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    Storm Expected to Bring Snow to Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, Again

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    Two to four inches of snow were possible in New York City overnight Friday through early Saturday, forecasters said.A fast-moving storm system was expected to bring several inches of snow to parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions for the second time this week, with two to four inches predicted for New York City overnight Friday into Saturday morning and up to 10 inches in portions of West Virginia and Maryland.Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New York, described the system that was expected to move through as a “quick hitter.”“It’ll be in and out before folks may even wake up tomorrow morning,” Mr. Ramunni said.The greatest snowfall totals were expected across parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, where a winter storm warning was issued for late Friday through Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service.In parts of Maryland and West Virginia, up to 10 inches of snow were possible, with snowfall rates of up to two inches per hour at times, the Weather Service said.Austin Mansfield, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sterling, Va., said the snow could make travel difficult at times and reduce visibility.“Anytime you have a significant accumulation like that, you certainly start to see road impacts across those areas,” he said.Philadelphia could record four to six inches of snow, and Washington could see snowfall totals ranging from two to five inches, forecasters said.In New York City, where snow from a storm on Tuesday was still melting on Friday afternoon in parts of the area, there could be snowfall totals from two to four inches, Mr. Ramunni said.The storm system is expected to bring snow to some Northeast cities for the second time this week.A storm that moved through the region on Tuesday dropped 3.2 inches in Central Park and more than eight inches of snow in parts of Maryland, according to the Weather Service.Ahead of the expected weekend snowfall, the New York City Emergency Management Department issued a citywide travel advisory, warning that slippery roadways and reduced visibility were possible late Friday through early Saturday.Temperatures overnight Friday into Saturday were expected to be lower than during Tuesday’s storm, indicating that New York City could get a more powdery snow.“We’re not expecting that really heavy wet snow that we saw with this last event,” Mr. Ramunni said. “You’re not shoveling bricks of cement, so to speak, tomorrow morning.”Snow has been something of a rarity in New York City over the past couple of years. After 701 days without meaningful accumulation, a total of 1.7 inches fell in Central Park on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16.If more than 3.2 inches are recorded in Central Park on Saturday, it would be the city’s highest snowfall in two years, Mr. Ramunni said.“As a snow lover,” he said, “my tail’s wagging.” More

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      Dozens of independent abortion clinics closed in 2023 post-Roe, study finds

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      Dozens of independently owned reproductive health clinics shuttered in 2023, the year after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, according to a new report from the Abortion Care Network.The group found that 23 independently owned clinics closed this year, on top of the 42 that shuttered in 2022, leaving over a dozen states, mainly in the American south and midwest, without a single brick-and-mortar clinic that provides abortion.“Even before Roe fell, we were the only abortion clinic in a very rural, very underserved state with limited access to health care, and now that’s all been exacerbated,” said Katie Quinonez-Alonzo, executive director of Women’s Health Center of West Virginia.Like most independent clinics in the United States, the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia struggled to keep its doors open after the supreme court decision paved the way for the state to ban abortion last year. The clinic still provides other reproductive and sexual health services, like gender-affirming care for transgender patients.“We want to stay here in our community and help the patients that are still counting on us, but it’s been one uphill battle after another,” Quinonez-Alonzo told the Guardian.The Women’s Health Center of West Virginia is an especially crucial lifeline for low-income, uninsured people in the state, who rely on the clinic for routine gynecological check-ups. Those services became harder to offer after West Virginia banned abortion, slashing the clinic’s revenue by roughly half a million dollars.This year, Quinonez-Alonzo anticipates a roughly $350,000 budget deficit.Independently owned clinics – in contrast with bigger players like Planned Parenthood – provide the majority of abortions in the United States. According to the ACN report, “indie” clinics make up the majority of clinics operating in states that are most hostile to abortion, and offer the broadest range of options for patients seeking the procedure. ACN researchers found that 73% of indie brick-and-mortar clinics offer both medical and surgical abortions, compared with just 42% of Planned Parenthood affiliates – so as they dwindle in number, so do options for women seeking care.Before the supreme court overturned Roe, the West Alabama Women’s Center provided over half of the abortions in the state.“In the deep south, it was always indie providers that were the ones providing abortions. Very few Planned Parenthoods existed in our region,” said Robin Marty, executive director of West Alabama Women’s Center.“Alabama used to have three Planned Parenthoods, we have just one now, the others have closed,” Marty said. “We’re still here, though.”After Alabama enacted a sweeping ban on abortion, the Tuscaloosa clinic refocused on protecting newly pregnant people’s access to affordable prenatal healthcare.But Alabama is one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid, leaving roughly one in seven women of childbearing age without any form of health insurance. The state allows newly pregnant women to apply for Medicaid, but that requires a doctor’s letter confirming the pregnancy.“But of course, as these people do not have insurance, they can’t get into a doctor in order to get this letter for Medicaid,” Marty said. “This is why we’re seeing so many people in Alabama who don’t have prenatal care in the first trimester.”Even after a patient receives a doctor’s letter confirming their pregnancy, it can take four to six weeks for the state to approve coverage. To help care for uninsured and pregnant people in Alabama, Marty said her clinic provides free prenatal care until a patient’s Medicaid coverage is approved. If financial trouble forces the clinic to close, a bad maternal health landscape will get worse.“The people in our community need prenatal care and birth control and STI testing just as much as they need abortion,” Marty said. “For these patients, there isn’t another healthcare provider here for them.” More

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      ‘The odds are against us’: Democrats in once-blue West Virginia survey loss

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      Nibbling appetizers off American-flag printed paper plates in a city hall basement, the group of Democrat voters had been listening to a party official’s appeals to get active in politics when Terri Rodebaugh stood up to air a grievance.“One thing I want to say is I’m tired of being called a baby killer, which I am not,” said Rodebaugh, her shirt pink and her hair, like most others in the room, gray. Yet having such epithets hurled at them is what it has come to for party faithful and pro-choice West Virginians like Rodebaugh in Nicholas county.For much of the 20th century, voters in Nicholas county and much of the rest of West Virginia were reliably Democratic, backing the party even in its worst years. That changed in 2000, when George W Bush won the state’s electoral votes, and by 2020, nearly 78% of Nicholas county voters had cast ballots for Donald Trump. West Virginians overall gave him the second-highest share of support of any state in the nation.A few weeks before that year’s election, the then president’s adherents paraded through the county seat Summersville, and the Democrats held a counterprotest. Trump supporters then turned up outside the party’s offices in their pickup trucks, burning out their tires and kicking up gravel. The landlords called not long after and told the Democrats to leave, and ever since, the party has been itinerant, meeting in churches, restaurants and, most recently, Summersville’s city hall.“I never dreamed Nicholas county would ever go Republican,” said 81-year-old John Jarrell, who has served on the local party committee for decades. “And I never dreamed West Virginia would ever go Republican.”The Democratic party’s power in the state now seems on the brink of reaching its nadir.Even as the GOP was consolidating its hold on the state’s politics, voters kept electing one Democrat: Joe Manchin, a two-term governor who won a Senate seat in 2010 and just over a decade later became one of the most controversial politicians in the country for refusing to support proposals by Joe Biden to fight the climate crisis, poverty and a host of other social ills.Manchin was scheduled to face voters again in 2024, and whether he could win a third full term representing his ruby red state was a subject of fierce debate. Now, West Virginians will never learn the answer – earlier this month, Manchin announced he would not run again for the Senate, and is openly mulling a third-party run for the presidency.Few politics watchers believe any other Democrat can win Manchin’s seat, and by the start of 2025, the party may hold none of West Virginia’s statewide elected offices for the first time since 1931.“We’re going to be underrepresented,” Pam Tucker-Cline, the chair of the Nicholas county Democratic party, said of Manchin’s exit as the 27 supporters who turned up for the meeting filtered out into the Summersville evening. “I don’t think people realize what he’s done for the state.”Party leaders refuse to give up, but acknowledge they’re not quite sure what the path back to power is in a state that lacks so much of what makes Democrats successful elsewhere.“We don’t plan to give up on any seat, and we know that the odds are against us, but we feel that West Virginians are worth fighting for,” said Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic party chair and a lawmaker in the state house of delegates.“It’s been extremely hard for anybody with a D after their name in rural America, as of late, but we feel that things are definitely never static in politics, things are always changing.”In the first two years of Biden’s administration, Manchin became the rare kind of lawmaker who goes from state-level star to national fixation for the way he used his power to manipulate the president’s agenda.While Democrats had an effective majority in the Senate, it was only by a single vote, giving any member the power to derail legislation that did not attract Republican support.Manchin made his objections known after the president proposed Build Back Better, a huge plan to fight the climate crisis and poverty, offer universal paid parental leave and make childcare more affordable. The White House spent months negotiating with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator who was the other holdout to the plan and last year left the Democratic party to become an independent.Kayla Young, a Democratic member of West Virginia’s house of delegates, remembers advocacy organizations from around the country descending on the capital, Charleston, seeking ways to get Manchin to drop his blockade. “I worked with some of those groups. We literally were all Manchin whisperers for a year, because everybody just wanted to come and figure him out,” Young recalls.As 2021 drew to a close, Manchin said he wouldn’t vote for the plan, citing its estimated $2tn cost and rising inflation, and Young remembers the organizations that had been so keen to hear from West Virginians swiftly departed.“Seeing all those groups that I align with still come in and use us was not good. That did not feel good to just be used,” Young said.In the years before Biden took office, the GOP used a similar sense of abandonment among West Virginians to dismantle what had been decades of Democratic dominance.Democrats had controlled the governor’s mansion, the entire congressional delegation and the legislature with supermajorities simultaneously, and West Virginia Democrats see it as a point of pride that John F Kennedy, a Catholic, bagged the party’s presidential nomination in 1960 by triumphing in the mostly Protestant state.That consensus ended in 2000 with Bush’s victory, and after Barack Obama won the White House eight years later, the GOP adopted an argument against his administration that proved especially potent: the Democrat was waging a “war on coal”. The industry has historically undergirded both the Appalachian state’s economy and cultural identity, but employment had been declining for decades as more mines automate extraction and power stations shift to cheaper forms of energy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“West Virginia was ripe for flipping,” said Mike Plante, a Democratic strategist based in Charleston, describing a belief among the state’s residents that outsiders were intent on both harming its economy and disrespecting its culture. “There’s a feeling that we’ve kind of been taken advantage of for years and years and years, and I think that plays into the the Maga message of score-settling.”In 2015, the GOP took control of both houses of the legislature for the first time in decades, and in the presidential election the following year, West Virginia voters gave Trump his largest share of support of any state.Four years later, Biden ousted Trump from office by rallying voters in suburbs and cities nationwide as well as racial minorities – all of which West Virginia lacks. The state is 91% white, and the population of Charleston, its largest city, is just over 47,000, while the rest of its 1.8 million residents are spread out in a handful of small cities, towns and villages dotting its landscape of rolling hills and narrow valleys.Even strategies Democrats have used elsewhere to win elections in red states barely work in West Virginia. The GOP now holds supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, and after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, they quickly moved to ban abortion. Young represents one of the most competitive districts in the state, and says she successfully used her Republican opponent’s support for the ban to win a second term – but only by a razor-thin margin of 58 votes.“In West Virginia, we thought that in 2022 … we would pick up more seats, and we lost them. So, it helped me. I don’t think it helped anybody else,” she said. The party today has three lawmakers in the 34-seat senate, and 11 in the 100-member house of delegates.Last year, the Democrats did not field candidates for several legislative seats across the state, something Young, who serves as minority leader pro tempore in the legislature’s lower chamber, hopes the party will change. She also has her own re-election to worry about in 2024, a task she expects to be even more difficult now that Manchin has exited.“Having him on the top of the ticket on the ballot was really good for all Democrats in the state, whether you agree with him or not, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t,” she said.There’s no telling if Manchin would have won another term, but Sam Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University, said even an unsuccessful run would have forced the GOP to allocate resources to the state that they are now free to spend elsewhere – probably in Ohio and Montana, both red states with Democratic senators whose re-election campaigns will be crucial if the party is to keep control of Congress’s upper chamber.At the state level, the Democrats are on the defensive, their elected positions confined to a handful of mayor’s offices and legislative districts in more populated areas.But Workman said the party had an opportunity to champion West Virginia’s economic transition away from extractive industries like coal and towards tourism and renewable energy – areas where Manchin’s mark will be felt long after he leaves the Capitol.After months of deadlock, the senator last year reached a compromise with Biden to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which lowers prescription drug prices and will subsidize the country’s transition to clean energy. He’s also been a champion of the New River Gorge, a recreation area popular with whitewater rafters, hikers and rock climbers, where he helped establish a national park in 2020.“Whatever the Democratic party is going to be going forward, it has to come to grips with these transitions and have coherent messaging around those transitions, and I just don’t think we’re there yet,” Workman said.The long odds for Democrats have not dampened Tucker-Cline’s enthusiasm to find the party a new office in the center of Summersville in time for next November’s vote. She’s been looking all over town for a storefront to hang campaign signs and welcome volunteers, while trying to coax many of the county’s younger voters into supporting the party openly.“The ones that really want to put signs in their yard are the old Democrats. You have to really work on these young Democrats to make them feel like they’re not going to hurt themselves or hurt their businesses,” Tucker-Cline said.She’s got a lead on one property right in the middle of Summersville, but it’s on the second floor, and their most active volunteers are elderly – she worries they’ll struggle with the stairs, but insists on the party headquarters being right where Nicholas county residents can see it.“If we have to go upstairs in the building in downtown we’ll do that,” Tucker-Cline said. “We want to be in the red country.” More

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      Can a socialist ex-marine fill Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia?

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      To launch his campaign for US Senate, Zach Shrewsbury chose the site of one of America’s most famous hangings.Charles Town, West Virginia, was where state authorities executed the abolitionist John Brown after he led an attack on a federal armory a few miles down the road in Harpers Ferry, a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the civil war. One hundred and sixty four years later, Shrewsbury – who decided against attempting to get a permit for the event at the site of the insurrection, which is now a national park – stood on the courthouse grounds where Brown’s hanging took place to announce that he would be the only “real Democrat” running to represent West Virginia in the Senate next year.“We need leaders that are cut from the working-class cloth. We need representation that will go toe to toe with corporate parasites and their bought politicians. We need a leader who will not waver in the face of these powers that keep the boot on our neck,” Shrewsbury said to applause from the small group of supporters gathered behind him.“So, as John Brown said, ‘These men are all talk. What we need is action.’ I’m taking action right now to stand up to these bought bureaucrats.”The remarks were a swipe at Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who for the past 13 years had managed to represent what has become one of the most Republican states in the nation. In recent years he has used his power as a swing vote in Congress to stop several of Joe Biden’s legislative priorities – attracting the ire of progressives and prompting Shrewsbury to mount a primary challenge.A few weeks after Shrewsbury began campaigning, he was showing a friend around an abandoned mining town when his phone rang with news: Manchin had decided not to seek re-election, leaving Shrewsbury as the only Democrat in the race.By all indications, Shrewsbury, a 32-year-old Marine Corps veteran and community organizer, faces a difficult, if not impossible, road to victory. West Virginia gave Donald Trump his second-biggest margin of support of any state in the nation three years ago, and Manchin is the last Democrat holding a statewide office. Political analysts do not expect voters to elect the Democratic candidate – whoever that turns out to be – and predict Manchin will be replaced by either Governor Jim Justice or Congressman Alex Mooney, the two leading Republicans in the Senate race.Shrewsbury’s message to them is: not so fast.“People were really sold on the fact that Joe Manchin could be the only Democrat that could win in West Virginia, and I very much disagree,” Shrewsbury told the Guardian a week after the senator made his announcement.Also a former governor, Manchin is considered the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and when the party took the majority by a single vote in the chamber in 2021, Manchin stopped the Biden administration from passing policies that would have made permanent a program to reduce child poverty, and more forcefully fight climate change.Sitting in a conference room at the Fayette county Democratic party’s headquarters in Oak Hill, where visitors pass a lobby displaying an American flag, a pride flag, and a stack of Narcan, the opioid-overdose reversal medication, Shrewsbury outlined his plans to run a campaign distinctly to the left of Manchin’s policies – and one he believes can win.“People want someone who’s genuine. They don’t want a politician. They want someone who actually looks like them. I mean, hell, you can’t get much more West Virginia than this,” said Shrewsbury, fond of wearing flannel shirts and hunting caps.Among his priorities are creating universal healthcare and childcare programs, and reducing the role of incarceration in fighting the opioid epidemic ravaging West Virginia.“Everyone here just is thankful for the scraps or crumbs that we get from whoever we elect. And that’s who we keep electing – whoever can keep the little crumbs coming along. I’m trying to say there is a better way,” Shrewsbury said.He also doesn’t shy away from identifying as a socialist, arguing the term may be less politically damaging than it appears – West Virginia Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary, and the independent senator, he argues, is popular even with the state’s Republicans.“If caring about working-class people, caring about people having bodily autonomy, water rights, workers’ rights, makes you a socialist, then call me whatever you want. Doesn’t bother me,” Shrewsbury said.Raised on a farm by a Republican family in rural Monroe county, Shrewsbury dropped out of college after a semester and joined the marines. In the years that followed, he guarded the perimeter at the US base in Guantánamo Bay, and was deployed to Japan, Malaysia and South Korea before eventually moving to Seattle and then returning to West Virginia, where he realized how bereft his home state was of the prosperity he saw elsewhere in the country and overseas.“Why can’t my home be as economically profitable as the rest?” Shrewsbury recalls thinking. “It woke me up in the Marine Corps a little bit, and once I got back home, I really just kind of put the nail in the coffin there for what I was gonna be for work. I want to help people.”He turned to community organizing, seeing it as a way to help a state with the fourth-highest poverty rate in the nation, which is struggling to transition from the declining coal and logging industries that have historically undergirded its economy.“I know Zach’s a long shot. It’s like David against three Goliaths,” said Pam Garrison, a fellow community organizer. “Zach is able to be hardline when he needs to be. I’ve seen him being forceful and steadfast in his principles and what things are. And then I’ve seen the compassionate and empathy side of Zach too, And that’s what makes a good politician.”Since 2020, Shrewsbury has helped towns dig out from flooding, door-knocked in the narrow Appalachian valleys – known as hollers – to find out what residents were looking for from the state legislature, and talked to mayors and city councils about the opportunities presented by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which incentivizes consumer usage of renewable energy, including home solar panels.Though Manchin played a key role in authoring the IRA, he also nixed the expanded child tax credit, which has been credited with cutting the child poverty rate by half in 2021, the sole year it was in effect. Shrewsbury was outraged by reports that later emerged of the senator privately expressing worries that people would use the program’s money to buy drugs, and jumped into the race.Despite the state’s conservative leanings, Sam Workman, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University, believed Manchin may have had a path to victory had he decided to run. But he said the same cannot be said for Shrewsbury or any other Democrat.“It’s kind of a fall-on-your-sword moment,” Workman said. “Politics is like sports: you should never say never, but I do not see the Democrats winning the Senate seat, no matter who runs.”Shrewsbury may be alone in the Democratic primary at the moment, but he expects other candidates to enter. Since launching his campaign, he has not heard from the state Democratic party, nor the national party’s senate campaign arm.“I’m not exactly what the party wants, because I speak my mind. You know, I’m not going to toe the party line,” he said. “I wish the party would get back in more touch with the workers. But like I said, I have the message that many people aren’t saying.” More

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      Should Joe Manchin Run for President?

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      In the emotional life of the liberal mediasphere, there was so little space between the release of the New York Times/Siena poll showing President Biden losing to Donald Trump handily across a range of swing states (doom! doom!) and the Democratic overperformance in Tuesday’s elections (sweet relief!) that one of the striking features of the polling passed with relatively little comment.This was the remarkably strong showing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy. When added to the swing-state polls, Kennedy claimed 24 percent of registered voters against 35 percent for Trump and 33 percent for Biden.That number is notable along two dimensions. First, for showing Kennedy drawing close to equally from both likely nominees rather than obviously spoiling the race for one or the other. Second, for its sheer Ross Perotian magnitude, its striking-distance closeness to the major party candidates.Yet I don’t see a lot of people entertaining the “Kennedy wins!” scenario just yet, and for good reasons: Most notable third-party candidates eventually diminish, he may be artificially inflated by his famous name, and his crankishness is so overt (whereas Perot’s was gradually revealed) that many voters currently supporting him in protest of a Biden-Trump rematch may well abandon him after a light Googling.The world being strange, we shouldn’t take this conventional wisdom as gospel. But if we assume that Kennedy’s 24 percent is mostly about people seeking a third option rather than explicitly supporting his worldview, the immediate question is whether someone else should try to fill that space.Someone like, say, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who spiced up his announcement bowing out of a re-election bid with some talk about “traveling the country” for a movement to “mobilize the middle.”There is already a potential vehicle for a Manchin candidacy in the No Labels movement, along with an effort to draft Manchin and Mitt Romney to run together, with Romney at the top of the ticket.But the ideal ticket would probably lead with Manchin. For an independent run, his branding as a moderate with strong ideological differences with the left seems stronger than Romney’s branding as a conservative with strong moral differences with Trump.When elites pine for a third-party candidate, they usually imagine someone like Michael Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative and social liberal. But the sweet spot for a third-party candidate has always been slightly left of center on economics and moderate to conservative on cultural issues — and that describes Manchin better than it does most American politicians. (It arguably described Biden once but not as he’s evolved in the past decade.)The West Virginian could run, authentically, as an unwoke supporter of universal health care, fiscal restraint and a middle ground on guns and abortion. That’s a better basis for a run than Bloombergism or Kennedy’s courtship of the fringes, with a chance of claiming votes from Never Trumpers and the center left.But is it worth the effort? Stipulate that Kennedy will remain in the race and hold on to some share of the vote that might otherwise be available to a third-party moderate. Then the question becomes whether both Trump and Biden could fall below their 35 and 33 percent levels in the Times/Siena poll, giving Manchin a plurality of the popular vote and a chance at an Electoral College win (because merely deadlocking the Electoral College would just send the race to the House, where — pending the results in 2024 — Trump would probably prevail).In a polarized landscape, that kind of mutual G.O.P. and Democratic collapse seems unlikely. But if you were drawing up a scenario for it to happen, it might resemble the one we’re facing — in which one candidate seems manifestly too old for the job and the other might be tried and convicted before the general election. Such a landscape seems as if it should summon forth a responsible alternative. Confronting the American people with a Trump-Biden-Kennedy choice would be a remarkable dereliction by our political elites.But comes the response from anxious liberals: Isn’t an even greater dereliction for a Democrat — however ornery and moderate — to embark on a run that could help re-elevate Trump to the White House?Let’s allow that it might be, but then let’s also allow that, if current polling holds, it’s not running an alternative to Biden that seems most likely to put Trump back in the presidency.That Trump-friendly polling may change. But it’s entirely possible to begin an independent candidacy and then suspend it (just ask Perot) if the situation looks entirely unpropitious. Which is what I’d advise Manchin to consider, if the donors and infrastructure are there: a patriotic attempt, to be abandoned if it’s going nowhere, but to be seen through if enough of the country desires a different choice.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Joe Manchin’s Senate resignation fuels speculation of third-party 2024 bid

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      The West Virginia Democrat senator Joe Manchin’s announcement that he will not run for re-election next year has triggered speculation that he might instead launch a bid for the White House as the candidate of No Labels, a third-party group which has attracted significant funding.Manchin has long flirted with such a bid, brushing off warnings that by running he would only help elect Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate who is far ahead in the party’s 2024 nomination race.On Thursday, announcing his decision to quit the Senate, Manchin pointed to a possible presidential run. He said: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia.“I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.“But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilise the middle and bring Americans together.”Polling shows that most Americans do not want a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump next year, deeming the former too old, at nearly 81, and the latter, 77, too damaged by his chaotic presidency, assault on democracy and extreme criminal and civil predicament.Nonetheless, a rematch seems all but assured. Accordingly, Manchin’s announcement prompted concern across the political spectrum.Bill Kristol, a Never Trumper on the right, said: “Tuesday night’s results [in Kentucky, Ohio and elsewhere] were good news for Democrats. Manchin’s announcement today was bad news – bad for Democratic prospects for holding the Senate in 2024, bad for No Labels implications in the presidential race.”Olivia Troye, an adviser to Mike Pence when he was vice-president to Donald Trump, said: “The odds of [Manchin] running on the No Labels ticket for president have likely increased exponentially. If he does run, it will split the votes and, in the end, only help Trump in the 2024 election.”Rahna Epting, political action executive director of MoveOn, a progressive political action committee, also issued a stark warning: “Every independent analyst reaches the same conclusion: a No Labels ticket has no chance of winning a single electoral college vote in any state. Instead, their campaign would only ensure Trump’s re-election.”Other third-party candidates have already declared. Most prominent is Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine campaigner whose conspiracy-laced message shows signs of siphoning more votes from Trump than from Joe Biden. Two academics, Cornel West and Jill Stein, offer challenges from the left.But with Trump-Biden polling in swing states on a razor’s edge, any further move or comment from Manchin will now attract most attention.Now 76, Manchin was governor of West Virginia before entering the Senate in 2011. As a Democrat in elected office in the fossil fuels- and Republican-dominated state, he became a rarity or oddity: a political coelacanth, a holdover from an earlier age, drifting on partisan tides.But even fossils must pass on. Having accepted his likely doom as a senator, Manchin seems set to make one last pitch for a place in history.In its own statement, No Labels called him a “great leader … a tireless voice for America’s commonsense majority and a longtime ally of the No Labels movement”.In words that will strike fear into all who fear a second Trump term, it added: “Regarding our No Labels Unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House.“As we have said from the beginning, we will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a unity presidential ticket and who will be on it.”Whether he runs or not, Manchin’s decision does seem likely to at least hand Republicans a Senate seat. Greeting Manchin’s announcement that he will not run for re-election in the senate, Steve Daines of Montana, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said simply: “We like our odds in West Virginia.” More

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      Will Joe Manchin Run for President? He Keeps Fueling 2024 Rumors.

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      The West Virginia senator, who announced Thursday that he would not seek re-election, has stoked chatter about a third-party run. But his allies have been tight-lipped about his plans.Almost since he arrived in Washington, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia has complained about the partisan nature of the Capitol and insisted that Americans aren’t as politically divided as the people they send to Congress.With his announcement on Thursday that he will not seek re-election next year, Mr. Manchin again floated the possibility that he thinks the solution to America’s polarized politics lies in the mirror.“What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together,” Mr. Manchin said in his retirement video.He added, “I know our country isn’t as divided as Washington wants us to believe. We share common values of family, freedom, democracy, dignity and a belief that together we can overcome any challenge. We need to take back America and not let this divisive hatred further pull us apart.”What Mr. Manchin actually plans to do remains a mystery. His closest aides and advisers insist they don’t know. A conservative Democrat who has served as one of his party’s key votes in the Senate, he has long kept his own counsel on his biggest decisions and made up his mind at the last minute.Mr. Manchin has flirted this year with No Labels, a group that has made noise about running a centrist candidate for the White House. No Labels officials said Thursday that Mr. Manchin’s announcement had taken them by surprise, though they commended him “for stepping up to lead a long-overdue national conversation about solving America’s biggest challenges.”“Regarding our No Labels Unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House,” the group said in a statement.Some allies of Mr. Manchin are skeptical that he will run for president. For one, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run a credible independent or third-party campaign, and Mr. Manchin has never been a formidable fund-raiser on his own.Fellow Senate Democrats and their super PAC subsidized much of his 2018 re-election effort and were poised to do so again next year had he chosen to run. He did hold a fund-raising event for his political action committee last weekend at the Greenbrier, the West Virginia resort owned by Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican who is running for the state’s Senate seat.But the odds of him winning the presidency would be extremely long, especially at this relatively late date.“I wouldn’t say that he can’t or won’t run, but I know he hasn’t run for anything that he doesn’t want to win, ever,” said Phil Smith, a longtime lobbyist and official at the United Mine Workers of America and an ally of Mr. Manchin’s. “If you look at independent candidates for president, even well-known ones, those who started this late never got more than 2 to 3 percent of the vote.”Then there’s the question of Mr. Manchin’s age. He is 76, and would be running in a race with heightened attention and concern about the ages of President Biden, 80, and the likely Republican nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, 77.Mr. Manchin, a former West Virginia University quarterback, remains in good physical condition for a septuagenarian. In May, he completed a three-mile race in Washington in just over 40 minutes.One thing Mr. Manchin has always enjoyed since he won a special election to the Senate in 2010, when he was West Virginia’s governor, is the attention that comes with being a critical vote when Democrats control the chamber.That has often afforded him a platform that has made him popular among cable television bookers and centrist donors, while drawing the ire of the Democratic Party’s progressive activists. He said this summer that he was thinking “seriously” about leaving the Democratic Party.“If he sees that Biden continues to be the Democratic nominee and Trump the Republican nominee, I think he truly sees a huge slice of the American electorate, both Republican and Democratic, fed up with both of their parties’ nominees,” said former Representative Nick Rahall, a fellow West Virginia Democrat who has known Mr. Manchin for decades.For months this year, Mr. Manchin has cozied up to No Labels, which has so far secured ballot access in 12 states in its attempt to offer an alternative to Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. The group’s president, Nancy Jacobson, has told potential donors that the group intends to select a Republican to lead its ticket, a decision that would exclude Mr. Manchin if No Labels maintains that position.One candidate openly teasing a No Labels run, Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, released a foreign policy video on Tuesday that looked and sounded like a campaign advertisement, denouncing the isolationism in his party and declaring himself “a Reagan guy.”Mr. Hogan appeared at a Bloomberg event last month and said that when he spoke with No Labels officials and donors, “most of them are now assuming it should be a Republican at the top of the ticket.”No Labels has methodically moved forward on its possible presidential campaign, unveiling a manifesto — a platform of sorts — in July and holding its own centrist events. They have featured a rotating cast of characters including Mr. Manchin, Mr. Hogan and Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and moderate Republican.The group plans to raise $70 million before a convention in Dallas scheduled for April. But No Labels officials say they will decide whether to announce that campaign before then, possibly after Super Tuesday on March 5, when the Republican presidential primary contest may be all but over.The decision could come earlier, with the field of presidential candidates outside the major parties continuing to expand.On Thursday, Jill Stein, whose presence on the ballot in 2016 may have helped secure the White House for Mr. Trump, joined Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the iconoclastic vaccine skeptic, and Cornel West, the left-wing academic, as challengers to the Republican and Democratic nominees. Ms. Stein will seek to represent the Green Party, as she did in 2016.But No Labels’s drive to get a slot on the ballot in all 50 states appears to have stalled at 12. Thirty-four states allow a group like No Labels to claim a place-holder slot without a candidate, but 16 others and the District of Columbia require a ticket.“They’re not going to run a 50-state campaign,” said Mr. Smith, the lobbyist and union official. “They’re just not.”There will be no shortage of unsolicited advice for Mr. Manchin from Democrats when it comes to his plans.Matt Bennett, the co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, who is organizing efforts to stop Third Way and dissuade Mr. Manchin from joining their ticket, said he was “not worried” about Mr. Manchin running as an independent candidate.Rahna Epting, the executive director of the progressive group MoveOn, said Thursday that Mr. Manchin should “reject any overtures from No Labels’s dangerous ploy.” More

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      in US Politics

      US Democratic senator Joe Manchin will not seek re-election in 2024

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      West Virginia’s controversial Democratic US senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and will instead “fight to unite the middle”.The 76-year-old senator, who for years has held an outsized degree of power within the Democratic party and often defied its leadership, appeared in July at an event held by a political group exploring a third-party presidential bid.Manchin’s appearance with the centrist No Labels group fueled speculation that he was considering a run for the presidency, a scenario that alarmed Democrats as it could weaken Joe Biden’s candidacy for another term in the White House.On Thursday afternoon, Manchin put out a statement saying: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.”He added: “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”No Labels sees Manchin as a potential candidate for its centrist platform. Although No Labels, which has been around since 2010, mostly behind the scenes, has stated it will not field a candidate if their platform does not gain traction or if it appears it would swing the vote in favor of one party, the group has been actively fundraising and is seeking to get on ballots across the country.Maryanne Martini, a spokesperson for No Labels, released a statement praising Manchin as “a longtime ally” but declining to comment on his potential to run for president.“Regarding our No Labels unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House,” she said. “As we have said from the beginning, we will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a unity presidential ticket and who will be on it.”Opinion polls show dissatisfaction with the current leading White House candidates, both the incumbent Biden and the Republican frontrunner Trump.Manchin’s decision to step down will also jeopardise Democrats’ narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Republicans hold the governor’s office and the rest of the congressional delegation in a state that Trump won by a wide margin over Biden in 2020. Manchin won his last election with just 49.6% of the vote, 0.3 percentage points ahead of his Republican rival, in 2018.The US senator Steve Daines, the head of Republican senators’ campaign arm, said in a brief statement: “We like our odds in West Virginia.”The state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, has already launched a campaign for his party’s nomination for Senate. Justice was a Democrat when he was first elected governor in 2016, but a year into office he switched parties and went on to cruise to re-election, winning 65% of the vote in 2020. Trump has endorsed Justice.Justice said on Thursday: “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionManchin’s departure will raise the stakes for Democrats in several other Senate races including in Republican-leaning Montana and Ohio and highly competitive Pennsylvania and Arizona.Manchin, who took office in 2010, has been a key vote on every major piece of legislation of Biden’s tenure as a moderate representing an increasingly conservative state. His support was critical to the passage of Biden’s sweeping $1tn infrastructure law, one of the president’s key domestic accomplishments.Together with the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who switched her registration to independent from Democrat in December, Manchin has secured major concessions and the scaling back of his party’s legislative goals, winning him applause from conservatives and condemnations from many fellow Democrats.The pair stood together in protecting the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires that 60 of the chamber’s 100 members agree on most legislation, in the face of intense opposition from their own party.Manchin’s defence of the filibuster helped block Democrats’ hopes of passing bills to protect abortion rights after the supreme court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had established the right nationwide.Republican senators praised Manchin’s commitment to bipartisanship.The Utah senator Mitt Romney, who is also not seeking re-election, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “I will miss this American patriot in the Senate. But our friendship and our commitment to American values will not end.” More

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      in Elections

      Trump Endorses Gov. Jim Justice in West Virginia Senate Race

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      The endorsement is a blow to the governor’s rival for the Republican nomination as the Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III, weighs whether to seek re-election.Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia for senator, in a race that is widely viewed as a prime pickup opportunity as Republicans seek to reclaim control of the Senate.Mr. Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday evening, praised Mr. Justice’s stances on issues including the southern border, energy policy and the economy. “Big Jim will be a Great UNITED STATES SENATOR, and has my Complete & Total Endorsement. HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!!!” Mr. Trump wrote.The endorsement was a blow to Representative Alex Mooney, another Republican running for the seat, whom Mr. Trump endorsed in his congressional race last year.Mr. Justice, a popular two-term governor, announced his bid in April for the seat held by Senator Joe Manchin III, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats facing re-election in 2024 as Democrats hold the chamber by a tight 51-49 margin. Mr. Trump won West Virginia in the 2020 election by nearly 40 percentage points.Mr. Manchin has not yet announced if he will seek re-election, and the race is marked as a tossup by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.Shortly after the endorsement, Mr. Justice shared a screenshot of the Truth Social post on X, formerly known as Twitter, along with a fund-raising link, writing: “I’m endorsed by @realDonaldTrump. I’m the only American First Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in West Virginia.”As Mr. Trump mounts his presidential bid, he has made few endorsements in the 2024 election cycle — a departure from the 2022 midterm cycle, when he endorsed several losing candidates in important swing states.In addition to supporting Mr. Justice, he has endorsed Kari Lake — who unsuccessfully ran for governor of Arizona with his endorsement last year — in her race for the seat held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema. More