US midterm elections 2022

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      Republican senator says tax rises in own plan are ‘Democratic talking points’

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      Republican senator says tax rises in own plan are ‘Democratic talking points’Rick Scott of Florida grilled on Fox News Sunday about suggested income tax rise and letting social security and Medicare fall A Republican senator and reputed presidential hopeful found himself in a tough spot when he claimed tax rises contained in his own “11 point plan to rescue America” were “Democratic talking points” instead.‘Rick Scott had us on lockdown’: how Florida said no to $70m for HIV crisisRead more“No, no, it’s in the plan!” his interviewer exclaimed, on Fox News Sunday. “It’s in the plan!”Rick Scott, from Florida, is a former healthcare chief executive whose company admitted 14 felonies related to fraudulent practices. As the South Florida Sun-Sentinel put it, “most happened under Scott’s leadership”.As the Guardian reported, when Scott was governor of Florida “his administration presided over the effective blocking of $70m in federal funds available for fighting the state’s HIV crisis”.Scott beat an incumbent Democrat for a Senate seat in 2018 and is now chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) as the party eyes a Senate takeover in the midterm elections.Last month, Scott released an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America”. It proposes that more Americans pay federal income tax and says Congress could “sunset” social security and Medicare within five years, meaning allow them to lapse.The plan immediately came under fire.The non-partisan Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep) said Scott’s plan “would increase taxes by more than $1,000 on average for the poorest 40% of Americans”.Itep also noted the effect Scott’s plan would have on Republican heartlands, saying the states most affected, “where more than 40% of residents would face tax increases, are … Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia, New Mexico, South Carolina and … Florida”.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, disowned the plan, saying: “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, said Scott had given Democrats a much-needed election-year gift.“All Democrats need do,” he wrote, regarding a plan which would also cut trade with China and slash tax-gathering resources, “is repeat Scott’s own words.”The Fox News Sunday host John Roberts asked Scott: “Why would you propose something like that in an election year?”Scott said Roberts was repeating “Democrat talking points”.“No, no, it’s in the plan!” Roberts said. “It’s in the plan!”Scott said: “But here’s the thing about reality for a second.”Roberts said: “But, Senator, hang on. It’s not a Democratic talking point! It’s in the plan!”Scott defended his plan, saying, “We ought to every year talk about exactly how we are going to fix Medicare and social security” but “no one that I know of wants to sunset” either.“Here’s what’s unfair,” he added, of his tax plan. “We have people that … could go to work and have figured out how to have government pay their way. That’s not right. They ought to have some skin in the game. I don’t care if it’s a dollar. We ought to all be in this together.”Scott is reportedly Donald Trump’s choice to replace McConnell as Senate leader – an effort that shows no sign of succeeding.Scott was asked if, with a Wall Street Journal column entitled “Why I’m Defying Beltway Cowardice”, he was calling McConnell a coward. He dodged the question, saying he wanted “to get something done”.Complaining about “the woke left” and Democratic policy on immigration and energy, he said: “We’ve got to change this. You don’t change it without having a plan.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansUS taxationUS domestic policyUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump heads to Georgia in high-stakes bid to shape Republican primaries

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      Trump heads to Georgia in high-stakes bid to shape Republican primariesEx-president plans rally after endorsing candidates seeking to replace leaders who rejected his election lie Donald Trump’s continuing effort to bend national Republican candidates to his will and the party to do his bidding faces a test in the key state of Georgia on Saturday as the former president holds a score-settling rally there in support of candidates who could boost any future re-election agenda.Trump’s presence in the state comes 18 months after he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, a conversation that is now the subject of a grand jury investigation in Atlanta.The loss, which made Trump the first Republican presidential candidate to lose the state in 28 years, continues to rankle the former president, and he has endorsed the state congressman Jody Hice in his challenge to Raffensperger. He also backed other candidates in the state against establishment Republicans, including David Perdue against the sitting governor, Brian Kemp.It follows a similar pattern in other states where Trump has held or plans to hold rallies as a way of showing support for Republican candidates who have offered him their fealty.Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the culture warRead moreSaturday’s rally in Commerce, 70 miles north-east of Atlanta and one of the most conservative parts of the state, is expected to feature Herschel Walker, a former football player running for the US Senate; Perdue; and the congressional candidate Vernon Jones, a former Democratic state representative who began calling himself the “Black Donald Trump” after switching parties.But Trump is playing a high-stakes game and his candidates’ success in Georgia’s May primaries is far from guaranteed.Walker is slightly ahead of the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in RealClearPolitics polling averages, but Jones, who dropped a bid for the governorship in February, faces a crowded Republican field for the conservative 10th congressional district, which covers part of east Georgia.Trump’s pick for governor, Perdue, faces an even more complex struggle. He has struggled to raise campaign money and trails incumbent Brian Kemp by 11 points, according to a Fox News poll.Perdue has toed Trump’s false line of a “stolen” 2020 election and begun claiming that his defeat to the Democratic senator Jon Ossoff, to whom he conceded in January, was also problematic. “Most people in Georgia know that something untoward happened in November 2020,” he told the talk radio host Bryan Pritchard. “I’ll just say it, Bryan. In my election and the president’s election, they were stolen. The evidence is compelling now.”‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracyRead moreThe Perdue-Kemp contest represents a personal grudge for Trump, which flared after Kemp after refused to support his bid overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result.Trump has also sought to undermine the governor by backing Patrick Witt, who supported Trump’s election challenge, against John King, who is Georgia’s first Latino statewide constitutional officer and a Kemp loyalist. Witt is running against King in the Republican primary for state insurance commissioner. But the larger question is how far Trump’s influence extends in shaping Georgia’s Republican politics. To some, the former president’s endorsement power is diminishing in the state.“He will not be a help to Trump-endorsed candidates when he comes on Saturday,” the conservative commentator Martha Zoller told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week. “He will be negative and backward looking – and that’s not what voters want.”Some Republican pollsters said that while Trump’s endorsement was coveted, he had diluted his influence by reaching far down the ballot or supporting late-entry candidates with little public recognition or campaign apparatus.TopicsDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the culture war

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      Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the culture war Abortion bans, anti-LGBTQ laws, book bans – the party sees hot button issues as a tried and test path to victory. Democrats ignore it at their peril, experts say“Sue-thy-neighbour” laws that ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in Texas and now Idaho. A “don’t say gay” bill censoring discussion of sexual orientation in schools in Florida. A ban on Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, by a school board in Tennessee.America’s national government might be under Democratic control but its red states are on the march with sweeping laws targeting abortion, LGBTQ+ people and the teaching of race in schools that threaten to turn back the clock to an era when a citizen’s rights depended on where they lived.Republicans to field more than 100 far-right candidates this yearRead moreThe offensive on cultural hot button issues also appears calculated to ensure that November’s midterm elections will be contested on a playing field of rightwing outrage. Democrats argue that Republicans resort to such territory in lieu of policy substance.“There’s no serious agenda on the Republican side,” said Donna Brazile, a former acting chairperson of the Democratic National Committee. “It’s the same choir that had the same anthem from the 60s through the last election cycle. Without an agenda, without a leader, without a way forward, you have to rely on the old hits. It’s no longer on vinyl; it’s digital.”Although President Donald Trump lost the White House and Republicans lost both chambers of Congress in 2020, Trumpism is thriving in the 30 states where Republicans have legislative control. Under Trump’s continued influence, they are exploiting wedge issues as never before.Last year seven states imposed new restrictions on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the biggest such wave of legislation since the supreme court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973.A law in Texas bans abortion after a doctor detects an embryonic heartbeat – usually around six weeks – and allows private citizens to sue clinics, doctors and anyone else accused of helping provide such abortions in the state. In the month after it took effect the number of abortions reported in Texas fell by 60%, with many women travelling to neighbouring states.Deep red Idaho this week passed a similar measure, a six-week restriction again relying on private citizens to enforce the law. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “We’re right back in the Soviet era with neighbours and family members snitching on neighbours and family members. That’s unbelievable.”Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee are considering similar proposals, while earlier this month Florida’s Republican-led legislature sent a 15-week abortion ban to Governor Ron DeSantis for signature.Republican state legislatures have also launched what the Human Rights Campaign, America’s biggest LGBTQ advocacy group, describes as the worst attack on LGBTQ+ rights in decades. A record of more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced this year, it says, with 130-plus specifically targeting transgender people.The HRC describes the legislation as part of a coordinated effort by powerful interests promoted by rightwing entities such as the Heritage Foundation. “These groups peddle in fear and pit people against each other to marginalize and punish LGBTQ+ people – and especially transgender children.”Among the most egregious examples is Florida legislation dubbed “don’t say gay” that would bar instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in schools from kindergarten through grade 3. Its dog-whistling impulse was evident when Christina Pushaw, press secretary for DeSantis, tweeted: “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘don’t say gay’ would be more accurately described as an anti-grooming bill.”Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said: “We’re looking at one of the worst legislative sessions for LGBTQ issues ever in terms of volume of bills introduced.”“Almost all of them are targeting transgender youth, whether that’s through bans on trans students being able to play school sports consistent with their gender identity, bans on trans youth being able to access gender-affirming medical care, bans on trans students being able to use the correct restroom in school.”Oakley added: “The ‘don’t say gay or trans’ bill lives at the intersection of this huge effort to attack LGBTQ but particularly trans youth and the movement that we’ve seen resurrected in the recent years that’s about surveilling teachers and censoring curriculum, whether that’s talking about critical race theory, about what’s in the sex ed class or about banning books.”In Tennessee, the McMinn county school board removed Maus, a Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum because of “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman (actually a cartoon mouse). The state’s governor, Bill Lee, then proposed a law for closer scrutiny of school libraries so students consume “age appropriate” content.Tennessee also banned the teaching of a critical race theory (CRT), an academic discipline that examines how racism becomes embedded in legal systems but has been caricatured by Republicans as a divisive anti-white ideology.Eight other Republican-led states – Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona and North Dakota – had also passed legislation against the teaching of CRT as of last November, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, with nearly 20 states introducing or planning to introduce similar legislation.Brookings also noted that the conservative Fox News channel had mentioned “critical race theory” 1,300 times in less than four months. CRT was a frequently cited bogeyman at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, which was themed “Awake not woke” – a sure sign of its potential to energise and rile up the base for electoral purposes.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at Brookings and former Bill Clinton administration official, said: “There were some very good things about the old Republican party. Now it’s a party of racists and homophobes and people pursuing bizarre cultural things. It’s just crazy.“They’re a bankrupt party and yet they manage to do well on these kinds of issues because people get emotional about them and don’t really understand or in fact care about the economic issues. Democrats have been tone deaf thinking that the economic issues will always trump the cultural issues. They don’t.”For Republicans, this week’s Senate judiciary committee hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed to be as much as about campaigning for the 2022 midterms, which will decide control of the House of Representatives and Senate, as the first Black woman nominated to the supreme court.Dwelling on CRT, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas held up the book Antiracist Baby by Ibram X Kendi and demanded: “Do you agree… that babies are racist?” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Jackson replied: “I can’t … I’m not a biologist.”Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump group Lincoln Project, said: “The Scotus [supreme court] nomination hearings this week were a window into the Republican party’s strategy going into midterms and 2024. They have no policy agenda. They are strictly focused on culture war wedge issues because they’ve had success energising their base with them and the people who are leading the charge are fundamentally unserious people.“Senator Mitch McConnell has already said that he’s not releasing a policy agenda. There’s a reason for that. Culture war politics can work and Democrats run the risk of underestimating how powerful and energising this tactic of politicking can be. They underestimate it at their own peril.”What links many hot button issues is children. Whether unborn or at school, they are portrayed by Republicans as vulnerable to sinister forces aligned with Democrats and leftwing militants. Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, set up a tip line so parents could send “reports and observations” about perceived objectionable conduct by teachers and school staff.The appeal to parental instincts rather than to policy judgments was accelerated by frustrations over mask mandates and school closures during the coronavirus pandemic.Setmayer, a political commentator and former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Some of the issues speak to the fundamental desire to protect your children. There’s a reason why Republicans for decades have always included getting involved at the school board level as part of their grassroots playbook.“Any time you frame a political issue around children, you can activate voters who may not have been activated before because they want to make sure that their children are safe. It becomes a more righteous issue; it’s not just about them in their minds.”Not all Republicans are on board. This week Indiana’s governor, Eric Holcomb, and Governor Spencer Cox of Utah vetoed legislation that would bar transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports at school. But such voices remain in the minority, with the Trump-dominated party only likely to become more aggressive on hot button issues as the polls draw closer.Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: “At this point Democrats are in some ways dismissing it as well as though they think people will see through it and I think that’s a big mistake.“They need to fight this head on, counter these arguments, make things clear, try to redefine things like so-called critical race theory and explain the reasons why they support teaching this kind of historical perspective in schools and why it’s necessary, and why abortion has been legal for so long and what’s happening to it now.”She added: “They need to do the same kind of call to arms that Republicans are doing but on the liberal side, and I don’t see them doing that at this point. I see them resting on their laurels to a certain extent, targeting specific districts. It’s all about strategy but they’re not getting at the heart of the matter.”TopicsUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Star Trek makes Stacey Abrams president of United Earth – and stokes conservative anger

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      Star Trek makes Stacey Abrams president of United Earth – and stokes conservative angerNational Review says candidate for governor in Georgia and self-confessed superfan does not deserve fictional title The Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams has been made president – of United Earth.‘Champion for Alaska’: Don Young, longest-serving House Republican, dies at 88 Read moreThe honour, which a leading conservative website said Abrams did not deserve, was bestowed by the Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Discovery, in its season four finale.Abrams is a self-confessed Star Trek superfan. In 2019, she told the New York Times she binged on episodes during her last run for governor.“I love Voyager and I love Discovery and of course I respect the original,” she said, “but I revere The Next Generation.”Michelle Paradise, executive producer of Star Trek: Discovery, told Variety the show decided it needed a figure of suitable gravitas.“When the time came to start talking about the president of Earth,” she said, “it seemed like, ‘Well, who better to represent that than her?”Abrams is a former Democratic member of the Georgia state house as well as a prolific romance novelist. She has said she will be US president by 2040.In 2018, she ran the Republican Brian Kemp close for governor of Georgia. She is seeking a rematch this year and in part thanks to her work on voting rights has risen to prominence in the national party, having been considered for vice-president to Joe Biden.Abrams’s work helped secure both Biden’s win in Georgia in 2020 and Democratic control of the US Senate, via two Georgia run-offs.Such work has made her a target of the right. On Friday, the National Review, a conservative site, published a column about her Star Trek cameo: Stacey Abrams Does Not Deserve to Be President of Earth.Abrams, the Review said, “is, at this time, most famous for losing the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election and then proceeding to deny she had lost it”.Abrams refused to concede to Kemp, who as Georgia secretary of state oversaw the purging of voter rolls before the election he contested.Brad Raffensperger, the current Georgia secretary of state, has argued that Abrams’ refusal to concede was “morally indistinguishable from – and helped set the stage for – former president Donald Trump’s behavior after the 2020 presidential election”.Raffensperger famously stood up to Trump, whose request that Raffensperger “find” sufficient votes to flip the state is at the heart of a grand jury investigation.In 2019, Abrams told the New York Times that while she “legally acknowledge[d] that Brian Kemp secured a sufficient number of votes under our existing system to become the governor of Georgia. I do not concede that the process was proper, nor do I condone that process.”She also said: “I have no empirical evidence that I would have achieved a higher number of votes. However, I have sufficient and I think legally sufficient doubt about the process to say that it was not a fair election.”The Review complained that Star Trek would never make Trump president of Earth, not even “in the way that the evil genetic superman Khan Noonien Singh once despotically ruled one-quarter of earth’s population”.It added: “In classic Trek fashion, Abrams [was] shown as the logical and inevitable result of the kind of technocratic progressivism that the show has long advanced, a fruition of our highest ideals. Her behavior in the political sphere does not seem to bear this out.”Elie Mystal, a writer for the Nation, responded: “Look at how conservative white people react to a FICTIONAL black woman president.”Mystal also tied the Review’s criticism to events in Washington, where Ketanji Brown Jackson will next week begin confirmation hearings to be the first Black woman on the supreme court.“Next week,” Mystal wrote, “this same publication that can’t handle a black women president ON A TELEVISION SHOW is going to claim to have reasonable and *totally not racist* thoughts about a real life black woman on the supreme court.” The makers of Star Trek: Discovery seemed happy just to have had Abrams on set. They also explained how they fulfilled her request not to be told of the plot of her episode, so she could enjoy it later.As the Washington Post reported, the episode, which was filmed in Toronto last August, ended with Abrams “telling the show’s protagonist … ‘There’s a lot of work to do. Are you ready for that?’“‘I am,’ [Captain Michael Burnham] responds. ‘Let’s get to it.’”Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Burnham, told Variety she was “taken aback … and really moved” by Abrams’ performance.“It really signaled the culmination of the season having her there,” she said, “because she’s such this symbol of hope and strength and connection and sacrifice and building something bigger than yourself that will last generations, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about doing in the story.”In a “cherished moment”, Martin-Green said, Abrams was presented with a trophy, a captain’s badge and a poem.TopicsStacey AbramsStar TrekUS politicsDemocratsUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS televisionnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits back

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      ‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits backTom Rice faces Trumpist challenger because of vote to impeach over the deadly Capitol attack A Republican congressman attacked by Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday called the former president a “would-be tyrant”.Republican Kinzinger: I should have voted to impeach Trump over UkraineRead moreTom Rice voted to impeach Trump over the deadly Capitol attack and will face a Trump-endorsed challenger later this year.In a statement, Rice said: “If you want a congressman who supports political violence in Ukraine or in the United States Capitol, who supports party over country, who supports a would-be tyrant over the constitution, and who makes decisions based solely on re-election, then Russell Fry is your candidate.”Trump has praised Vladimir Putin and avoided invitations to condemn him but he has called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “crime against humanity”.The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 happened after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud. Seven people died around the riot.Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the attack. Trump was acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to find him guilty.Like all House Republicans, Rice supported Trump when he was impeached a first time, for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract dirt on Biden.Trump has endorsed challengers to disloyal Republicans prominently including Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of two Republican members of the January 6 committee.At his rally in Florence, South Carolina, on Saturday, Trump attacked Rice and Nancy Mace, a congresswoman with her own challenger after voting to certify election results.The former president called both “atrocious Rinos”, Republicans in name only, and “bad people”. He called Rice a “disaster” and “a total fool … laughed at in Washington”.“Thankfully this June you have a chance to dump these grandstanding losers and replace them with two rock-solid America-first champions,” Trump said.Rice retorted: “Trump is here because, like no one else I’ve ever met, he is consumed by spite. I took one vote he didn’t like and now he’s chosen to support a yes man candidate who has and will bow to anything he says.”Rice’s South Carolina district is deep Republican red. In 2020, Trump won it by 18 points. Rice won by nearly 24.The Associated Press reported on how Rice and Mace are trying to convince voters to back them. Mace emphasised her support for Trump, the AP said, while Rice took a “lower key” approach.The AP described the congressman “quietly winding through rural stretches of his congressional district to remind voters of his work securing federal relief for frequent – often disastrous – flooding, and of his advocacy for agricultural improvements”.Of his vote to impeach Trump, he said: “I’ve had some people come to me and say, ‘I was disappointed in your vote’. But 10 times as many have said, ‘Thank you.’”TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesSouth CarolinanewsReuse this content More

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      Beto O’Rourke calls Texas governor Greg Abbott an ‘authoritarian’ and ‘thug’

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      Beto O’Rourke calls Texas governor Greg Abbott an ‘authoritarian’ and ‘thug’The Democratic gubernatorial candidate compared his Republican opponent to the Russian president Vladimir Putin

      Can Texas go purple? It may depend on Hispanic voters
      Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, has likened his Republican opponent to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, calling Greg Abbott an “authoritarian” and a “thug”.Judge blocks Texas from investigating parents of transgender childrenRead moreAs governor, Abbott has presided over draconian laws on issues including abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights. In February 2021, on his watch, a failure of the state energy grid during cold weather contributed to hundreds of deaths.O’Rourke is a former congressman and candidate for both US Senate and the Democratic presidential nomination. On Saturday, he spoke at the SXSW festival in Austin, the state capital.Speaking to Evan Smith, a co-founder of the Texas Tribune newspaper, O’Rourke said, “I just had a chance to meet with the ambassador from the [European Union]. We talked about the fact that you’re seeing the continued rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world. And we have our own, right here, in the state of Texas.”Smith asked: “Greg Abbott is a thug in your mind?”O’Rourke said: “He’s a thug, he’s an authoritarian. Let me make the case.“Not only could this guy, through his own incompetence, not keep the lights on in the energy capital of the planet last February, but when people like Kelcy Warren and other energy company CEOs made … $11bn in profit over five days – selling gas for 200 times the going rate – not only did [Abbott] not claw back those illegal profits, not only was there no justice for more than 700 people who were killed – who literally froze to death in their homes, outside, in their cars, people who are paying now tens of billions of dollars cumulatively to pay for the property damage that the flooding that ensued caused in their homes – but he’s taking millions of dollars in payoffs from these same people.“I mean, he’s got his own oligarch here in the state of Texas.”Russian oligarchs, billionaire businessmen who control fortunes often based on natural resources and work closely with Putin, have been subject to severe sanctions in the west since their president ordered the invasion of Ukraine last month.As the Texas Tribune reported, the state of Texas says 246 people died in the power grid failure in 2021 but other analysis has placed the figure as high as 702.The paper also pointed out that Warren, a co-founder of Energy Transfer, an oil pipeline company, recently sued O’Rourke for defamation. Warren did not immediately comment on Saturday. O’Rourke has called the lawsuit “frivolous”.According to testimony from a Texas power grid manager, energy prices were kept high in the aftermath of the failure as a way to incentivise private companies to avoid more blackouts.In a statement, Abbott’s campaign said: “It’s unfortunate Beto O’Rourke continues to run a campaign based on fear-mongering and tearing down Texas.”O’Rourke also linked Abbott to Putin when discussing a new elections law which critics say seeks to reduce participation among those likely to vote Democratic.“You think this stuff only exists in Russia or in other parts of the world?” said O’Rourke. “It’s happening right here. You think they rig elections in other parts of the planet? It is the toughest state in the nation in which to vote, right here.”‘Shivering under a pile of six blankets, I finally lost it’: my week in frozen Texas hellRead moreTexas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994 but progressives see hope in demographic change. O’Rourke showed strongly in his US Senate race in 2018, losing narrowly to the Republican Ted Cruz. But his run for the presidency went nowhere.The Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey’s decision not to run for governor cleared O’Rourke’s path but Realclearpolitics.com on Saturday put Abbott up by 8.8% in its polling average. Fivethirtyeight.com showed Abbott up by between 5% and 11%.On Saturday, O’Rourke said he would seek to work with Republicans on gun control reform, strong remarks on the subject having proved unpopular with Texans in 2020. He also discussed immigration and Joe Biden – who he said was “not a drag on anyone”.Mark Miner, Abbott’s communications director, said: “It appears if you want Beto to tell the truth, you need to put him in front of out-of-state liberal elitists, not the people of Texas.”TopicsBeto O’RourkeGreg AbbottTexasUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracy

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      ‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracyCandidates for secretary of state are raising huge sums after Trump’s lies shook 2020 election Last year, Brad Raffensperger was attracting national headlines for taking a stand against Donald Trump and his lies about the 2020 election.In a phone call that was quickly made public, Trump demanded that Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, “find” enough votes to deprive Joe Biden of a victory in the battleground state. Raffensperger refused to do so and won widespread praise for his courage.Raffensperger is paying for his actions in a way that reveals how his once obscure elected position is now at the center of a battle for the future of American democracy – and attracting all the big money and political heat that entails.This year, Raffensperger is facing a brutal primary race against a Trump-backed candidate, the US congressman Jody Hice, and trying to cling on to his job. Hice, who has said the 2020 results in Georgia would have been different if the race had been “fair”, has already raised more than twice as much money as Raffensperger.Hice’s impressive haul is partly thanks to the unusually high number of out-of-state donations that his campaign has attracted, as more Americans across the country zero in on secretary of state races.‘This should terrify the nation’: the Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s electionsRead moreAnd Georgia is not unique. As Trump and his allies continue to spread the “big lie” of widespread fraud in the 2020 race, many voters are focusing their attention – and wallets – on the officials who oversee states’ elections.Secretary of state candidates in both parties are now posting substantial fundraising figures, intensifying concerns over how election administration has become a heated political issue in the US.Secretary of state races have historically attracted little notice and even less money. The winners of these elections assume rather bureaucratic roles, and their duties may include managing state records, overseeing the department of motor vehicles and keeping the state seal. But in many states, the secretary of state also serves – crucially – as the chief election official.In the weeks after the 2020 election, as Trump and his supporters falsely claimed the results had been tainted by fraud, secretaries of state in key battleground states became the target of intimidation and threats. Now the former president is using the power of his endorsement to wield influence in the races for those posts.While Trump did not endorse any candidates for secretary of state in 2020, he has already endorsed three in the 2022 cycle: Hice in Georgia, Mark Finchem in Arizona and Kristina Karamo in Michigan. All three candidates have embraced the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election by allowing fraud to affect the results. Biden’s margin of victory in each of those states was less than three points, and their input could prove decisive in the next presidential election.“They are willing to overturn the will of the voters in order to choose the winner,” said Kim Rogers, executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “It is disempowering, and it is akin to giving an arsonist keys to the firehouse.”Republicans and Democrats’ disparate concerns over election fairness have contributed to a significant increase in donations to secretary of state candidates.According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, donations for secretary of state races in six battleground states are three times higher than they were at this point in the last election cycle, in 2018, and eight times higher than the 2014 cycle. Fundraising has particularly increased in Arizona, Geor­gia and Michigan, which also happen to be the three states where Trump has issued an endorsement.“A lot more money is going to these once sleepy, bureaucratic races,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “The places that we’ve seen the biggest increase – which is basically Arizona, Georgia and Michigan – each of those places had some degree of nationally covered election controversy around 2020.”The Brennan Center analysis also indicated that out-of-state donations to secretary of state candidates are increasing at an even faster rate than overall donations. Finchem, who has called on the Arizona legislature to decertify the 2020 presidential results in three major counties, already has six times as many donors as every secretary of state candid­ate in the 2018 elec­tion combined. Two-thirds of those donors live outside Arizona.Democrats have taken note of Republican enthusiasm about secretary of state elections, and they are responding by ramping up their own fundraising.The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and its partner groups raised a record $4.5m in 2021, compared with $1.5m raised during the entire 2018 cycle. The organization has said it is on track to meet its fundraising goal of $15m for the 2022 cycle, in part because of the increase in first-time individual donors. Other progressive groups, including End Citizens United and iVote, have pledged to spend tens of millions more on secretary of state races this year.“The engagement is at every single level. We have seen a massive increase in our email list and grassroots support,” Rogers said. Rogers believes Democratic activists are increasingly turning their attention to secretary of state races partly because they have been frustrated by the lack of progress at the federal level. Congressional Democrats have repeatedly tried to pass national voting rights legislation, which would reverse some of the voting restrictions enacted by 19 states last year, but Senate Republicans have successfully used the filibuster to defeat those bills.‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0Read more“I think there are a lot of activists who got involved in 2020 who fought incredibly hard for the federal voting rights legislation in 2021,” Rogers said. “When 50 Republicans blocked it yet again, folks were looking for a way to stay engaged and to continue the fight, and they shifted their assets into the states.”Republicans complain that Democrats are trying to alter election regulations to their benefit at both the federal and state levels. Andrew Romeo, communications director for the Republican State Leadership Committee, said Democrats were “ramping up their interest in secretary of state races because they see control of these offices as a way to change the rules to compensate for their inability to win elections”.Romeo’s group is an umbrella organization that promotes Republican candidates for state legislatures, state supreme courts and secretary of state offices, among other roles. The RSLC and its policy partner group raised $33.3m in 2021, exceeding their previous odd-year record by more than $14m.But to Democrats like Rogers, the outcome of secretary of state races in key battleground states represents nothing less than the fate of American democracy.“These folks want to rig the game, and they are out to do that,” Rogers said. Vandewalker fears that the increasingly dire messaging about secretary of state races will contribute to a political climate in which both parties distrust the outcome of elections.“Money and attention being paid to these races is not inherently a bad thing. The voters should be informed about these candidates,” Vandewalker said. But he adds, “that kind of rhetoric is extremely dangerous to voter confidence because of course one side or the other is going to win and is going to count the votes. And democracy counts on people accepting the result, even if their side doesn’t win.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsGeorgiafeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie

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      Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie Analysis: His British friend tried to help but the former president did not want to forget his voter fraud obsession and focus on the future. CPAC loved it but Republicans hoping to take Congress know they are courting disasterThe sagest advice given to Donald Trump all week came from a man who is neither a Republican nor an American.Donald Trump defends calling Putin ‘smart’, hints at 2024 presidential bidRead moreNigel Farage, the British politician, broadcaster and demagogue whose Brexit campaign coincided with Trump’s rise to power, warned his old pal against endlessly fixating on the 2020 election.“This message of a stolen election, if you think about it, is actually a negative backward looking message,” Farage told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.“There is a better, more positive message the Republican party needs to embrace and it’s this: ‘We are going state by state, vote by vote to make sure that America has the best, the cleanest, the fairest election system anywhere in the western world.’”Urging an end to the “big lie” obsession is heresy at places like CPAC, the Woodstock of the red meat right. Perhaps no pro-Trump Republican would dare breathe it to the former president, lest he slap them with a demeaning nickname, endorse a primary opponent or blackball them from his luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.But Farage, as foreigner and fellow traveller, may have felt liberated to speak an inconvenient truth: that endlessly re-litigating the last election with false claims of voter fraud could prove a serious liability for Republicans in November’s midterms.The former UK Independence party and Brexit party leader went on: “That negative anger must be turned into a positive. You’ve got to offer the voters of this country a shining city on the hill. You’ve got to give them a vision. People want dreams, people want hopes, and the deliverers of that message are you guys.”The audience sounded receptive enough. And while some CPAC speakers did promulgate “the big lie” – Ohio Senate hopeful Josh Mandel declared, “I want to say it very clearly and very directly: I believe this election was stolen from Donald J Trump” – they generally gave greater emphasis to winning Congress in 2022 and, of course, Trump returning to the White House in 2024.Jim Jordan, an Ohio congressman and close Trump ally, declared: “I believe President Trump is going to run again … I think if he runs, he’s going to win.”But the annual CPAC straw poll testing who should get the Republican nomination raised more questions than answers. Of course Trump won with more votes than everyone else combined. But his 59% was not quite the overwhelming show of force he might have hoped for in what is usually the capital of Trumpistan.There is now a clear alternative. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, finished second on 28%, well clear of Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, on 2%.In a separate poll where Trump was removed from the equation, DeSantis won by a landslide 61%.On the other hand, Florida is DeSantis’s home state, so he might expect to punch above his weight here. The governor gave a well received speech on Thursday that notably failed to mention Trump. But the audience for Trump’s address on Saturday was appreciably bigger and brimming with “Trump 2024” badges and caps.Even those sporting DeSantis regalia were not quite ready to back him. David Duffy, 57, a retired insurance worker sporting a giant “DeSantisLand” flag, said: “We want to keep President Trump as our president. We believe he still is our president and, with DeSantis being 42 years old, we want to give him a little bit more time.”Asked for her 2024 preference, Marnie Allen, wearing a “DeSantisLand” cap, said: “Trump, only because I owe him. I think we all owe him to make up for the disasters and because he’s going to go in with a vengeance this time and take care of our fourth level of government: career bureaucrats. He will go in this time and he will take a machete to them.”The 51-year-old from Orlando, who works in higher education, felt compelled to add: “Not a real machete, of course, but a figurative machete.”Unless something dramatic happens – a criminal indictment in New York, say – the nomination remains Trump’s to lose. On Saturday he dropped his strongest hint yet that he does intend to pursue it.The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracyRead moreHe clearly did not get Farage’s memo. Trump told the audience: “The Rinos [Republicans In Name Only] and certain weak Republican politicians want to ignore election integrity also but we cannot ignore it. We have to fix it. Make no mistake, they [Democrats] will try to do it again in ’22 and ’24, and we cannot let them do that.“And the way we [let them do that] is to come to a very powerful conclusion as to what happened in 2020. We stand down to stop talking about it, we stop making Americans aware of the cheating and corruption that went on. That’s really saying, ‘It’s OK, you can do it again.’ We can’t let that happen.”The slapping sound you heard was a hundred Republican midterm candidates planting their hands on their foreheads. Trump is coming to a district near you, with a big lie to tell. It remains Democrats’ best hope of a midterm miracle.TopicsDonald TrumpCPACUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024Ron DeSantisanalysisReuse this content More