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Will democracy still be on a roll in 2023?

Apadana Central — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 13:03:44 +0000

2022 was the year democracy bounced back. But will the worst political system apart from all the others keep up its lead in the year ahead?

In the US last year, midterm election voters repudiated Donald Trump’s election-denying extremist candidates; now the former President’s reelection campaign – which is based on lies about 2020 – faces an existential crisis. Congress also passed a new law designed to make it harder for sore loser presidents like Trump to mess with the Constitution. In another blow to populist extremism, Brazilian voters ousted one of Trump’s proteges, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. And in April, French President Emmanuel Macron defeated far right challenger Marine Le Pen.

As democracies showed resilience, autocrats lost momentum in several countries last year. Soon after securing a norm-busting third term, Chinese leader Xi Jinping was embarrassed by nationwide outcry and forced to abandon a controversial “Zero Covid” policy. Iran’s clerical regime is still being rattled by a furious protest movement. And the pitfalls of surrounding yourself with yes men were exposed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s miscalculated “special operation” in Ukraine, which has raised the profile of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a champion for democracy and revived the West’s Cold War alliance.

Democracy’s enemies won’t rest. There’s no sign that the challenges facing Moscow, Tehran or Beijing could loosen their iron grasps on power. Even in the US, Trump is on the comeback trail and a Republican majority (dominated by members who voted not to certify President Joe Biden’s election in 2020) is poised to take over the US House of Representatives.

But those who thought they had democracy on the run in 2022 got a surprise. The simple magic of a voter marking their ballot in a polling booth or a protestor willing to put their life on the line for the right to do so remains as powerful as ever.

Meanwhile, here’s what will define the new year in American politics

Washington is bracing for a new era of divided government likely to bring governing showdowns, shutdowns, withering political investigations and the opening shots of the 2024 presidential race.

Here’s what we think will shape the year.

A House Republican majority, in which radical conservatives now have disproportionate influence, will try to throttle Biden’s presidency and ruin his reelection hopes. By driving McCarthy’s speakership bid to the brink, pro-Trump conservatives have already shown they will not be stopped. Governing could therefore be impossible and a likely standoff with the White House over raising the US borrowing limit later this year could turn into an economy-wrecking disaster.
Spare a thought for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose decision on whether to charge Trump with a crime is one of the most fateful in modern politics. Trying the ex-President would tear open old political wounds and would further damage legal and governing institutions politicized by Trump. Yet a failure to prosecute could set a precedent that hands ex-presidents impunity and fractures the principle that everyone is equal before the law.
Like it or not, Trump has pitched America into the next presidential campaign. But his limp launch, bleating over his 2020 election loss and the poor track record of his hand-picked election-denying candidates in the midterms diminished his aura. Potential alternative Republican figureheads for populist, nationalist culture war politics, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are emerging. Biden meanwhile may give Americans a new piece of history – a reelection campaign from a president who is over 80. His strongest card is that he’s already beaten Trump once. But that might not help him against a younger challenger like DeSantis.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed how global events can redefine an American presidency. But as the war grinds on, Biden’s capacity to stop it from spilling into a disastrous Russia-NATO clash will be constantly tested. He has his hands full: An encounter between a Chinese jet and US military jet over the South China Sea over the holiday hints at how tensions could boil over there. And nuclear crises are building with Iran and North Korea.
In 2022, 40-year-high inflation and tumbling stock markets coincided with historically low unemployment rates in an odd economic mix. The key question for 2023 will be whether the Federal Reserve’s harsh interest rate medicine – designed to bring down the cost of living – can bring about a soft landing without triggering a recession.

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Zelensky says Russia planning prolonged attack with Iranian-made drones

Apadana Central — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 07:57:24 +0000

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia is planning a prolonged campaign of attacks with Iranian-made Shahed drones to exhaust Ukraine.

“We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack with Shaheds. Its bet may be on exhaustion,” Zelensky said in his nightly address Monday. “On exhaustion of our people, our air defense, our energy sector.”

Zelensky said Ukraine’s main task is to ensure Russia’s drone plans fail.

He said more than 80 have been shot down over Ukraine since the start of 2023.

“This number may increase in the near future. Because these weeks the nights can be quite restless.
“Now is the time when everyone involved in the protection of the sky should be especially attentive.”

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The most underdiscussed fact of the 2022 election: how historically close it was

Apadana Central — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 07:41:13 +0000

A lot of people have tried to draw lessons from the 2022 elections, which ended earlier this month. Whether it be Democrats’ historically strong performance for a party in power during a midterm or the lack of Senate incumbents losing, the takes have been aplenty.

But perhaps the most important lesson as we head into the 2024 cycle hasn’t gotten enough oxygen: the closeness of the 2022 midterms. Indeed, an examination of the data reveals that 2022 was a historically close election in a historically divided era.

Let’s start with seat counts in governorships and in the House and Senate. Post-election, neither party dominates. Republicans have maintained the thinnest majority of governorships (52%) and House seats (51%). Democrats will control the Senate with a bare majority (51% of the seats).

It’s not unusual for any one of these (governorships, House seats or Senate seats) to be narrowly split. After all, we’ve just had two years in which each party has held 50 Senate seats.

What is unusual is to have all three be so closely divided. By my count, this is apparently the first time since the popular election of senators (1914) when neither party will hold more than 52% of governorships, House seats or Senate seats.

When you examine the vote counts from the 2022 election, the closeness becomes even more apparent. Republicans won the House popular vote by less than 3 points and would likely have won by about 2 points had both parties run candidates in every district. That would have been the second-closest midterm margin in the House popular vote in the last 70 years.

The popular vote margins in governor’s and Senate races this year were even closer. There were 36 gubernatorial races in 2022, with Democrats winning more votes cast for governor in total than Republicans – by less than 0.3 points.

That margin was the closest in midterm- or presidential-year gubernatorial races since at least 1990.

The margin in Senate races was still tighter. Republican candidates for Senate won more votes than Democratic candidates – by 0.1 points. Democrats likely would have gotten more votes had they run a candidate in Utah instead of endorsing independent Evan McMullin.

Still, the 0.1-point popular vote margin was the closest in Senate races in any election since at least before the beginning of World War II.

Not every state held gubernatorial and Senate races this year, but those that did were well representative of the country as a whole when looked at together. They collectively voted for Joe Biden in 2020 by a margin comparable with his actual national popular vote advantage.

A growing divide

What makes the closeness of the 2022 elections especially notable is how it exemplifies an electorate that has been quite divided for nearly 35 years.

We have not had a presidential election in which the popular vote was decided by double-digits since 1984. This streak of single-digit elections is the longest since most states began popularly electing presidents in the 1820s.

The largest margin in the House popular vote since 1984 was the nearly-11-point win Democrats notched in the 2008 election. In fact, the last time the House popular vote margin was 11 points or more was 40 years ago, in 1982. We haven’t seen such a string of close results in the House popular vote in 200 years.

Political scientists have debated the reasons for this tight set of recent elections. Arguably, the best explanation is political polarization. The era of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats is mostly gone now. The pool of swing voters has, accordingly, shrunk.

But that hasn’t made swing voters any less valuable today. These voters, who go back and forth between the parties, remain highly sought after by Democrats and Republicans, and they can make all the difference. For instance, a number of purple states (such as Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin) elected candidates of different parties for governor and senator this year.

The 2024 election will undoubtedly see both parties trying to win over these swing voters. The early read suggests neither party can feel secure about their chances. You can find polls that have Biden (the likely Democratic nominee) and his likely Republican opponent (either former President Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) within a few points of each other among this group.

The bottom line is: Neither party has a lasting majority from the public. That was true in the historically close election of 2022 and in the historically divided era of the last 35 years. And it could very well also be also true in the next presidential election.

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Why 2022 was a tough year for Trump and 2023 may not be much better

Apadana Central — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 07:35:10 +0000

This must feel like the year that won’t end for former President Donald Trump, whose actions appear to be catching up with him in public, painful and expensive ways.

Trump is infamous for escaping accountability, but he’s been put under the microscope in the second half of 2022 in a way that has complicated things for the 2024 contender.

The FBI searched his Florida resort, where classified documents were seized. His business was found guilty of criminal tax fraud. Documents relating to his tax returns were released by House Democrats, who are expected to release his actual returns before turning over the committee gavel next year to Republicans, who won a smaller-than-expected majority under Trump’s influence. Many candidates Trump backed failed in key Senate races, costing Republicans a majority in that chamber.

The former president himself hasn’t been charged with any crimes. But a special counsel has been appointed at the Justice Department to oversee two Trump-related investigations – surrounding the hoarding of documents at Mar-a-Lago and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Trump has railed against the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, and his most ardent supporters tried to stonewall it, but it’s hard to objectively dismiss its damning 800-page detailed report, which spells out his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role inspiring rioters to attack the Capitol.

And though the committee’s criminal referrals of Trump to the Justice Department are largely symbolic, the former president still has to wait and see what comes of the DOJ’s own twin probes.

In the meantime, there’s no sign that the former president – who launched his third nonconsecutive presidential bid last month – has done much to clear the GOP field, with other hopefuls mulling their options over the holidays.

String of setbacks

The ongoing end-of-year revelations chipping away at Trump’s facade of power include large developments like the January 6 committee report – and smaller details.

Hidden in court documents is the inconvenient truth that even his loudest acolytes on Fox News knew his 2020 election fantasy was false.

Sean Hannity, the Fox News opinion host, admitted he didn’t “for one second” believe the fraud claims he helped push.

It might be nice for Fox viewers to hear that from Hannity, but the admission came off the air and in a deposition as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the conservative network, according to the New York Times.

Hannity, as we know from text messages, was in close contact with Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in the days leading up to January 6.

That the conservative elites in Trump’s circle knew the truth adds context to the fears of fraud they pushed to encourage Republican lawmakers to pass new election security laws in key states.

The truth about taxes

The release of Trump’s tax information, without his consent, by House Democrats confirmed what anyone could have guessed – that he paid no federal income tax in a year when he was leading the country.

Even in years like 2018, where he paid about $1 million in federal taxes, the rate he paid, a bit more than 4%, was on par with the bottom half of American taxpayers.

The special tax rules for real estate barons, which Congress can’t seem to address, help explain why Trump’s tax bill looks so different than that of regular wage-earning Americans. But the end result is that the former president looks like a tax avoider.

Trump broke with tradition in 2016 by refusing to release any of his personal tax returns. But his team immediately tried to weaponize the release of his information. “If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said last week.

Popularity slipping among Republicans

Trump made sure his influence was felt during the 2022 midterms, but after Republicans failed to secure a “red wave,” some members of his party have blamed him for the GOP’s poor showing.

He must now grapple with polls like CNN’s from earlier this month, which showed that most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want the party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024. Their top pick for an alternative? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The GOP governor, who won a resounding reelection last month, enjoyed much stronger favorability ratings than Trump among Republicans, according to the CNN survey.

That’s bad news for a man who jumped out in front of the 2024 Republican field and launched another presidential bid at the precise moment he began to appear politically weak.

Even his most ardent supporters are growing tired of some of his antics. The $99 Trump-themed digital trading cards timed the NFT market all wrong and drew ridicule even from his most loyal supporters.

“I can’t do this any more,” complained Stephen Bannon, the former adviser who was sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress after ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 committee. (He’s appealed that conviction.)

2023 may not be much better

Many of the issues that dogged Trump in 2022 won’t be over with the start of the new year – and could even escalate.

His business, convicted of tax fraud in late 2022, also faces civil charges from the New York attorney general in 2023.

On the election-stealing front, it’s not just Special Counsel Jack Smith that Trump has to worry about. An Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State has already begun writing its final report, CNN reported earlier this month. That will serve as a mechanism for the panel to recommend whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue indictments.

While Trump envisions himself returning to the White House, one of the final bipartisan efforts lawmakers agreed on this month was an update to the Electoral Count Act, making clear that attempts like Trump’s after 2020 – to exploit antiquated language in federal election law and undermine the Electoral College – can never occur again.

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Prolonged winter storm causes at least 37 deaths and leaves thousands without power

Apadana Central — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 05:37:55 +0000

The prolonged winter storm that brought heavy snow, high winds and brutal cold to most of the US this past week has killed at least 37 people and had hundreds of thousands without power on Christmas morning.

Perhaps the worst impact was around Buffalo, New York, where 43 inches of snow fell as of Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The snowfall and blizzard conditions made roads impassable, froze power substations and left more than a dozen people dead, Erie County officials said.

The conditions eased slightly on Sunday, allowing emergency responders to get out and see the extent of the problem.

“I don’t want to say that this is going to be it because that would be a fallacy for me to say that, because we know that there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said Sunday. “There are people in homes who are below freezing temperatures.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called it the “most devastating storm in Buffalo’s long storied history” due to its power and its extended length.

“It’s a crisis of epic proportion,” Hochul told CNN’s Paula Reid on Sunday.

Over the past week, this winter storm brought dangerously cold temperatures, blizzard conditions and coastal flooding to almost the entirety of the US, wrecking Christmas plans along the way.

More than 55 million people were under wind chill alerts Sunday morning, and freeze warnings are in effect across the South.

The blizzard conditions persisted Sunday across the Great Lakes, while frigid cold temperatures gripped the eastern two-thirds of the country.

Some major cities in the Southeast, Midwest and East Coast recorded their coldest Christmas in decades. In Florida, it will be the coldest December 25 since 1983 for Miami, Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach.

New York City also saw record cold temperatures on Christmas Eve at several locations, including its JFK and LaGuardia airports. The high at Central Park was 15 degrees, marking it the second-coldest December 24 in at least 150 years, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures are forecast to rebound later in the week with a much-welcomed warming trend with above-normal temperatures.

About 250,000 homes and businesses in the US had no electricity service as of about 11 a.m. ET Sunday, with nearly half of those affected in Maine and New York, according to PowerOutage.us. Since the start of the storm the number of outages has at times exceeded a million customers.

Power grid struggling with cold

A power grid operator for at least 13 states in the country’s eastern half asked customers to conserve power and set thermostats lower than usual from early Saturday to 10 a.m. on Sunday because usage was straining capacity.

The operator, PJM Interconnection, serves about 65 million people in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The operator warned rolling blackouts could happen if the strain becomes too much.

In New York, utility companies Con Edison and Natural Grid US also urged customers to conserve energy, citing extreme weather conditions and increased energy demand on interstate pipelines carrying natural gas into the city.

Meanwhile, a shortage of electricity in Texas prompted the US Department of Energy to declare an emergency Friday, allowing the state’s energy provider to exceed environmental emissions standards until energy usage drops.

In Jackson, Mississippi, frigid temperatures are hampering efforts to repair a large water main break late Saturday, which has caused a loss in water pressure for residents, city officials said.

“We are grateful to the crews who are braving these frigid temperatures on this Christmas Eve night, while working to restore pressure to residents. Their sacrifice does not go unnoticed and is appreciated not only by this administration, but also by every resident who is affected,” the release stated.

The brutal weather conditions have also snarled travel during the busy holiday weekend, with more than 5,000 flights canceled Friday, more than 3,400 flights canceled Saturday, and more than 2,800 canceled for Christmas Day.

Dangerous weather conditions claim lives

Out of the 17 weather-related fatalities recorded across New York, 16 were in Erie County, officials said, and one was a fatal carbon monoxide poisoning reported in Niagara County, according to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office.

Blistering blizzard conditions swept the region, and Poloncarz, the county executive, said about 500 motorists found themselves stranded in their vehicles Friday night into Saturday morning, despite a county driving ban put in place during the storm.

National Guard troops had been called in to help “rescue people that are stuck in vehicles,” he said.

Of the deaths reported early Sunday – with individuals ranging in age from 26 to 93 years of age – “some were found in cars and some were found actually on the street in snow banks,” Poloncarz said.

Two died in separate incidents Friday night when emergency medical personnel could not get to their homes in time for medical emergencies, Poloncarz said Saturday morning. Details about a third death, confirmed by a county spokesperson Saturday afternoon, weren’t immediately available.

“The loss of two lives in Buffalo – storm related – because people were not able to get to medical attention, is again a crisis situation that unfolds before your eyes and you realize that lifesaving ambulances and emergency medical personnel cannot get to people during a blizzard situation,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Saturday.

Hochul said she will ask the federal government “for a declaration of emergency that’ll allow us to seek reimbursements for the extraordinary expenses of all the overtime and the fact that we brought in mutual aid from other parts of the state.”

Other storm-related deaths have been reported in the country. They include:

• Colorado: Police in Colorado Springs, Colorado, reported two deaths related to the cold since Thursday, with one man found near a power transformer of a building possibly looking for warmth, and another in a camp in an alleyway.

• Kansas: Three people have died in weather-related traffic accidents, the Kansas Highway Patrol said Friday.

• Kentucky: Three people have died in the state, officials have said, including one involving a vehicle crash in Montgomery County.

• Missouri: One person died after a caravan slid off an icy road and into a frozen creek, Kansas City police said.

• Ohio: Nine people have died as a result of weather-related auto crashes, including four in a Saturday morning crash on Interstate 75, when a semi tractor-trailer crossed the median and collided with an SUV and a pickup, authorities said.

• Tennessee: The Tennessee Department of Health on Friday confirmed one storm-related fatality.

• Wisconsin: Wisconsin State Patrol on Thursday reported one fatal crash due to winter weather.

What to expect as the storm slowly weakens and hazardous conditions continue

Strong winds behind the arctic cold front that pushed through this week will lead to lake-effect snow and blizzard conditions at times across portions of the Great Lakes on Sunday.

Blizzard warnings, winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories blanket much of the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes region and Ohio Valley.

An additional 8 to 16 inches of lake-effect snow is possible.

The storm system is forecast to gradually weaken as it lifts into southeastern Canada, moving slowly during the next couple of days and pulling arctic air from Canada down into much of the eastern side of the country.

The Arctic blast will slowly moderate into Monday.

The cold temperatures combined with dangerous wind chills will create a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers who become stranded, people who work outside, livestock and pets, according to the National Weather Service.

“In some areas, being outdoors could lead to frostbite in minutes,” the Weather Service warned.

As the frigid air continues to blast the warm waters of the Great Lakes, lake-effect snows and blizzard conditions are expected to continue, but slowly become less intense.

Still, strong gusty winds initially up to 60 mph accompanying the snow downwind from the Great Lakes will continue to make for extremely dangerous conditions on the road.

By Christmas night into Monday, another low pressure system coming from the Pacific will deliver the next surge of moisture toward the Pacific Northwest and then into northern California, according to the Weather Service.

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Biden to name former Rep. Joe Kennedy III as Northern Ireland envoy Monday morning

Apadana Central — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 04:53:16 +0000

President Joe Biden will announce Monday morning that former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III will serve as the US envoy to Northern Ireland, according to a source with knowledge.

CNN reported last week that Kennedy would be named to the post, which was has been vacant since former Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney resigned in 2021.

Kennedy will be taking the post as the British government and the European Union clash over the Northern Ireland protocol, which dictates cross-border trade regulations between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Biden has been an active follower of the discussions and has pressed London and Brussels to come to an agreement that would not threaten the hard-fought peace in Northern Ireland. He has pressed the matter with the last three British prime ministers, including the current leader Rishi Sunak, arguing that an agreement should be reached by the anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday agreement in April.

Kennedy is expected to focus primarily on economic matters, not political ones, though Northern Ireland has been without a fully functioning government for months.

Former President Bill Clinton appointed the first US special envoy to Northern Ireland, Sen. George Mitchell, to help broker the Good Friday agreement.

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Exclusive: Schumer and Pelosi say Biden should run in 2024

Apadana Central — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 08:30:18 +0000

House Speaker Nancy Pelos is leaving Democratic leadership after Republicans won the majority. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is remaining at the helm of a chamber Democrats still control.

But both said President Joe Biden should run for a second term in 2024 after what they described as an “excellent” first two years in office.

The Democratic congressional leaders’ comments came in their first joint sit-down interview with CNN’s Jamie Gangel over lunch at Hunan Dynasty, a Chinese restaurant on Capitol Hill in Washington, where the two have shared meals for years.

Pelosi said Biden, who at 80 is already the nation’s oldest president, has “done an excellent job” in the White House.

“I hope that he does seek reelection. He’s a person with great vision for our country. He’s been involved for a long time so he has great knowledge of the issues, and the challenges we face,” she said.

Pelosi also said Biden is “the most empathetic president. He connects with people.”

“The vision, the knowledge, the strategic thinking is all here,” she said, pointing to her head. “The empathy is from the heart. And I think he’s a great president.”

Asked if Biden should run again, Schumer said: “Yeah. He’s done an excellent, excellent job. And if he runs, I’m going to support him all the way.”

Carol Guzy for CNN

The interview took place less than three weeks before Pelosi steps down as speaker after Republicans won a slim majority in November’s midterm elections. The California Democrat plans to remain in the House, representing her San Francisco district, but is leaving her caucus’s leadership ranks.

Schumer and Pelosi reminisced in the interview about past battles with Donald Trump – and both predicted the former president will lose his third bid for the White House.

“The American people have gotten wise to him. Took a little while, but they did,” Schumer said.

The New York Democrat said Americans watched as pro-Trump rioters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and said voters’ understanding of the “danger to democracy” is partly responsible for Democrats’ stronger-than-expected showing in this year’s midterms.

“I don’t think we should talk about him while we’re eating,” Pelosi said of Trump.

The comments by the Democratic duo come amid the possibility of a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024. Trump has already announced his 2024 candidacy, though he is likely to face a competitive GOP primary; Biden has not made a formal announcement but has long maintained he will seek reelection, saying he will officially decide early next year.

A new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS found little appetite for a rematch between the 2020 rivals. About 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they want their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024 (62%), while a similar 59% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they’d like to see someone other than Biden at the top of their ticket in the next presidential election.

In the interview, Pelosi and Schumer detailed their actions on January 6, 2021, as Trump-supporting insurrectionists attacked the Capitol.

Schumer said he asked acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to put him on the phone with Trump – but Rosen would not do so.

“He wouldn’t put him on,” Schumer said.

Asked if Trump would not take their call, Schumer said, “Right. Correct.”

Those calls came three days after a high-stakes Oval Office meeting at which Trump considered replacing Rosen as acting attorney general with loyalist Jeffrey Clark so that Clark could use his powers to attempt to overturn the 2020 election. In that meeting, Trump was told that if he followed through on that plan, top Justice Department officials, including Rosen, would resign.

Pelosi contrasted Trump with the Republicans she’d worked with as House Democratic leader, including former speaker John Boehner. She described Trump as insane.

“I think there’s a need for an intervention by his family or something. I don’t think he’s on the level now,” Pelosi said.

In the interview, the two described a close relationship of more than three decades – “almost like brother and sister,” Schumer said.

That relationship involves regular dinners and talking on the phone four times a day – too many, Pelosi joked – all because Schumer has a flip phone.

“If he had a regular smartphone, we could reduce the number of conversations because I could just text him,” she said.

The two discussed a heated Oval Office meeting with Trump in December 2018, during which Trump said in front of news cameras that he would shut down the government over lawmakers’ refusal to fund his US-Mexico border wall.

“Chuck was masterful,” Pelosi said of the meeting, in which Schumer prompted Trump to make the declaration that he would shut the government down.

“She set him up so I could go in for the kill,” Schumer said.

Schumer said Pelosi was able to successfully navigate Trump’s presidency because she treated the Republican like a child.

“I tell people Nancy instinctively knew how to handle Trump because her first 35-40 years of life she raised five children,” he said.

Schumer said despite Pelosi’s departure from House Democratic leadership, the two will continue to speak regularly.

“I will be certainly calling,” he said, “and seek her advice and a feeling of what’s going on in the House and what we can get done.”

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Why voters don’t want Biden or Trump but might get them anyway in 2024

Apadana Central — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 05:36:59 +0000

Even as President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump move toward a rerun of the most turbulent White House race in modern history, many voters are pining for a break from the past – and the present.

A new CNN/SSRS poll shows that 6 in 10 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents want their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024. A similar slice on the other side hopes for a nominee other than Biden.

Those findings suggest that voters are ready for the days of presidential campaigns when one generation passed the torch to the next. A Biden versus Trump race would raise questions over whether a bitterly polarized political system, where democracy itself is at stake, has lost the capacity for self-renewal that has always been an American strength. And it would suggest that the heady appeal of an outsider, which produced presidents in 1992, 2008 and 2016, has for now been kept at bay.

Of course, it’s early. And the 2022 midterms offer a still fresh reminder that in a volatile, partisan age shadowed by crises at home and abroad, logic, history, polls and pre-race predictions months ahead of time often don’t count for much.

But the race is on, whether voters want it or not. Early perceptions of the contenders’ strengths are important since they shape the decisions of potential rivals and donors in the early money chase. Trump is already a declared candidate, although he could use a relaunch after a tepid start, and Biden is giving every sign he plans on running, suggesting he’ll let the country know for sure early in the new year.

The midterm elections, in which Democrats held the Senate and Republicans won a tiny House majority, help explain the poll’s findings. Voters hoping for a return to the normality Biden had promised after generational public health and inflation challenges weren’t exactly enthused with the president, whose low approval numbers largely kept him off the campaign trail in battleground states. But they didn’t trust a GOP still largely under Trump’s sway to fix things either.

The poll also hints at one of the emerging paradoxes in the nascent 2024 race. Even though they are the most powerful figures in their parties, both Biden and Trump seem oddly vulnerable at the start of the two-year campaign, and could face complications from a shifting political environment, outside factors or age.

Trump’s appeal seems to be fading. A disastrous midterm election for many of his candidates in swing states, which reflected the fatigue over his incessant whining about 2020, meant voters rejected his brand in consecutive national elections. Trump’s talent for thwarting accountability is, meanwhile, facing its toughest test from twin special counsel probes. And some Republicans are looking elsewhere. The CNN poll shows that when GOP voters are asked who they’d prefer, 47% have an alternative in mind. Nearly 4 in 10 of them pick Florida Gov Ron. DeSantis, who is untested on a national stage but already looms as a big threat to the former president.

As for Biden, it’s hardly flattering to a president that a majority of his own voters would like to see someone else as their candidate. Any commander in chief with a sub 50% approval rating like Biden is typically vulnerable in a reelection race. And there’s never been a presidential election when an 80-something president is asking for a second term. Biden has said he’s a great respecter of fate – a hint that he understands that, at his age, the good health needed for a campaign is not taken for granted.

But the president ends the year in better political shape than Trump, and appears to have stabilized his slump. This summer, only 25% of Democrat-aligned voters wanted him to be their nominee. Now that figure is 40%. And among those who want someone else, 72% say they’ve got no one particular in mind, further bolstering the advantage a sitting president usually has against a primary challenger.

Trump at a crossroads

Republican politics may, or may not, be at a moment of transition. How things shake out in the next few months will be critical to Trump’s prospects. On the one hand, more and more Republicans – prompted by the failure of many of the ex-president’s hand-picked candidates in the midterms – are saying it’s time to move on.

And Trump’s dinner with extremists with a record of antisemitism like White supremacist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago is bolstering their arguments that his general election viability is damaged beyond repair. Trump’s so-far lackluster campaign, which looks like it was declared to make it easier for him to portray criminal probes into his conduct as persecution, isn’t convincing anyone so far.

And yet, the former president’s allies, like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, will be hugely influential in the new GOP House majority. Paradoxically, the failure of Republicans to do better in November means that a thinner majority will be easier for extremists to manipulate as they seek to turn Republican control of half of the Capitol into a weapon to damage Biden and help Trump in 2024.

Another campaign will test whether there’s been any erosion in Trump’s base. But even if his mythical connection to those voters might not be enough to win him the presidency, it could still carry him to his third straight nomination. The unwillingness of most Republican lawmakers to repudiate Trump over comments like his recent call to terminate the Constitution suggest that they are still under the sway of the ex-president’s supporters at home. The same can be said for House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who has found ways not to condemn Trump’s recent associations with extremists in his desperate bid to win the speaker’s gavel next month.

Trump was regularly winning big primaries in 2016 with between 30% and 40% of the vote in a large field. In the CNN poll, 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they want Trump as the nominee again. (And even two-thirds of those said they’d prefer someone else said they’d definitely or probably back him in the general election if he were the nominee.)

GOP hopefuls will see that 38% – the lowest point of three CNN polls on the topic this year – as an opening for an anti-Trump candidate. But another big field could splinter opposition to the ex-president among untested potential foes.

While DeSantis, for instance, has impressed conservative voters by seizing on hot button culture war issues like immigration, transgender rights, anti-Covid 19 measures and supposed voter fraud, he has not yet come face-to-face with Trump. The Florida governor, who won an easy reelection race last month, has not said whether he will run against Trump, who set him up in his first gubernatorial race with an endorsement. But a string of primary debate clashes with Trump would test his capacity to take a blow, his ability to think on his feet and his willingness to counter-attack a former president who still benefits from a personality cult among GOP base voters.

Trump, after all, is at his most ruthless and politically effective with an enemy in his direct sights. And DeSantis has a lot to lose.

Biden isn’t going to start listening to polls now

Biden’s best answer to those Democrats who would prefer another candidate is that he’s already beaten Trump in 2020 and staved off the traditional first-term shellacking for first-term presidents in the midterms, partly by warning Trump’s ultra-MAGA forces were mustering for another assault on American democracy.

It’s nothing new for Biden not to have the confidence of his party. His previous two presidential campaigns fizzled early and his 2020 effort was in disarray until a win in the South Carolina primary rescued his White House hopes. Heading into the midterms, the conventional wisdom was that Biden’s low approval ratings and raging inflation would deal him a devastating blow. But the Republican red wave never came and Democrats added a seat to their narrow Senate majority – even if the White House’s relief did obscure the liability it will face from a radical GOP-controlled House with investigative powers.

So a president who has constantly defied expectations about his political vitality is unlikely to pay much attention to polls that suggest voters want someone else. Biden also recently reinforced his firewall against a primary challenge by shaking up the Democratic primary season, downgrading the Iowa caucuses – where he’s never done well – and elevating his beloved South Carolina to the first spot in the primary race. The lack of a strong alternative Democrat also helps Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t performed strongly enough to have her party clamoring for Biden to step aside in her favor. And other Democrats with an eye on the White House will be loath to damage a sitting president of their party.

After the midterm elections, a president looking for a rationale for reelection can find plenty. The CNN poll shows Biden on an upward trajectory and in a better position in his party than Trump is in his. And economic indicators this week, which showed the high cost of living might be cooling, could also insulate Biden.

Still, any president is deeply vulnerable to unexpected outside events that could splinter his approval ratings and chances of reelection. And the oldest president in US history will have to confront the age issue every day. Republicans will seize on any slackening of the campaign trail pace, or even a cold, as proof he’s unfit for a second term. And while Biden appears healthy, the chances of an adverse event increase for people in their 80s.

The question of his age, however, might be less important if Biden faces Trump, who is already 76. But the current commander in chief might be vulnerable to a youthful Republican challenger like DeSantis, for instance, who is in his 40s.

Maybe the idea of leadership shifting between generations will be a potent 2024 possibility after all.

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Congress faces looming government shutdown deadline at end of the week

Apadana Central — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:03:38 +0000

Lawmakers face a Friday at midnight deadline when government funding is set to expire – and the House and Senate will likely have to pass a short-term extension to avert a shutdown at the end of the week, which would give negotiators more time to try to secure a broader full-year funding deal.

The other major legislative item lawmakers are working to wrap up before the end of the year is the National Defense Authorization Act, the massive annual must-pass defense policy bill. The NDAA is expected to get a vote in the Senate this week and be approved with bipartisan support.

The House has already approved the measure so once the Senate votes to pass it, the bill can go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

The approaching deadline had members of Congress and their staffers from both parties, as well as Biden administration officials, continuing to slog through negotiations over the weekend to try to get to an agreement on a spending package.

“This is the time of the year when there’s no weekends for folks who work on appropriations,” one administration official closely involved in the talks told CNN.

Over the weekend, both Democrats and Republicans were sharing with one another their “bottom lines” on various fronts, and the White House remained publicly optimistic that an agreement could be reached on an omnibus: “There is absolutely still a path and time for a deal.”

But if Biden administration officials are still keeping their eyes on the ball on Congress ultimately reaching a deal on a government spending deal, there is also real recognition that lawmakers will need an extra few days – perhaps even a week – of cushion to buy themselves more time. That would be achieved through passing a short-term stop-gap measure called a continuing resolution, or a CR.

Particularly with that in mind, administration officials also continue to maintain that they do not see any real likelihood of a government shutdown.

Congressional aides acknowledged to CNN that the weekend talks went better than days prior, which is why Democrats have announced they will not introduce their own Democratic-only omnibus plan on Monday. Republicans on Capitol Hill had been reading a threat for Democrats to introduce their own bills as a messaging exercise that would only further divide negotiators, and by avoiding that messaging exercise, Republicans see a sign that Democrats are serious about trying to get to yes.

$26 billion apart, top Republican says

For now, a bipartisan deal on government funding remains elusive. Lawmakers have not yet been able to reach a negotiated agreement for a comprehensive, full-year funding package – known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus – amid a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense, domestic priorities. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has told reporters the two sides are roughly $26 billion apart.

Republicans are critical of recent domestic spending by Democrats and argue that measures Democrats have passed while they have been in control both chambers of Congress, like the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and the sweeping health care and climate bill, are wasteful and will worsen inflation. Democrats counter by saying those measures were necessary to help the country recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic as well as to tackle other critical priorities. And Democrats said that money to respond to Covid, health care and climate should not mean there should be less money next year for government operations and non-defense, domestic spending.

The impasse over a broader funding deal is likely to force both sides to agree to pass a short-term funding extension – known as a continuing resolution, or CR – before the fast-approaching Friday deadline on Friday.

Shorter-term extension possible

The key question will be how long such an extension would last. It could be as short as one week, a timeframe that would keep the pressure dialed up for lawmakers to reach a broader deal, while still allowing more time for negotiations. Or it could extend the shutdown deadline into the next Congress, which will convene on January 3, and when Republicans take control of the House.

That change in majority in the House would dramatically alter the dynamic for negotiations and likely make it far harder to reach a broader funding deal. Lawmakers could pass a full-year CR if it looks like a bipartisan funding deal can’t be reached, but leaders in both parties hope to avoid that scenario since it would keep spending flat for the Pentagon as well as domestic priorities.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell laid out the GOP position in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday. “Our commander-in-chief and his party have spent huge sums on domestic priorities outside the normal appropriations process without a penny for the Defense Department. Obviously, we won’t allow them to now hijack the government funding process, too, and take our troops hostage for even more liberal spending,” McConnell said.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, outlined the argument for his party in his own floor remarks on Thursday. Republicans, Leahy said, are “demanding steep cuts to programs the American people rely on.”

Referring to Democratic-passed legislation that Republicans have criticized, Leahy said, “Those bills were meant to get us out of the pandemic, get the nation healthy, and get our economy back on track, and I believe they are accomplishing that goal. They were not meant to fund the basic functions of the American government in fiscal year 2023.”

Leahy also said that Democrats plan to introduce an omnibus bill of their own Monday – which would not be expected to have the Republican votes to pass in the Senate, but would serve as a marker of Democratic priorities in the funding fight.

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Appeals court halts special master review of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago in major defeat for Trump

Apadana Central — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 08:27:24 +0000

In a major defeat for former President Donald Trump, a federal appeals court on Thursday halted a third-party review of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The ruling removes a major obstacle to the Justice Department’s investigation into the mishandling of government records from Trump’s time in the White House.

The three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order appointing a so-called special master to sort through thousands of documents found at Trump’s home to determine what should be off limits to investigators. The court said the judge should not have intervened in the first place.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

The 11th Circuit said that either approach would be a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and that “both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

The Justice Department is investigating obstruction of justice, criminal mishandling of government records and violations of the Espionage Act, according to court filings. The probe exploded into public view with the August search, which came after investigators obtained evidence they said led them to believe that Trump had not complied with a subpoena for all documents marked as classified being stored at his Florida home.

The opinion – which was issued jointly by the three-judge panel made up of all GOP appointees – dismantled Trump’s arguments for why a special master was necessary. The court said that only in extraordinary circumstances should courts intervene in Justice Department investigations that are still in their early stages, and that standard had not been met here.

“This restraint guards against needless judicial intrusion into the course of criminal investigations—a sphere of power committed to the executive branch,” the court wrote.

The appeals court said that its new ruling will go into effect in seven days, unless a party in the case successfully seeks an order – known as a stay – pausing the ruling from going into effect while it is appealed.

Trump’s legal team has not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court but is weighing the option, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Rebuke of Judge Cannon’s deference to Trump

The ruling is a stinging rebuke of how Cannon inserted herself into the dispute. In addition to reversing the order, the appeals court is instructing her to dismiss the entire case.

The appeals court took aim at the idea, hinted at in her order appointing the special master, that Trump deserves special treatment because he is a former president.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president – but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the court said.

To create that “special exception,” the 11th Circuit wrote “would defy our Nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.’”

The three-judge panel that issued the ruling is comprised of appointees of Republican presidents, including two who were put on the bench by Trump: Britt Grant and Andrew Basher. Both jurists had previously hinted in a ruling related to the case that they believed Cannon had overreached.

The third, Judge William Pryor, the chief judge of the appellate court, is an appointee of George W. Bush who has long demonstrated his conservative bona fides on a host of controversial issues.

Trump had sought the special master in the weeks after the August search, securing the court order from Cannon. Judge Raymond Dearie, a senior judge who sits in Brooklyn, had been tasked by Cannon with leading the review of the thousands of documents that remained.

During oral arguments in the 11th Circuit case, Trump’s attorney James Trusty said that only about 900 of those documents were in dispute. Trump’s legal team contends the documents are his personal records or privileged and should be kept outside the scope of the investigation.

Lawyers for the Justice Department argued that the special master process stood to drag out for several weeks, if not months, impeding the probe into the documents. Prosecutors said that without access to the other documents, they could not question witnesses about the materials that had been found intermixed with classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department effort is now being led by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed last week to helm that probe and another investigation into efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 election loss that could implicate the former president and current 2024 White House candidate.

Smith took over the investigation shortly before the 11th Circuit heard oral arguments in the case and said in court filings that he approved the stance federal prosecutors had taken. He has promised to not let his appointment slow the pace of the investigations he’s taking over.

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