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      Texas attorney general impeached by Republican-led House in historic vote

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      Texas’ Republican-led House of Representatives impeached state attorney general Ken Paxton on Saturday on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust, a historic rebuke of a GOP official who rose to be a star of the conservative legal movement despite years of scandal and alleged crimes.Impeachment triggers Paxton’s immediate suspension from office pending the outcome of a trial in the state Senate and empowers Republican governor Greg Abbott to appoint someone else as Texas’ top lawyer in the interim.The 121-23 vote constitutes an abrupt downfall for one of the Republican party’s most prominent legal combatants, who in 2020 asked the US supreme court to overturn president Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump. It makes Paxton only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to have been impeached.Paxton, 60, decried the move moments after many members of his own party voted to impeach, and his office pointed to internal reports that found no wrongdoing.“The ugly spectacle in the Texas House today confirmed the outrageous impeachment plot against me was never meant to be fair or just,” Paxton said. “It was a politically motivated sham from the beginning,”Paxton has been under FBI investigation for years over accusations that he used his office to help a donor and was separately indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, though he has yet to stand trial. His fellow Republicans had long taken a muted stance on the allegations, but that changed this week.“No one person should be above the law, least not the top law enforcement officer of the state of Texas,” David Spiller, a Republican member of the committee that investigated Paxton, said in opening statements. Another Republican committee member Charlie Geren said without elaborating that Paxton had called some lawmakers before the vote and threatened them with political “consequences”.Lawmakers allied with Paxton tried to discredit the investigation by noting that hired investigators, not panel members, interviewed witnesses. They also said several of the investigators had voted in Democratic primaries, tainting the impeachment, and that they had too little time to review evidence.“I perceive it could be political weaponization,” Tony Tinderholt, one of the House’s most conservative members, said before the vote.Paxton is automatically suspended from office pending the Senate trial. Final removal would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, where Paxton’s wife, Angela, is a member.Representatives of the governor, who lauded Paxton while swearing him in for a third term in January, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on a temporary replacement.Before the vote on Saturday, Trump and senator Ted Cruz came to Paxton’s defense, with Cruz calling the impeachment process “a travesty” and saying the attorney general’s legal troubles should be left to the courts.“Free Ken Paxton,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, warning that if House Republicans proceeded with impeachment, “I will fight you.” More

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      Ex-NFL player Colin Allred launches challenge to Ted Cruz for Senate seat

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      The far-right Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz will be challenged for his seat next year by Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker who launched his campaign on Wednesday with a video referencing the January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters Cruz called “peaceful protesters”.“I’ve taken down a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz,” Allred said.Allred, 40, played college football for Baylor in Texas then played 32 games for the Tennessee Titans between 2007 and 2010. He entered Congress in 2019, a rare Democrat in red Texas. He has increased his majority since.Democrats control the Senate but face a tough elections map in 2024. A pick-up in Texas would be a shock but would boost activists who insist the state is turning towards progressives.On 6 January 2021, Trump supporters urged on by the then president and Republican allies including Cruz attacked Congress in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win, which Trump baselessly claimed was the result of electoral fraud.In his announcement video, Allred took Cruz to task for being one of 147 Republicans who objected to election results even after the riot, which is now linked to nine deaths including law enforcement suicides, and for confessing to hiding in a closet during the attack.“When I left the NFL,” Allred said, walking on a football field, “I thought my days of putting people on the ground were over. Then, January 6 happened.“I remember hearing the glass breaking and the shouts coming closer. I texted my wife: ‘Whatever happens, I love you.’ Then I took off my jacket and got ready to take on anyone who came through that door.“And Ted Cruz? He cheered on the mob. Then hid in a supply closet when they stormed the Capitol. But that’s Ted for you. All hat, no cattle.”Allred also targeted Cruz for a famous flight to Cancun when Texas fell under a big freeze amid widespread power failures, and for perceived policy failings, before telling his own life story.On Twitter, Allred added: “I’ve taken down a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz, but I can’t do this without your help.”Now 53, Cruz entered Congress in 2013. In 2016 he ran second to Trump in the Republican presidential primary. Initially a hold-out against the billionaire, who insulted his wife and father, like most of the rest of the party Cruz soon came onside. Paul Manafort, a former Trump aide, has said Trump gave Cruz a rare apology.In the usually collegial Senate, Cruz is famously unpopular. Al Franken, the former Democratic senator from Minnesota, once said: “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”In 2018, the last time Cruz ran for re-election, he faced a strong challenge from Beto O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman. Cruz won by less than three points.Speaking to the Dallas Morning News, Allred said Texas “can’t afford six more years of Ted Cruz”.He added: “The political extremism that we are becoming increasingly known for is a real risk to our business community and our path forward. It’s making some folks say they don’t want to send their kids to school in our state. We can go in a different direction.” More

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      Republican Ted Cruz introduces bill to block US supreme court expansion

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      The Republican senator Ted Cruz, whose party defied convention to delay then rush conservatives on to the supreme court, has introduced a constitutional amendment to stop Democrats expanding the court in response.“The Democrats’ answer to a supreme court that is dedicated to upholding the rule of law and the constitution is to pack it with liberals who will rule the way they want,” Cruz said.“The supreme court should be independent, not inflated by every new administration. That’s why I’ve introduced a constitutional amendment to permanently keep the number of justices at nine.”There is no constitutional provision for how many justices sit on the court.Democrats say the current court is not independent of the Republican party.In 2016, when the conservative Antonin Scalia died Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, held the seat open until a Republican president, Donald Trump, could replace a Democrat, Barack Obama, and nominate Scalia’s replacement. Neil Gorsuch filled that seat.In 2020, Democrats were helpless again when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, died shortly before the presidential election and McConnell changed course, rushing Amy Coney Barrett on to the court before Trump lost to Joe Biden.Those changes and the replacement of the retiring Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh produced a court dominated, 6-3, by conservatives.Conservative justices including Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas have claimed not to be influenced by political considerations.Coney Barrett notably did so, saying the court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”, while standing next to McConnell at a political studies centre named for the Republican leader.Among conservative rulings passed down by the new super-majority, a May 2022 decision saw the court side with Cruz in a case concerning personal loans to campaigns. The three liberal justices said the ruling paved the way for corruption.But the Dobbs decision of last year, removing the right to abortion, most enraged Democrats and progressives.On the left, plans have been floated to increase the size of the court and thereby redress its ideological balance.Writing for the Guardian last year, David Daley, author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, said: “The court’s hard-right majority has neither popular support for its agenda nor institutional legitimacy.“It is the product of a hostile takeover of the courts 50 years in the planning by conservatives who have long understood that unpopular policies … can be thrust upon Americans by an unaccountable and unelected judiciary.“The court must be expanded and reformed to counter a rightwing power play that threatens to remake American democracy and life itself.”Biden ordered a commission to study options for reform. It found bipartisan support for term limits for justices but reported “profound disagreement” on whether the court should be expanded. Biden has said he is “not a fan” of expanding the court.Cruz’s amendment has little chance of passing a Democratic-held Senate but 10 Republican senators supported it nonetheless.Josh Hawley of Missouri said: “For years the left has been desperate to pack the court to promote their radical agenda. We must ensure that we stay true to the court’s founding principles, maintain the precedent of nine justices, and keep the Democrats from their brazen attempts to rig our democracy.” More

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      What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossip

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      What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossipThe gathering of conservatives returns to Washington and could prove to be a crystal ball into the GOP’s 2024 outlookIts impresario is facing allegations of sexual assault. Its headline act is a twice impeached former US president under criminal investigation. And its after-dinner speaker is a local news anchor turned far-right election denier.Classified Trump schedules were moved to Mar-a-Lago after FBI search – sourcesRead moreWelcome to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which claims to be the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world. It is also a perennial window to the soul of the Republican party.After going on the road to Florida and Texas because of their more relaxed coronavirus pandemic restrictions, CPAC returns to the Washington area on Wednesday for the first time since 2020, offering a four-day festival of political incorrectness, Maga merchandise and Joe Biden-slamming bombast.But this time the cavernous corridors of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, will fill with chatter about the Republican presidential primary in 2024 – and gossip about CPAC’s own organiser and public face, Matt Schlapp.An unnamed Republican staffer has filed a lawsuit accusing Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, of groping his genitals as he drove Schlapp to a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, last October. The man, who is in his late 30s, is seeking nearly $9.4m in damages in a complaint that included screenshots of purported text messages.Schlapp strenuously denies the allegation. Last month he tweeted a statement from lawyer Charlie Spies that said: “The complaint is false, and the Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress due to the false allegation from an anonymous individual.”Schlapp, who was director of political affairs in the George W Bush White House, is an influential supporter of former president Donald Trump. His wife, Mercedes Schlapp, served as Trump’s communications director between 2017 and 2019. The lineup of CPAC speakers announced so far suggests that the Schlapps remain firmly in Trump’s camp as he campaigns to win back the presidency in 2024.That lineup also includes Trump allies such as former housing secretary Ben Carson, senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz, representatives Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronny Jackson, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Elise Stefanik, former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, ex-White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Truth Social chief executive Devin Nunes.Then there is Trump’s son, Don Jr, his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle – infamous for hollering “The best is yet to come!” at the 2020 Republican national convention – and the main event: a speech by Trump himself that will be akin to an indoor campaign rally.It is a chorus that will try to make the case that reports of Trump losing his grip on the Republican base after seven years have been greatly exaggerated. But the 76-year-old celebrity businessman, whose electability has been questioned after last year’s midterms, will not have it all his own way.CPAC will also hear from both of his officially declared Republican primary rivals in next year’s presidential race so far: Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state and potential candidate, will also speak. Each address will be closely analysed for veiled critiques of Trump – and for applause and cheers, boos and heckles, or polite indifference from the crowd.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, believes that it would be a “massive mistake strategically” for hopefuls to tiptoe around Trump. “How do you expect to beat a guy if you’re not willing to talk about him directly and contrast yourself with him?” he said. “You’re not giving the voters a reason to change the channel.”CPAC’s tweets mockingly point out that Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House of Representatives, and Joy Behar, a comedian and co-host of television’s The View, have not been invited to the conference. But a more striking absence, at least according to what has been announced so far, is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, widely seen as the most credible threat to Trump.Rick Wilson, who attended many CPACs before cofounding the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “DeSantis is not going: I think that’s because Schlapp, like many other Republicans, has made the probably correct calculus that Ron DeSantis is an overpriced stock and Donald Trump is still the best known quantity in the Republican party.”Florida-based Wilson, who has met DeSantis in person and found him to have to the “charisma of a toaster oven”, argues that the current audience for the governor falls into three groups. “Culture war weirdos who believe this whole ‘woke’ thing, which is a meaningful but not enormous part of the party. National Review writers who are desperate, desperate, desperate, desperate, desperate for anything other than Trump so they can say, ‘See, we’re past that. We can go back to normal.’“I have some bad news for them. Nobody’s ever inviting them back in the room in the Republican party of tomorrow, just as nobody’s ever inviting guys like me back in the room. It’s over. The party’s run by the mob, not by the intellectuals, and it’s never going to go back. Once a movement becomes a populist movement dominated by the grassroots of the base, it never goes back to being a thoughtful, intellectually driven movement.”The third and final group, he added, “are liberal Republican hedge fund billionaires from New York. The open borders, globalist US Chamber of Commerce are going out of their way to help DeSantis! The irony is DeSantis thinks he can have the most elite support and then trick the Maga base into thinking he’s a rah-rah like Trump. It just defies imagination.”CPAC traditionally ends with a less than scientific “straw poll” of attendees’ preferences for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump has dominated it for years. Last summer in Dallas, Texas, he won with 69% of the vote, ahead of DeSantis on 24%. Anything other than a victory for Trump next week would cause political shockwaves.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who estimates that he attended four of five CPACs, said: “Trump and DeSantis will be the number one and two in the poll. Haley and Pompeo and anybody else who might speak at CPAC right now has no shot, no chance, no nothing. It’s the party of Trumpism and Trumpism will be reflected in CPAC.”Border security, crime, culture wars and parents’ rights are likely to feature prominently at the conference. CPAC’s Twitter bio has the hashtags “#AwakeNotWoke” and “#FirePelosiSaveAmerica” – an outdated reference to the retired House speaker. CPAC’s website promotes a documentary entitled The Culture Killers with the warning: “The woke wars are coming to a neighborhood near you.”CPAC will also give the biggest platform yet to growing dissent in the nativist wing of the Republican party over US support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, roughly $50bn and rising. Biden is likely to face criticism for having travelled to Kyiv in the same week that Trump headed to the scene of a toxic train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.A group of Trump-aligned Republicans led by Gaetz recently introduced a “Ukraine fatigue” resolution calling for an end to military and financial aid to the embattled nation. Greene tweeted this week, “Ukraine is the new Iraq”, while DeSantis condemned the aid as an “open-ended blank cheque”, telling Fox News: “The fear of Russia going into Nato countries and all that, and steamrolling, that has not even come close to happening.”Walsh predicted: “You’ll hear anti-support for Ukraine, pro-Russia, pro-Putin, take care of our borders. You’ll hear that isolationist build-a-wall-around-America attitude at CPAC because that is an animating force now in the party. I doubt Nikki Haley, who is not an isolationist, will even talk about Ukraine, because that’s not what the people in that auditorium want to hear.”Ronald Reagan spoke at the first CPAC in 1974 and towered over it for years. A showpiece dinner is named in the 40th president’s honour, though it might be argued that CPAC has drifted far from his views on immigration, Russia and the definition of conservatism itself. This year Kari Lake, a former TV host who ran for governor of Arizona last year and still refuses to accept her defeat, is the featured speaker at the Reagan dinner.Bardella, who attended CPAC when he was previously a Republican congressional aide, said: “I remember a CPAC that had keynotes from figures like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty and Paul Ryan. Now we’re seeing figures like Donald Trump and Sean Spicer and, in the past, Steve Bannon.“CPAC at one point in time thought of itself as the establishment conservative cattle call for presidential candidates and now it’s become completely overrun by the extremists and the fringe who are the new establishment of the Republican party. There was a time where someone with the last name Cheney would be welcomed as a hero at an event like CPAC. Now someone with the last name Cheney is considered an enemy of the Republican party.”Another familiar CPAC staple is an exhibitors’ hall where conservative groups promote their work, sell books and seek recruits. Ronald Solomon, president of the Maga Mall, a clothing and merchandising company, will be there as always. Speaking from his home near Palm Beach, Florida, he said his range contains about a hundred Trump or Trump-related hats, compared to around eight for DeSantis.“After that lacklustre midterm he waned a little bit but now the popularity is coming back,” he said. “I am convinced that Trump will be the nominee.”TopicsCPACDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisWashington DCJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Ted Cruz wants two-term limit for senators – and a third term for himself

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      Ted Cruz wants two-term limit for senators – and a third term for himselfTexas senator says he ‘never said I’m going to unilaterally comply’ with his own proposed restriction Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to limit US senators to two terms in office, thereby removing from Washington what he calls “permanently entrenched politicians … totally unaccountable to the American people”.Buttigieg backs Biden 2024 run but poll says most Americans don’tRead moreOn Sunday, however, he said he saw no problem with running for a third term himself.“I’ve never said I’m going to unilaterally comply,” the Texas senator said.Cruz was speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation.Elected to the US Senate in 2012, Cruz emerged as a face of the Republican hard right through stunts including reading Dr Seuss and impersonating Darth Vader during a marathon floor speech and prompting a government shutdown.Such behaviour did not make him popular in Congress. Al Franken, then a Democratic senator, once said, “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”Nonetheless, Cruz challenged strongly for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, finishing the primary second to Donald Trump.After a brief spell as a rightwing alternative to Trump, Cruz won a second term in 2018 despite a strong challenge from the Democrat Beto O’Rourke.Cruz’s name now features, if not strongly, in polling regarding the notional field for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 – when he will be up for Senate re-election.Congressional term limits are a popular policy offering on the American right.Introducing his bill to achieve a constitutional amendment, an effort mounted with Ralph Norman, a House Republican from South Carolina, Cruz said term limits were “critical to fixing what’s wrong with Washington DC”.Bemoaning “a government run by a small group of special interests and lifelong, permanently entrenched politicians … totally unaccountable to the American people”, he said: “Terms limits brings about accountability that is long overdue”.On Sunday, his CBS host, Margaret Brennan, said: “You introduced a bill to limit terms to two six-year terms in office for senators. Why aren’t you holding yourself to that standard? You said you’re running for a third term.”Cruz said: “Well, listen, I’m a passionate defender of term limits. I think that Congress would work much better if every senator were limited to two terms, if every House member were limited to three terms. I’ve introduced a constitutional amendment to put that into the constitution.”Brennan said: “But you’re still running.”Cruz said: “And if and when [the term limits amendment] passes I will happily, happily comply. I’ve never said I’m going to unilaterally comply. I’ll tell you what, when the socialists and when the swamp …”Brennan interrupted, asking: “Are you running for president?”Cruz carried on, saying “… are ready to leave Washington, I will be more than happy to comply by the same rules that apply for every one. But until then, I’m going to keep fighting for 30 million Texans because they’ve asked me to do” so.Brennan said: “I think you’ve heard me ask if you’re running for president.”Cruz said: “I’m running for re-election to the Senate. There’s a reason I’m in Texas today. I’m not in Iowa, I’m in Texas, and I’m fighting for 30 million Texans.”In 2018, 4.26 million Texans voted to send Cruz back to the Senate. More than 4 million voted to restrict him to one term.TopicsTed CruzRepublicansUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsTexasnewsReuse this content More

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      As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaigns

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      As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaignsRepublicans vying for the party’s nomination have taken the ex-president’s midterm losses as a sign for them to step up Potential rivals to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will this week be reading the runes of political fortune with their families ahead of the New Year – typically the time that nomination contenders begin to make themselves formally apparent.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreAmid a lackluster start to Trump’s own campaign and a string of scandals and setbacks to hit the former US president due to his links to far-right extremists and his own legal problems, a field of potential rivals is starting to emerge for a contest that only a few months ago many thought was Trump’s alone for the taking.They include multiple ex-members of Trump’s own cabinet, including his own former vice-president, his former UN ambassador and his former spy chief. Adding to that are a raft of rivals with their own political power bases, such as Florida’s increasingly formidable right-wing governor, Ron DeSantis.Now the hints of ambitions to taking on Trump are coming thick and fast, especially in the wake of the defeat of a host of Trump-backed candidates in November’s midterm elections which have triggered a reckoning with Trump’s grip on the Republican party.“I can tell you that my wife and I will take some time when our kids are home this Christmas – we’re going to give prayerful consideration about what role we might play,” former vice-president Mike Pence, 63, told CBS’ Face the Nation last month.Maryland’s term-limited Republican governor Larry Hogan, and Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor and US ambassador to the UN, have said the holidays would also be a time for deliberation.“We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is,” Haley said in November. Hogan, a fierce critic of Trump, told CBS last week “it won’t be shocking if I were to bring the subject up” with his family during the break. Come January, he said, he would begin taking advice to “try to figure out what the future is”.“I don’t feel any pressure or any rush to make a decision … things are gonna look completely different three months from now or six months from now than they did today,” Hogan, 66, added.Others in the running are also readily apparent. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s team has reached out to potential campaign staff in early primary states, the Washington Post reported over the weekend. “We figured by the first quarter next year, we need to be hard at it if we’re going to do it,” Pompeo, 58, said in an interview with Fox News.Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is reportedly talking to donors to determine his ability to fund the 18-month “endurance race” of a nomination process. Hutchinson has said that Trump’s early declaration, on 15 November, had “accelerated everyone’s time frame”.“So the first quarter of next year, you either need to be in or out,” the outgoing, 72-year-old governor told NBC News earlier this month.New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, 48, said this week he doesn’t believe Trump could win in 2024. He’s voiced concerns that the Republican party could repeat the nomination experience of 2016, when he was a contender, when a large, divided field allowed Trump’s “ drain the swamp” insurgent candidacy to triumph.“We just have to find another candidate at this point,” Sununu told CBS News. While Trump could be the Republican nominee, he added, he’s “not going to be able to close the deal”.Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, 56, has said he’s “humbled” to be part of the 2024 discussions but in the convention of most candidates, he’s focused on his day job.Youngkin telegraphed his fiscal conservative credentials to wider Republican big-money interests by pushing $4bn in tax cuts through the Virginia legislature and meeting with party megadonors in Manhattan in June.“2024 is a long way away,” he recently told Fox News. “We’ll see what happens”.Helping to break the gender-lock on potential candidates is also South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Her name has emerged as a potential Trump running mate, but she recently said he did not present “the best chance” for Republicans in 2024.“Our job is not just to talk to people who love Trump or hate Trump,” Noem, 51, told the New York Times in November. “Our job is to talk to every single American.”The biggest dog in the potential race – aside from Trump himself – is by far Florida’s DeSantis, who recently won re-election in his state by a landslide. Some of the Republican party’s biggest donors have already transferred their favors from Trump, 78, toward the 44-year-old governor.Republican mega donor and billionaire Ken Griffin, who moved his hedge fund Citadel from Chicago to Miami last year, described Trump as a “three-time loser” to Bloomberg a day after the former president’s declaration.“I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s a huge personal decision,” Griffin said of DeSantis. “He has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well-served by him as president.”Similarly, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private-equity giant Blackstone, told Axios he was withdrawing his support from Trump for 2024 but stopped short of backing DeSantis. “America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” he said. “It is time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders.”DeSantis has yet to rule a run in or out, but has signaled his interest by beginning to plant ads on Google and Facebook that target an audience beyond Florida.But in the post-midterm political environment, with Trump-backed candidates performing poorly in most contests, and the former president besieged by investigations and questions about his associations, the running is open.Maryland’s Hogan has described Trump as vulnerable, and “he seems to be dropping every day”. Hutchinson has said “you never know when that early front-runner is going to stumble”. Polls suggest Trump trails DeSantis in a nomination head-to-head, but leads over Pence and Haley.Other potential names in the pot include Texas governor Greg Abbott, 65; Florida senator Rick Scott, also 65; former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, 60; and Texas senator Ted Cruz, 52, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2016.In a provocatively titled “OK Boomers, Let Go of the Presidency” column last week, former George W Bush advisor Karl Rove warned that 2024 may resemble 1960 when voters were ready for a generational shift. In that year, they went for the youngest in the field, John F Kennedy, aged 43.“Americans want leaders who focus on the future,” Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “The country would be better off if each party’s standard bearer came from a new generation … It’s time for the baby boomers and their elders to depart the presidential stage. The party that grasps this has the advantage come 2024”.TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpRon DeSantisUS politicsNikki HaleyMike PompeoMike PencefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Ted Cruz took refuge in supply closet during January 6 riot, book reveals

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      Ted Cruz took refuge in supply closet during January 6 riot, book revealsTexas senator wrote he ‘vehemently disagreed’ with colleagues’ call to allow certification of 2020 election As a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.Cruz revealed his whereabouts on the day of the deadly Capitol attack – which unsuccessfully aimed to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election – in a new book. The news was first reported by Newsweek.The book – titled Justice Corrupted – recounts how Cruz was listening to his colleague James Lankford of Oklahoma speak in the Senate chamber when a terrible commotion erupted outside. Capitol police rushed in to escort Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom the mob wanted to hang, off the dais, and the session was paused.“In the fog of the confusion, it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening,” Cruz wrote. “We were informed that a riot had broken out and that rioters were attempting to breach the building.“At first, Capitol Police instructed us to remain on the Senate floor. And so we did. Then, a few minutes later, they instructed us to evacuate rapidly.”Cruz said he was met with hot tempers after he and his fellow senators were led to a secure location, with some blaming him and his allies in the chamber “explicitly for the violence that was occurring”. After all, Cruz was among those who had helped spread the ousted Republican president’s lies that the election had been stolen from him, fueling the mob that now was invading the Capitol.“While we waited for the Capitol to be secured, I assembled our coalition in a back room (really, a supply closet with stacked chairs) to discuss what we should do next,” Cruz continued, according to Newsweek.Cruz said several of those in his coalition wanted to suspend their objections to the certification, but he “vehemently disagreed”.“I understood the sentiment,” Cruz added. “But … I urged my colleagues that the course of action we were advocating was the right and principled one.”Cruz later was one of just six Republican senators who voted against certifying Trump’s electoral college defeat in Arizona. He was one of seven GOP senators who voted against certifying Trump’s electoral college loss in Pennsylvania.Such stances have helped make Cruz unpalatable in some quarters. He attended a baseball playoff game Sunday between his home state’s Houston Astros and the New York Yankees in the Bronx.One cellphone video showed New York fans roundly booing Cruz, flipping him off and cursing him out, including one who called him a “loser,” before the Astros won and eliminated the Yankees.Officials have since linked nine deaths, including suicides among traumatized law enforcement officers, to the Capitol attack. More than 900 rioters have been charged in connection with the attack, some with seditious conspiracy.In a series of televised hearings this year, a bipartisan US House committee has publicly aired evidence seeking to establish that Trump had a direct role in the Capitol attack. That committee recently issued a subpoena to the former president ordering him to testify before the panel as well as produce documents.Cruz’s term doesn’t end until 2025, meaning his office is not at risk during the 8 November midterm elections in which Biden’s fellow Democrats are trying to preserve thin numerical advantages in both congressional chambers.TopicsTed CruzUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      White House says Ted Cruz voted against highway project he touted as ‘victory’

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      White House says Ted Cruz voted against highway project he touted as ‘victory’Texas Republican hails ‘Ports to Plains’ highway he co-sponsored – but which was in spending bill he refused to back The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz called a new highway project “a great bipartisan victory” that will bring “jobs to Texas and millions of dollars to the state”.Democrats will struggle to keep control of Congress in midterms, expert saysRead moreThe White House responded: “Senator Cruz voted against this.”A spokesperson for Cruz said the senator “made it possible” – but did not contest that Cruz voted against the $1.5tn spending package which contained the highway project.With Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, Cruz co-sponsored an amendment adding the Ports to Plains highway project to the spending bill earlier this year.Earlier this month, Cruz tweeted: “The Ports to Plains highway will run from Laredo all the way up to North Dakota and into Canada. This project will bring jobs to Texas and millions of dollars to the state. A great bipartisan victory!”After the White House hit back, an anchor for KAMC News, a Texas TV station whose interview Cruz used in his tweet, shared footage of a follow-up question.Ryan Chandler asked: “Why shepherd this federal highway designation through the process and then end up voting against the actual legislation that put it into law?”Cruz said: “That happens frequently in the United States Senate, where you end up working to get agreement and to pass a particular piece of legislation, but then it gets rolled into a giant bill that has a whole bunch of good things and bad things.“There have been dozens of different pieces of legislation that I wrote, that I got support for, that I got passed into law, but the ultimate vehicle they got stuck into had other elements that were bad and wasteful and didn’t make sense, so I’d vote against the giant mess of a bill but at the same time, enact the legislative victory that’s focused on jobs in the state of Texas.”The other Texas US senator, John Cornyn, voted for the spending bill. He said then: “The Senate has the responsibility not just to keep the lights on but also to make critical investments in our country.“… Despite its flaws, despite the crazy process by which we find ourselves here voting on this $1.5tn appropriation bill, notwithstanding all the reasons I could cite why maybe I should vote against it, I think there’s enough good in this bill to support it.”On Wednesday, Cruz’s spokesperson stuck to Republican midterms messaging when he called the appropriation bill “a Democrat spending spree that contributed to an economic recession for American families”.But Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, was happy to offer Cruz “a civics lesson”.“When you vote ‘NO’ on legislation it means … wait for it … you DO NOT SUPPORT the bill, therefore you should not take credit for something you didn’t vote for and support.”TopicsTed CruzTexasUS politicsnewsReuse this content More