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Tag: caucus

  • Black Caucus presses Senate Dems to blow up tradition on judges

    Black Caucus presses Senate Dems to blow up tradition on judges

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    So the Black Caucus, joined by a coalition of progressive groups, is turning up the heat on Senate Democrats in what’s becoming the most consequential battle over chamber rules since Democrats tried last year to weaken the filibuster.

    “I don’t know why anyone, let alone Senate Democrats, would hold up a Jim Crow practice,” Black Caucus Chair Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said in an interview on Wednesday, describing the GOP’s use of blue slips against judicial nominees as a civil rights issue.

    “It is literally about the fundamental survival of the people we represent,” Horsford added. “And we expressed that history, that context and that necessity to Chairman Durbin. I respect the chairman. He understands the dilemma.”

    The dispute has huge implications for the future of the federal judiciary, the Senate and the White House. With the House run by Republicans until 2024 at least, Senate Democrats still can confirm judges for lifetime appointments without a single GOP vote — but Republicans can block some of those nominees from ever getting to the chamber floor by denying blue slips.

    The acrimony is particularly acute among House members from blue districts in red states. They’re chafing at their Republican senators’ unwillingness to let nominees through and looking to Senate Democrats to help — even though during the Trump era the CBC urged the GOP to keep the blue slip to give Democrats some say in lifetime nominees.

    So Durbin isn’t ready to get rid of the tradition for federal district court nominees. And both Black Caucus members from the Senate, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock, share his reluctance to change the practice.

    In an interview, Durbin said he and GOP senators are negotiating over new Biden nominees that will become public soon. And several GOP senators said in interviews that they are working closely with the White House to address nominees for district court judgeships, U.S. attorney posts and U.S. marshals posts, all of which are subject to the blue slip.

    The Senate Judiciary Committee previously abandoned the blue slip for appellate court nominees who cover multiple states. If Durbin wanted to nix the practice for district courts, it would not require a Senate rules change.

    Durbin is still receptive to the Black Caucus’ entreaties, saying that he needs a “higher level of cooperation” from the GOP. He estimated that fewer than 20 of Biden’s nominees have received green lights from the GOP, while Democrats provided more than 110 for former President Donald Trump’s judicial picks during his time in office.

    “I tried to explain to them the arcane Senate rules. And how difficult it would be to do business. So I don’t know if I convinced them, because a lot of them are frustrated with the lack of cooperation,” Durbin said of his meeting with the Black Caucus.

    Republicans have used their blue-slip power recently against two Biden nominees, in addition to last year’s rejection by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of William Pocan — the brother of Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) — as a district judge. Democrats’ big fear, however, is that Republicans will start using the practice more.

    In a letter to Durbin this week, a coalition of progressive groups warned that “39 of the 43 district court vacancies subject to Republican blue slips — 91% — still do not have nominees.” The letter’s signatories ranged from Demand Justice to the League of Conservation Voters to End Citizens United.

    “The blue slip policy should be reformed or discontinued to ensure a fair process and stop Republicans from blocking highly-qualified Biden judicial nominees,” the progressive groups wrote. Their ideas: ignore blue slip blockades, force a firm timeline for senators to register their objections and require public explanations for blue slip denials.

    Republicans are holding their ground. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the party’s top member on the Judiciary Committee, said that scrapping the blue slip makes the Senate “irrelevant” and criticized the White House for not conducting sufficient outreach to the GOP.

    The White House is “turning to the red states because they’ve filled all the blue states, and it takes consulting. They didn’t even talk to people in Florida for six months. I made them talk to them. So this is a manufactured issue,” Graham said.

    White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded that “the White House has done outreach to every single Republican Senate office that represents a state with a judicial vacancy. In many instances, that outreach dates back to the previous Congress.”

    Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) accelerated the blue slip clash after she announced she would stop Scott Colom from taking a Mississippi judgeship. It’s likely that Biden may need to find a new nominee; “Sen. Hyde Smith will not budge,” said one person with direct knowledge of the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    There are currently more than 65 federal district court vacancies, and 38 of those do not have nominees — many of them in states where Republican senators have veto power. The lower-level courts are the Democrats’ primary focus after prioritizing appellate courts over the last two years.

    In addition, Kansas GOP Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran are slowing the nomination of Jabari Wamble to fill a district court seat while they await Biden’s choice to fill an appellate court vacancy covering their states. In an interview, Marshall said he’s simply being “cautious” and didn’t indicate where they would fall on a blue slip for Wamble.

    Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a Judiciary Committee member, said he is having “a lot of good conversations” with the White House; as many as three Missouri seats could be open by the fall.

    Horsford said Black Caucus members want every Republican withholding a blue slip to disclose their reasoning. He was joined in the Durbin meeting by Black Caucus members Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Troy Carter (D-La.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), Al Green (D-Texas), and Booker.

    Horsford said the lawmakers emphasized to Durbin that blue slips are not a Senate rule but a custom. For many of his members, Horsford added, “it’s hard for them as the sole Democrat in some of their southern states to defend a policy where one or two Senate Republicans can hold up those nominees.”

    Notably, the practice has yielded some success stories. The all-GOP Senate delegations in Idaho and Louisiana worked with the White House to hatch bipartisan agreements, and Indiana’s two Republican senators worked to confirm a home-state judge by a rare voice vote this year.

    And Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said she’s willing to give it another go with Johnson, even after he stopped William Pocan.

    As Booker recalled in an interview, he used blue slips to stifle Trump’s judicial picks — underscoring that the power to stop judicial nominees can also help Democrats during GOP presidencies.

    Still, Booker is clearly torn: “Anytime you tear up a Senate tradition, you should be really thoughtful about it.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Freedom Caucus and progressives lock arms — and that could be bad news for McCarthy

    Freedom Caucus and progressives lock arms — and that could be bad news for McCarthy

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    This alignment could create headaches for McCarthy, because he can only lose four members of his own party during any given floor vote in the closely divided House. And while the Senate has already passed its own bipartisan reversal of the Iraq war authorizations, most of the House GOP is not yet bought in on that issue, and there’s no consensus in the party about cutting Pentagon funding.

    So if McCarthy’s right flank teams up with liberals in earnest — after nearly costing the California Republican the speakership — it could chip at his hold over his slim majority. It remains to be seen whether a concrete break with the speaker will materialize, but lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are paying attention to the dynamic.

    As Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) put it: “Sometimes you have interesting bedfellows in Washington.”

    The best-case scenario outcome for McCarthy, who’s been noncommittal on a quick floor vote to repeal Iraq war powers, is House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul’s (R-Texas) proposal to replace those war authorizations as well as a third authorization passed after the Sept. 11 attacks. That approach would likely be a no-go for liberals who are currently on the same page as many conservatives.

    Ending Iraq war powers “should come to the floor as soon as possible,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a former Progressive Caucus co-chair who’s spearheaded a decades-long push on the matter. “And our Republican colleagues are also working to try to ensure that this comes to the floor as soon as possible. It’s way past time to get this done.”

    Rebelling against leadership is hardly a new mode for Lee, who endured harsh criticism during the George W. Bush administration as the sole House lawmaker to vote against the post-Sept. 11 authorization. And other members of the Freedom and Progressive Caucuses are gadflies in their own right; Roy, for one, regularly upends the GOP conference’s plans.

    “It’s a question of institutional power,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House Rules Committee chair whom Lee cited as one of her top Republican allies on repealing war authorizations. “And I think there’s a sense around here, on both the left and the right, that we’ve abdicated too much of that — and not just in recent Congresses, but honestly probably going back decades.”

    President Joe Biden has promised to sign the Senate-passed pair of war authorization repeals if they reach his desk.

    It’s not just the war powers effort that’s bringing together the House’s opposing factions. They’ve also united to push for pumping the brakes on a potential ban of TikTok, airing fears of government overreach while more establishment colleagues share national security worries.

    In addition, Progressive Caucus chief Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Freedom Caucus member Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) are jointly raising concerns about government surveillance laws ahead of a reauthorization deadline at the end of the year.

    The left and right frequently align “on issues of war, civil liberties and privacy,” Jayapal said. “We do have things that we see eye to eye on, and I think we’re always going to look for those opportunities.”

    It’s not clear yet how the war powers repeal might come to the House floor, whether as a stand-alone or attached to another must-pass vehicle. But Roy said that if it’s not brought up before the end of the year’s annual defense policy bill, he “can promise” it would “become an issue” during debate on that plan.

    “We’re gonna have to deal with that at some point. And so this will be just another step along the way. I’ve been happy to work with Congresswoman Lee towards that end,” Roy said.

    While McCaul may be able to find a war powers compromise that would satisfy a majority of House Republicans — according to longstanding conference tradition, the speaker needs majority-GOP support in order to bring legislation to the floor — the party probably can’t count on many Democratic votes for that plan.

    Right now, liberals are pushing solely for a full repeal of the 2002 and 1991 Iraq authorizations.

    “There’s nothing to replace it with,” said Lee. “That argument and strategy is muddying the water.”

    Meanwhile, McCaul’s Democratic counterpart atop the Foreign Affairs panel is looking to help break the logjam on post-Sept. 11 war powers. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) signaled an interest in introducing his own replacement for that measure. But Meeks aligned with progressives on the Senate-passed measures repealing the 2002 and 1991 war powers authorizations, calling for a “straight repeal.”

    If all else fails in the war powers debate, there’s always the wonky procedural gambit known as a discharge petition — which allows a majority of House members from either party to band together and force a bill onto the floor, regardless of leadership’s wishes.

    Some liberals, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), have indicated they’re open to that option. But other progressive leaders have said that’s off the table for now, concerned it could blow up the fragile bipartisan consensus on war powers.

    “The discharge petition is not the way to get bipartisan support,” Lee said. “We have the votes. So this should come to the floor as soon as possible.”

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    #Freedom #Caucus #progressives #lock #arms #bad #news #McCarthy
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • “Well, we’re friends.” “She’s been a very effective legislator.” Senate Democrats aren’t hitting back at Kyrsten Sinema after POLITICO reported she privately bashed caucus members. 

    “Well, we’re friends.” “She’s been a very effective legislator.” Senate Democrats aren’t hitting back at Kyrsten Sinema after POLITICO reported she privately bashed caucus members. 

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    “Whatever she does, I’m supporting her,” Joe Manchin said.

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    #friends #Shes #effective #legislator #Senate #Democrats #arent #hitting #Kyrsten #Sinema #POLITICO #reported #privately #bashed #caucus #members
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • “Well, we’re friends.” “She’s been a very effective legislator.” Senate Democrats aren’t hitting back at Kyrsten Sinema after POLITICO reported she privately bashed caucus members. 

    “Well, we’re friends.” “She’s been a very effective legislator.” Senate Democrats aren’t hitting back at Kyrsten Sinema after POLITICO reported she privately bashed caucus members. 

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    state of the union 44513
    “Whatever she does, I’m supporting her,” Joe Manchin said.

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    #friends #Shes #effective #legislator #Senate #Democrats #arent #hitting #Kyrsten #Sinema #POLITICO #reported #privately #bashed #caucus #members
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • The House Freedom Caucus laid down the first marker in debt-limit negotiations this morning. The group’s leader says the influential bloc is open to ideas, though.

    The House Freedom Caucus laid down the first marker in debt-limit negotiations this morning. The group’s leader says the influential bloc is open to ideas, though.

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    “Who said red lines? Did anybody say red lines?” Scott Perry said in an interview.

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    #House #Freedom #Caucus #laid #marker #debtlimit #negotiations #morning #groups #leader #influential #bloc #open #ideas
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Opinion | The George Santos Caucus Is Growing

    Opinion | The George Santos Caucus Is Growing

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    Liars are supposed to appall us, but in practice, they don’t. America loves its scoundrels. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is about a prolific liar, ranks near the top polls of America’s best-loved novels. Its enduring lesson teaches that if you can’t make it, fake it, and nobody will be any the wiser by the time you succeed. Spoiler alert if you slept through high school English: Gatsby climbs to the top by lying about his name (it’s James Gatz), the origin of his wealth (bootlegging; moving counterfeit stocks; bribing public officials; working with gangsters), and his past (he was born poor in North Dakota, not rich in San Francisco). He ultimately gets knocked off, not in comeuppance for his lies, but in an act of revenge. (His killer mistakenly thinks Gatsby hit and killed his wife in traffic when actually Gatsby’s mistress Daisy was the wheelwoman.) The moral of The Great Gatsby is if you want to get ahead in American life, lie profusely — but make sure your sweetheart drives safely.

    The Gatsby Directive has long been observed in corporate America, with executives routinely getting busted for resume padding. Academia, too, is shot through with professors who doctor their curriculum vitae. And you could fill a roadside Little Library with bestselling memoirs that turn out to be fake. In spinning their exaggerations and embroideries to political success, Santos, Luna and Ogles resemble President Joe Biden, who has dispensed one large dip of double-fudge after another throughout his entire political career. In a recent unrelenting column, the Washington Post’s Marc A. Thiessen truth-squaded Biden. The president’s many lies include those about his family history; about his college achievements; about getting arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison; about getting arrested for protesting civil rights; about getting arrested for sneaking into the U.S. Capitol; about getting shot at inside Baghdad’s Green Zone; about pinning a Silver Star on a Navy Captain in Afghanistan; about cutting the federal deficit in half. And that’s just a partial list.

    Of course, the volume and scale of Biden’s lies don’t compare to those of Donald Trump, who completely untethered himself from the truth during his administration. According to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, Trump made at least 30,573 false or misleading comments during his four years in the White House. Trump maintained such a unique relationship with the truth that it might have been simpler for the Post to tabulate his truthful statements than his lies. When the fact-checker first got going at Trump during the 2016 campaign, it looked like their accountings would fracture his credibility with voters, but it didn’t — or at least not enough to turn the election. Trump supporters discounted the fact that he was full of it because they liked many of the things he said about immigrants, foreign entanglements, Hillary Clinton, trade, economic growth and race. The same — although on a radically different scale — appears to be true with Biden supporters. When Joe blunders or overstates, they cover for him by saying, “Oh, that’s just Joe,” and change the subject.

    If Santos, Luna and Ogles studied the political career of Donald Trump before composing their personal histories, nobody should be surprised. Trump established that while journalists care about the truth, voters can be more forgiving. If voters cared that much about campaign lies, the Democrats would have made the 2020 election an exercise in public shaming about Trump’s lies. But they didn’t. The only lies politicians must avoid are the ones that might trigger legal proceedings against them, like the iffy campaign finance statements Santos filed that have spurred investigations and might result in prosecution. Garden variety lies that aren’t prosecutable are regularly forgotten by voters by the time their speakers run for reelection.

    Politicians lie, lie and lie some more because they’ve learned voters seem not to care much about it when the lies are uncovered. (In a perfect world, the press would fully vet every politician’s every statement, but even before the industry’s decline it didn’t have the resources to perform mass lie detection.) In the long run, voters seem not to care whether a candidate’s credentials are legitimate or if they really climbed Mt. Everest in their stocking feet as they attest on the husting. So why bother fluffing your resume in the first place if voters will only shrug when they discover you stretched the truth? Could it be that, like committing minor acts of vandalism or petty shoplifting, telling lies about ourselves feels too good to resist, especially when engaged in the contest that is politics, where every day brings another public exercise in resume comparison?

    When it comes to politics, a candidate’s lived experience should be less important than where they stand on the issue. For that reason alone, we’d be better off if politicians competed by deflating their resumes instead of ballooning them.

    ******

    I do, however, want my neurosurgeon’s resume to be accurate. Send neurosurgeon references to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed pitched in the World Series. My Mastodon account has invented a cure for cancer. My Post account saved a baby from being run over in traffic. My RSS feed has accomplished nothing and has no ambitions.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House Dem leaders calm outrage over Hispanic Caucus chair

    House Dem leaders calm outrage over Hispanic Caucus chair

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    Usyk’s removal had roiled the bloc’s members, who are typically conflict-averse. A well-respected Hill veteran, she’d been brought on as the Hispanic Caucus head staffer earlier this year after stints with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.). The group, following Usyk’s termination, now has no staffers.

    Barragán, a fourth-term lawmaker, has developed a reputation as a harsh boss — netting higher-than-average turnover in her office, as tracked by the nonpartisan site Legistorm. She’d brought on Usyk as the top staffer for the Hispanic Caucus, but other top staffers departed the group soon after Barragán was elected unopposed to its top job in December.

    The lack of staff threatens to hurt the caucus’ ability to meaningfully engage on policies like immigration, preventing the group from leading House Democrats on certain critical issues. The group was set this week to bring on a new communications director, Bianca Lugo Lewis, though it is unclear if she will still start the job. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Hispanic Caucus weighs ousting its chair over top staffer’s firing

    Hispanic Caucus weighs ousting its chair over top staffer’s firing

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    Barragán’s actions surrounding the Usyk firing are prompting anger from within the group and skepticism that she will be able to lead it going forward, according to more than a dozen people interviewed. Both people who confirmed the Hispanic Caucus’ imminent meeting on its chair described it as a potential step toward seeking her removal after Barragán’s axing of its top adviser left the influential Democratic group without any staffers at the start of a new Congress — alarming lawmakers and aides alike.

    The turmoil also threatens to hurt the Hispanic Caucus’ engagement on issues important to the communities its members represent, because the executive director works with the chair to set the group’s priorities. In addition, the staffing change and resulting controversy over Barragán’s move could also distract the group from working on policy at a time when its members are preparing for intense negotiations this Congress on immigration in the Republican-controlled House.

    “Jacky is no longer with the CHC. We wish her well in her future endeavors. We do not comment on internal confidential personnel matters,” Barragán told POLITICO in a statement on Thursday. Asked on Friday to comment on the news of a virtual meeting to discuss her leadership of the caucus, Barragán’s office did not respond.

    The Hispanic Caucus’ vice chair, Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), is considered next in line to run the CHC. His office did not respond to a request for comment on Barragán’s alleged management issues.

    Usyk, a well-respected Hill veteran who declined to comment for this story, rose up through the ranks of Democratic offices before coming to the Hispanic Caucus. She served most recently as a top leadership aide to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and worked previously for Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), who’s now in Hispanic Caucus leadership as well.

    The harsh scrutiny of Barragán comes at the outset of her tenure as CHC chair, a position that she won unopposed after its previous chair, Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), was term-limited out of the job. Her personal office ranked third for highest turnover rate of any House office from 2001 to 2021, according to the nonpartisan tracking site Legistorm.

    Dear White Staffers, an Instagram account popular with Hill aides, first posted about Usyk being fired Thursday night and POLITICO confirmed the news shortly after.

    After its former policy director recently departed to run another Hill group that represents younger Americans, Usyk’s firing leaves the CHC with no employed staffers as of Friday. The group had been set to bring on a new communications director next week, but it is unclear whether that aide, Bianca Lugo Lewis, will start the job as planned. Lugo Lewis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    There is some ambiguity in the group’s bylaws about its chair’s ability to unilaterally fire staffers. One of the people familiar with the group’s dynamics who confirmed its meeting on Barragán also told POLITICO that the chair is given authority to hire staff but less clear power over dismissals.

    Another two people familiar with the situation said Barragán sought counsel from the House’s lawyers before making the decision.

    Barragán has a reputation of being a strict boss who struggles with high turnover in her office, a dozen current and former Hill staffers told POLITICO. Just a few years ago, during her first term, she had conversations with party leadership because of her staff churn, according to two separate people familiar with that situation.

    The office of then-Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who likely took part in those conversations with Barragán, declined to comment, citing its policy on addressing private member-to-member conversations.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Black caucus presses Biden to use the bully pulpit to push for police reform

    Black caucus presses Biden to use the bully pulpit to push for police reform

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    The White House and the Black community find themselves at another tragic and all-too-familiar inflection point: eager to respond to another police killing of a Black man that has captured the nation’s attention but with limited capacity to do so. Horsford and the Black caucus plan on leading a full court press to show the country that D.C. isn’t completely toothless when it comes to this issue — that this time should be different. But those calls come in the shadow of a lack of movement on police reform. And even reform’s biggest boosters aren’t bullish on that shadow lifting.

    “I’m not optimistic. I’m not confident that we are going to be able to get real police reform,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who will attend the White House meeting. “I approach working on this issue as a responsibility that I have to do, that we must try.”

    Faced with the likelihood of legislative inertia, lawmakers and advocates have looked for solutions — even incremental ones — elsewhere.

    In a CBC meeting Tuesday night, lawmakers zeroed in on their first and biggest request of Biden: a commitment to talk about policing in his State of the Union next week. They also discussed using the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act as a starting framework for legislation to present to Biden — knowing that lawmakers would need to scale back the bill to open up the possibility of passage.

    On Tuesday, Horsford met with Susan Rice, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, to preview requests the CBC will present to the president — including executive actions for changes to criminal justice laws. He said Rice appeared “open to hearing further recommendations for areas that may be things that the executive branch can do.”

    More broadly, lawmakers, civil rights leaders and criminal justice reform advocates are pushing for Biden to use the bully pulpit to gather support to pass legislation, however it is shaped.

    “The president has unique powers in the office of the presidency. He’s committed to this issue,” Horsford said. “He can use his position to help, just like he did by getting the [Bipartisan] Safer Communities Law across the finish line. Just like he did with getting the infrastructure law across the finish line, just like he did getting the CHIPS and Science law across the finish line.”

    On both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, the death of Nichols has led to a sense of political agony and déjà vu. Lawmakers recognize they’ve been in this place before, as do White House officials. But there is also the feeling that little is left to do but run the same playbooks.

    The last round of negotiations failed in September 2021 after a flurry of finger pointing and general disagreement over the issue of qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that protects police officers from lawsuits. Advocates say that this time around, they hope that a more consistent message from Biden — not just calling for one piece of legislation and stepping away to let members of Congress hash it out — can move the bill along. But those calling for action are also clear-eyed that Republicans now control the House of Representatives and that nine GOP votes are needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

    The White House has taken steps to show it’s invested in the issue. After the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act failed to get a Senate vote in 2021, Biden eventually signed an executive order that created a national database of police misconduct, mandated body-worn camera policies and banned chokeholds from federal law enforcement agencies.

    After Nichols’ death, the administration has taken additional steps to show that it is eager for action and attuned to the anguish felt by the Black community. When the video of Nichols’ death was released, both Biden and Harris reached out to his family to send their condolences. While speaking with Nichols’ mother and stepfather, Harris was invited to attend Wednesday’s funeral in Tennessee and accepted.

    The White House has again called for Congress to pass the police reform bill but Biden has also consistently alluded to a lack of executive power left in his toolbox. “I can only do so much,” the president told reporters Friday.

    “The president will continue to do everything in his power to fight for police reform in Congress,” a White House official said, “but it is Republicans in Congress who need to come together with their Democratic colleagues to ensure our justice system lives up to its name.”

    Whether that will be enough for those looking to the White House for action is doubtful. Advocates praise the White House for doing what it can, often calling attention to the work of the Justice Department to be more aggressive in addressing policing and shootings involving officers. But how the next few days and weeks go will give the country an early indication of the ways in which the president plans to operate during major national crises without the power of both chambers of Congress.

    Next week’s State of the Union address will provide Biden with his biggest audience. Members of the Nichols family will be attending the speech as guests of Horsford. Their presence, one Hill aide said, “means the president will all but have to speak to the issue.”

    “Good politicians are able to adapt to the weather, the political weather. So if it’s raining, you go out with an umbrella,” said Maurice Mithchell, the national director of the Working Families Party. “We’re counting on his ability to address this in the shadow of this horrific murder that the political climate has shifted. And so that requires a different type of politics, not the politics of two weeks ago or the politics of a year ago.”

    But activists are also going to be looking at how the White House operates outside the bright lights of next week’s State of the Union.

    Marc Morial, the National Urban League president who has met with Biden multiple times over the administration, said the president has “expressed to us in some meetings before [that he] could get out there and talk about this every day, but then sometimes that undermines the ability to get it done.”

    But Morial, who has commended the administration for its executive orders and work using the Justice Department to address policing, added that on issues like criminal justice reform, the administration needs to be “showing efforts.”

    “People will read that if you don’t talk about it, you don’t care. Because the way people define the presidency is by the bully pulpit,” Morial said. “They’re not in the meetings with members of Congress. They’re not in the telephone conversations. They don’t see the staff work all the time. And that’s the tension that the White House has got to figure that out.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Why the Senate GOP’s McDaniel for RNC caucus is surprisingly small

    Why the Senate GOP’s McDaniel for RNC caucus is surprisingly small

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    Though Cramer isn’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced, his shrug-emoji reaction is widespread among many GOP lawmakers. That has more to do with large-scale political changes than her personally: The more that super PACs, party committees and candidate fundraising have decentralized the party, the less enmeshed Republican lawmakers are in the RNC structure.

    As Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) put it on Tuesday: “I don’t know what the RNC does. I really don’t.”

    Yet McDaniel’s chilly reception from some Republicans also stems from her mixed record, which includes an eyebrow-raising move to censure two former House Republicans who joined the Jan. 6 committee. With the GOP facing an identity crisis after Donald Trump left the White House, the RNC chair is poised to play a pivotal role in the party’s navigation of an open presidential primary next year. And senior Senate Republicans aren’t exactly clamoring for two more years of McDaniel.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Whip John Thune are both avoiding an endorsement of any candidate in the RNC race. A handful of notable Republican senators do support McDaniel, including Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and her cousin Mitt Romney (Utah), who said that “we don’t always agree on all policies, but I stand with family.”

    “She has been so helpful to Iowa, in really fleshing out the first-in-the-nation caucus … she does a great job,” said No. 4 Senate Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa. “She can promote Republican candidates as much as possible and try to hold our party together. But at the end of the day, you have to have candidates that will make their case.”

    National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) also signed a letter backing McDaniel. Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for McDaniel’s RNC campaign, said that “Just like the RNC, Chairwoman McDaniel’s decision to run for re-election was member-driven.”

    “Support for the chairwoman among members and leaders from across the ecosystem has grown since her announcement,” Vaughn said.

    But most Republican senators want nothing to do with the RNC race. Several said they didn’t even know when the vote is (it’s Friday).

    “I have a lot of things on my plate. That’s not one of them. I wish them all well,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

    One thing that unites both McDaniel backers and those who care little about the race is that they don’t see the RNC as primarily accountable for the GOP’s recent election performances. That’s in part because of Trump’s outsized sway since McDaniel took over the national party.

    What’s more, the days of Howard Dean’s 50-state DNC strategy or Haley Barbour’s storied reign atop the RNC appear to be in the past. These days, there are major limitations to the level of control either the RNC or the DNC have over the two major political parties.

    “If we’re going to blame losing on a national committee chairman, we’ve got problems. They don’t control that much,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)

    One reason congressional Republicans aren’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced is that they are uncertain about her challengers. There is no GOP equivalent to Pete Buttigieg, who achieved a level of national-politics wunderkind status by running for DNC chair in 2017.

    Mike Lindell, one of McDaniel’s challengers who is colloquially called the “My Pillow Guy” in some GOP quarters, is a known commodity to several Senate Republicans, including Tuberville. But Republicans said they were not sure how serious Lindell is about running.

    Harmeet Dhillon, the other challenger to McDaniel, faces a steep path to victory among the RNC’s 168 voting members. On top of that, Senate Republicans said in interviews that they were not particularly familiar with Dhillon or her style of politics.

    By contrast, several Republican senators observed that turnout — a key RNC mandate — was high in 2022. And that’s why McDaniel’s boosters are behind her for two more years.

    “[McDaniel] knows the system. Our problems in 2022 were multiple. I don’t blame her over anything. Personally, I think continuity is good. We are in a good spot to take back the Senate in 2024, and in the presidential primaries she’s a competent, fair-minded person,” Graham said. “I have confidence in her.”

    Even so, Graham is part of an apparent minority of Hill Republicans prepared to publicly stick their necks out for the RNC chair. It is particularly telling that McConnell declined to endorse her; he blanched at the national GOP’s censures of Trump-antagonist former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) last year and was far more bearish than most Republicans on his party’s midterm election prospects.

    McConnell’s top deputy, and one of his potential successors, is joining him in the neutral zone.

    “I’m not going to wade into that. They’ll figure it out,” Thune said. “I’m guessing whatever I say, if I support someone, it’d probably hurt them.”

    Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )