kent, who repeatedly had to explain his connections to rightwing extremists.Survivor winner Nick Wilson secures seat in Kentucky legislatureRead moreGluesenkamp Perez supports abortion access and policies to counter climate change, but also described herself as a gun owner who opposes an assault rifle ban, though she does support raising the age of purchase for such guns to 21. She wouldn’t be a “typical Democrat” in Congress, she said.Kent, a former Green Beret who is a regular on conservative cable and podcasts, has called for the impeachment of president Joe Biden and an investigation into the 2020 election. He’s also railed against Covid-19 shutdowns and vaccine mandates and has called to defund the FBI after the search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.In the eighth district, Schrier stressed results she has achieved, including helping to secure money for road projects, rural broadband access and police body cameras. She also emphasized that as the only female doctor in Congress who supports abortion rights, she’s a bulwark against any Republican efforts to restrict abortion nationally after the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. She called Larkin’s opposition to abortion rights disqualifying.Larkin is a lawyer and former Washington attorney general candidate who works for his family’s company, which makes parts for water pipes. Unlike more extreme Republican candidates, Larkin says Biden was legitimately elected, though he also notes that many people disagree and are frustrated about it. TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Washington stateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More