The News Caravan

Tag: Dems

  • 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 )

  • How McCarthy could pick off centrist Dems with 4 debt-limit ideas

    How McCarthy could pick off centrist Dems with 4 debt-limit ideas

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    On several occasions during debt-limit negotiations over the last decade, the unpredictable fallout of a looming deadline has helped persuade dozens of lawmakers from each party to begrudgingly support concessions they didn’t love. This time, ideas like beefing up work requirements for food assistance programs aren’t gaining the bipartisan appeal Republicans might have hoped for, while other proposals — like easing permitting for energy projects — might attract enough interest among Democrats to get added to a final deal.

    Here’s a breakdown of the particular policy areas in the House Republican bill that might offer an opening for a bipartisan deal, with a clear-eyed assessment of how realistic those hopes really are:

    Energy permitting

    A sizable share of lawmakers in both parties agree that it takes too long to get permits for energy project construction in the U.S. So House Republicans’ push to streamline permitting rules just might have legs.

    But what an agreement would look like, exactly, remains a big question. And Democrats remain resistant to linking energy policy to the debt-limit debate.

    “This may be one of the few things we can actually accomplish in this Congress,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said. He added that it’s “very clear” Republicans are focused on permitting for oil and gas pipelines, instead of electric transmission lines — an emphasis Democrats could shift.

    “They are just out of step with where the economy and country are,” Heinrich said of House GOP lawmakers. “That’s hopefully where the Senate comes in and rebalances.”

    Worried that green perks could go to waste from the party-line tax and climate law they cleared last year, many Democrats want the federal government to make it easier to connect clean energy to the grid. Progressives are reluctant to shorten the length of environmental reviews for energy projects, however, for fear that could hurt low-income communities and communities of color.

    Details: The House Republican package would streamline permitting reviews for energy projects and mines. But it’s also chock full of partisan priorities like protecting fracking, forcing the sale of oil and gas leases, killing tax benefits for green energy projects and pooh-poohing Biden’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

    Sympathizers: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has tried to rally bipartisan support for overhauling energy permitting rules. But he failed last year, as progressive lawmakers argued against changing the rules for environmental reviews and Republicans spurned him for supporting Democrats’ trademark climate law.

    In the House, when the chamber first voted in March on the package of energy policies that got rolled into the debt limit package, four Democrats joined as “yeas.” Those supporters included Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, who hail from oil-and-gas-rich Texas, as well as centrists Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Jared Golden of Maine.

    Work requirements

    House Republicans are trying to get a handful of swing-state Democrats in the Senate to support tougher work requirements for food assistance programs. But most have resoundingly rejected the idea.

    Details: The debt limit bill House Republicans passed last week includes provisions that would expand existing work requirements for the nation’s largest food aid program, often referred to by its acronym of SNAP, along with other emergency aid that low-income families can use to buy food.

    Specifically, it requires so-called “able-bodied adults without dependents” who receive SNAP to continue meeting work requirements until they’re 55 years old, rather than the current age limit at 49.

    Sympathizers: Manchin has signaled he could be open to beefing up work requirements, potentially backing tighter rules for people who are “capable and able to do it.” House Republicans are quick to highlight Biden’s own embrace of welfare reform during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, when the position was less fraught among Democrats and Biden was a sitting senator — but the stricter work rules getting pushed by today’s GOP go beyond those.

    Spending caps

    Democrats have insisted that they’re ready to haggle over federal funding for the fiscal year that kicks off on Oct. 1 — just not with the Treasury Department’s borrowing ability at stake.

    In order for that to happen, though, Republicans would have to agree to separate government funding caps that aren’t tied to debt-ceiling talks. And that would amount to a major shift from the GOP’s current demand for $130 billion in spending cuts in exchange for a vote to lift the debt limit.

    If those talks get decoupled, it’s plausible that both sides could reach an agreement on military spending, since there’s already broad bipartisan support for ensuring the Pentagon gets enough money to at least keep pace with inflation.

    Democrats would never sign off on the domestic spending cuts that GOP leaders are seeking. But it’s possible that they could cut a deal with a handful of Republicans — think centrists, purple-state members and appropriators — to keep non-defense funding essentially stagnant, pairing small cuts with increases elsewhere to rein in spending.

    Details: The House debt limit bill would cap spending at $1.47 trillion for the upcoming fiscal year, rolling back the clock by two years on federal funding levels. Then for a decade, funding would be allowed to grow by 1 percent every year.

    Sympathizers: A slew of moderate Democrats in both chambers have expressed support for fiscal restraint in the abstract, including long-term strategies for stabilizing the national debt like the 2010 budget plan that proposed trillions of dollars in tax increases and spending cuts.

    “I am certainly not opposed to working on ways to reduce the debt. I am very, very, very opposed to putting the full faith and credit of the country at risk,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who faces a tough reelection in a red state, has said. “So you know, if we’re talking about doing something like [the 2010 plan], I not only think that’s a good idea, put me on it.”

    Ending student loan relief

    It’s hard to see Biden negotiating away a major domestic policy achievement that his administration has so vigorously defended in court. Some have even credited the president’s student debt relief plan, announced in the months leading up to the midterm elections, with helping limit Republican gains in the House last November.

    A few moderate Democrats have criticized the president’s embrace of mass forgiveness of student loan debt, however, and have signaled openness to a separate Republican effort to nix the relief.

    Details: The House GOP bill would overturn Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which promises up to $20,000 in debt relief per borrower, even as the president’s plan remains in limbo ahead of a challenge at the Supreme Court.

    The Republican bill would also block the administration’s new income-driven repayment plan that’s designed to lower monthly payments. And it would permanently curtail the Education Department’s power to create new policies that increase the taxpayer cost of the student loan program.

    Sympathizers: When the president rolled out his student loan forgiveness plan last summer, Manchin called it “excessive,” arguing that people need to “earn it” through public service like working for the federal government. Other politically vulnerable Democrats have also spoken against the plan, including Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Michael Bennet of Colorado, as well as Rep. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire.

    Meredith Lee Hill and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate Dems plan hearings to pick apart GOP debt deal

    Senate Dems plan hearings to pick apart GOP debt deal

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    The Senate Budget Committee hearing on Thursday will feature Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and leaders of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

    Republicans and Democrats remain at loggerheads over debt ceiling negotiations, just as entrenched as they were before the House passed its GOP debt ceiling and spending cuts package. House Republicans were certain that their starting bid to rollback federal spending in exchange for lifting the debt limit would force President Joe Biden to the negotiating table. But last week’s action on the House GOP package has yet to move the needle much.

    Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Republicans are “demanding hostage negotiations” while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told “This Week” that Biden is “running out the clock” on the debt limit.

    Now the House is out of town, leaving the Senate to weigh in on the GOP proposal and how Biden should handle it. And Treasury Department officials are expected to update the public soon on the “X date,” before which Congress will need to pass a debt limit lift to avoid default, in the coming days. That will ramp up the pressure, but it’s not yet clear what will get leaders to budge.

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said last week that Biden not getting in a room with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to negotiate on the debt limit “signals a deficiency of leadership, and it must change.” The West Virginia Democrat said “we are long past time for our elected leaders to sit down and discuss how to solve this impending debt ceiling crisis” and called on Biden to “negotiate now.”

    Most other Democrats aren’t going that far. They are talking about talks, but have so far drawn a distinction between talks on spending and negotiations on the debt limit.

    “[Biden] will sit down with Speaker McCarthy to talk about these issues in the framework of the budget and the appropriations process,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told “Fox News Sunday.” But not the president should not negotiate over the debt limit, Van Hollen said.

    And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Sunday that Biden can “start negotiating tomorrow” on possible spending cuts but stressed that those talks can only move forward if Republicans commit to raising the debt limit.

    “I’m willing to look at any other proposals. There’s a lot of waste within government. Let’s go after it. But don’t go to war against the working class of this country, lower-income people,” Sanders said.

    Republicans maintain that what they view as government overspending and the nation’s growing debt are inextricably linked and that conversations about each cannot be separated.

    “As we’re addressing the debt limit, we also have to address the problem that got us here,” Scalise said on “This Week.”

    The House majority leader also challenged Senate Democrats to put forth their own legislation.

    “If they’ve got a better idea, I want to see that bill and tell them to pass it through the Senate,” Scalise said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Dems prep to hammer GOP debt bill on campaign trail

    Dems prep to hammer GOP debt bill on campaign trail

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    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) set the tone at the beginning of the week, privately telling Democrats in a leadership meeting that the debt vote could be framed to the American people in the same way liberals responded to Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, repeal Obamacare and pass the 2017 tax cut package, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

    “We’re focused on doing the right thing by the American people, which is to make sure we avoid a dangerous default and ensure that America pays its bills,” he said Wednesday in a brief interview.

    Democratic groups are already gearing up to knock Republicans over the debt standoff. The DCCC said vulnerable Republicans were “helping build the case against themselves” and their re-election, and House Majority PAC singled out frontline Republicans who voted for the bill.

    A focus on the GOP’s debt bill and proposed cuts isn’t without its own political pitfalls. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made clear his caucus is not responding to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) legislation — ultimately putting the issue between President Joe Biden and the speaker after its passage in the House.

    By contrast, the 2017 tax bill was signed into law with a GOP trifecta, giving Democrats real-life consequences to use against Republicans. It also gave candidates an avenue to campaign against Republicans without tying them specifically to then-President Donald Trump.

    But what Democrats saw as effective campaign messaging in the 2022 midterms around the Jan. 6 insurrection and abortion rights could end up ranking higher on the list than potential spending cuts.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Dems relish Trump-Biden rematch

    Dems relish Trump-Biden rematch

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    “Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him,” the retiring senator said in an interview. “Politically, for us, it’s helpful if former President Trump is front and center.”

    “Broadly,” Stabenow added, “the public rejects him.”

    As Trump reels in endorsements, rakes in campaign dollars and reclaims his lead in Republican primary polls, Democrats are growing more enthusiastic about his chances of clinching his party’s nomination. They think Trump would not only maximize Biden’s chances of a second term, but help the party battle for control of Congress.

    With Biden set to announce his reelection bid as soon as Tuesday, Democrats aren’t blind to his stubbornly low approval ratings. But they also know Trump’s polarizing profile — including an indictment, his fixation on the 2020 election and polarizing profile both within his own party and among independents — could be their best matchup in 2024.

    Of course, that was the same logic they applied in 2016. After Trump won the GOP nod, Democrats thought Hillary Clinton was in for a romp. With that in mind, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) warned Democrats “to be careful what you wish for.”

    “I hope they realize that there’s at least a 50/50 chance — and even more than 50/50 — that he becomes president if he becomes the nominee,” the 2012 Republican nominee said. “They think he’s the easiest Republican to beat. That may be the case. But in my opinion, he’s someone the country would not be well served to have in the White House again.”

    Nevertheless, Democrats still find themselves rooting for a Trump-Biden ballot as some polls show Trump would be weaker in a general election than someone like Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    “Obviously, it’s politically helpful,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who flipped a red seat in his party’s anti-Trump-fueled wave in 2018. “But that’s not good for the country.”

    In the House, where Democrats need to flip just a handful of seats to win the majority, they’re betting on Trump’s ability to turn out blue voters and inspire Democratic fundraising. That amounts to a much more potent villain for campaign ads than Hill Republicans like Speaker Kevin McCarthy or other potential presidential candidates like DeSantis.

    There’s always the chance Trump’s gravitational pull could propel more GOP voters, too, but Democrats believe the math is on their side. Just a handful of Democrats represent districts Trump won in 2020, like Jared Golden in northern Maine, Matt Cartwright in eastern Pennsylvania or Mary Peltola in Alaska.

    There are 18 Republicans, though, who sit in seats that Biden carried — more than three times as many as Democrats need to flip the House.

    “It’s very good for us,” said Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.), who’s held onto her own swing seat for a decade. Kuster called Trump “unelectable” in purple seats like hers, and predicted that if Republicans in Biden-friendly turf get behind Trump: “I think we’ll win them all.”

    One of those Republicans is Rep. Mike Garcia, a Trump-endorsed Californian who’s survived three elections since 2020 in a heavily pro-Biden seat. He said he’s not sweating having Trump at the top of the ticket and posited that turbocharged turnout on both sides would be essentially a wash: “The left gets more excited, and our base gets more excited.”

    Other Republicans predicted Biden’s presidency would help them more than Trump would hurt the GOP. “Two more years of this? I’m more and more confident every day,” said Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), a longtime Trump backer. “It’s looking really good for him right now.”

    Across the Capitol, the battle for the Senate majority hinges on deep-red Trump states like Montana, West Virginia and Ohio. That means Democrats could win the presidency and perhaps the House but still lose the Senate, even with anti-Trump tailwinds. But further down the map, in purple states like Stabenow’s that Biden flipped in 2020, Democrats say their constituents are tired of Trump.

    “I don’t want to see that for our country. I don’t even want to see that for the Republican Party,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) of a Trump nomination. “But if you’re just asking me numbers? We’ve seen that matchup before in Wisconsin. We can win that one.”

    Still, some endangered Democrats worry that their party could again overlook Trump’s strength. They noted how he emerged with a stronger hand in the GOP primary after his indictment last month and acknowledged there are plenty of purple districts with enough Trump supporters to tip tough races. Plus, House Democrats still lost a handful of seats in 2020, even as they kept their majority and their party won back the White House.

    A lesser-known candidate, like DeSantis or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, they argue, might not draw the same crowds. There’s also anxiety over how the election would change from 2020, as pandemic-era campaigning gives way to more traditional tactics and would require more time on the road for both the octogenarian president and his 76-year-old predecessor.

    “Democrats are rightfully terrified of 2024 because they have to own Joe Biden’s disastrous economic record that has hurt Americans and his foreign policy blunders,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign.

    Nonetheless, there’s a gut feeling that Trump is more beatable.

    “Personally, I think it’s probably better for Biden to have Trump as the nominee. But I don’t know that that’s true,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), one of Republicans’ top targets in 2024. “He’s a known commodity. Biden’s a known commodity. You just don’t know about the others. You don’t know how they’re gonna perform under pressure. You don’t know if they got a glass jaw.”

    A Biden adviser argued that the president proved in previous contests that “he is second to none in prosecuting extreme MAGA candidates.” The adviser also noted Biden’s endurance traveling the country to sell his accomplishments, comparing him favorably to former President Barack Obama in 2011 ahead of his successful reelection campaign.

    Still, using Trump as a cudgel in down-ballot races is now a tried-and-true Democratic campaign method everywhere but deep-red states like Montana. House Democrats’ campaign chief even began meddling in GOP primaries to boost pro-Trump opponents last cycle — with the hopes of helping their own candidates’ chances in the general election. It infuriated Democrats in the caucus, who feared it would backfire.

    It didn’t, ultimately, but there’s still some apprehension about elevating candidates that Democrats simultaneously argue are more beatable and extreme.

    Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden confidante, said he’s “surprised at how strongly the former president is performing in the early polls. But not a single vote has been cast in a single primary or caucus.”

    “If you look back at almost every previous election cycle, guesses about who was going to be the nominee, who would fare well, who would fare poorly, were almost always wrong,” Coons said. “Otherwise, we’d have President Giuliani or President Thompson or President [Hillary] Clinton.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House Dems worry Biden ‘can’t keep waiting’ on McCarthy debt meet

    House Dems worry Biden ‘can’t keep waiting’ on McCarthy debt meet

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    “They’ve got to do it soon,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), a close White House ally, said of a Biden-McCarthy sitdown, adding that while she believes there will ultimately be a clean debt-ceiling increase, the administration “can’t keep waiting.”

    Democratic lawmakers have already pressed that point in private, according to two people close to the discussions, urging the White House to lay out plans to meet with McCarthy for fear that public opinion would turn against the party. And swing-seat lawmakers stressed there’s no harm in starting a conversation, even as they all oppose McCarthy’s opening bid.

    “I don’t think there’s any harm in the two of them sitting down to talk,” said first-term Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio). “The idea that we’re even coming this close to a potential default is insane.”

    Over in the Senate, centrist Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has been pushing Biden for weeks to restart talks. Manchin said in a statement Thursday he didn’t fully agree with McCarthy’s proposal but slammed Biden’s refusal to meet with the Republican leader as a “deficiency of leadership.”

    Rank-and-file House Democrats aren’t going that far.

    “This is not a serious piece of legislation,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.). “That being said, I am happy we are talking about the debt ceiling, because I think it’s very critical to talk, and so do I think the speaker of the House and the president should sit down and talk about the debt ceiling? Of course they should.”

    Democratic leaders aren’t budging, yet. They remain in lockstep with the White House’s position that talks can’t begin until House Republicans release their own budget and fully divorce the conversation about debt from spending. Biden and McCarthy last met on the debt ceiling at the White House in early February, and while both characterized it as a promising start, the meeting didn’t produce any breakthroughs. Democratic leaders believe they should maintain maximum pressure on Republicans rather than strengthen McCarthy’s hand heading into a difficult vote for the GOP conference.

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday he didn’t expect any Democrats to support McCarthy’s offer and reiterated that they could talk with Republicans once they produced a budget. “I don’t know whether reasonable people would conclude that we should be negotiating against ourselves. That’s not a logical place to be,” he said.

    Biden allies are also salivating over the political contrast they believe the GOP’s debt plan creates, allowing Democrats to position themselves as the bulwark against proposals that would roll back clean energy tax credits and impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries.

    “Ask House Republicans: Do they support Speaker McCarthy’s plan to kill manufacturing jobs in their home districts?” read the headline of a White House memo Thursday detailing more than a half-dozen Republican members whose districts are benefiting from manufacturing projects supported by the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits.

    In a speech Wednesday, Biden rejected McCarthy’s proposal as full of “wacko notions” and reiterated his demand for a clean debt ceiling increase.

    Yet while he’s maintained for months that he wants McCarthy to put out a budget before meeting with him again, officials have refrained from saying definitively whether the GOP passing its debt-limit bill would shift that calculus.

    “If you do another meeting, there’ll be an expectation of negotiations,” one adviser close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said of the dilemma facing Biden and his top aides. “The White House would have to be able to structure the lead up to the meetings to say, we’re happy to talk to him but we’re not negotiating. … And then the question becomes: ‘What’s the meeting for?’”

    A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the Problem Solvers Caucus endorsed a separate debt framework Wednesday to hike the debt limit without drastic spending cuts. They’re billing it as a potential path to a compromise.

    “Probably everyone’s rooting for the speaker and the president to come to a deal,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a member of the bipartisan group. He said he wasn’t going to dictate what the president and speaker should do, but added: “I think more discussion or exploration about where people are, what would work, is helpful — and that’s why we did what we did.”

    Democratic leaders haven’t openly embraced the bipartisan bid, though Jeffries said Thursday he saw it as proof that there are several dozen Republican lawmakers “who disagree with the extreme Republican proposal.”

    Still, others projected optimism that a sitdown between Biden and McCarthy could produce a bipartisan breakthrough.

    “They’re both Irish-American. They ought to have a nice dinner, and they ought to get to work and get it done for the sake of the country,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who represents a district former President Donald Trump won in 2020.

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    #House #Dems #worry #Biden #waiting #McCarthy #debt #meet
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate Dems wrestle with Feinstein resignation chatter

    Senate Dems wrestle with Feinstein resignation chatter

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    “The question is, how long until she goes back? So if it’s three months, I don’t know, that becomes a really difficult question. If it’s a couple of weeks? I’m fine with it,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.). “I’m not going to pressure her one way or the other. But I think, you know, if it’s going to be months and months? My guess is that … she will be her own harshest critic.”

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blocked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Tuesday afternoon request for unanimous consent to add Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) temporarily to the Judiciary Committee. In theory, that could tee up a floor vote on the matter, but Democrats don’t have the 10 GOP votes they’d need to move forward.

    “This is about a handful of judges that you can’t get the votes for,” Graham said.

    Indeed, Republicans made clear Monday that they would reject Feinstein’s request to temporarily step down from the Judiciary panel. Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has had to repeatedly delay committee votes on judges since Feinstein’s absence began in late February.

    Now Democrats are largely out of options. And Schumer said little Tuesday, declining to get into any resignation talk whatsoever. Feinstein’s future did not come up at Democrats’ Tuesday lunch meeting, according to multiple senators.

    “She and I are both very hopeful she will return very soon,” said Schumer, who spoke to Feinstein on Friday.

    Unless Feinstein returns or resigns, all Democrats can do is wait. Feinstein’s term ends at the end of 2024, and her office on Tuesday pointed to last week’s statement in which she said she expects to come back.

    It’s not the first time Democrats have wrestled with tough questions about the twilight of the 89-year-old Feinstein’s career. She faced pressure to step down as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee during the presidency of Donald Trump and eventually acceded to those demands. She also passed on the role of Senate pro tempore, which as the most senior senator of the majority party would put her in the line of presidential succession.

    Now, Democrats expect her to make a difficult call about her own health as it threatens to overshadow her rich legacy in politics. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is now the pro tempore and was elected the same year as Feinstein, said she has “complete confidence that [Feinstein] will make the right decision for her state and her country.”

    “The next step is up to Sen. Feinstein. I hope that means she’ll be returning to us soon,” Durbin said. As to whether she should resign, Durbin added: “This is her decision. She’s had a remarkable career in the Senate. I’m not going to make that decision or even suggest it.”

    Publicly, the White House lined up with other Democrats, saying Feinstein deserves a chance to recover and to make her own decisions on her career.

    “This is a decision for her to make — when it comes to the future, her future,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

    Other Democrats noticeably bristled at the suggestion that Feinstein should be forced out, or that the party would talk about her resignation at all. At least three House Democrats have already stated that Feinstein should step down, though no senators have yet joined them.

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called the resignation talk among Democrats “very selfish.”

    “Other people have different reasons and concerns that they couldn’t be here,” Manchin said, referring to a spate of health problems that have sidelined other senators recently. “We never asked them to step aside.”

    House Democratic leadership is giving Feinstein similar room to maneuver, with No. 3 Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) saying Tuesday she should set her own timetable. However, he added that as the debt ceiling fight heats up in Congress, “our expectation as House Democrats is that every senator is going to need to participate.”

    Yet with the special Senate responsibility of confirming nominees, the problem is already acute across the Capitol.

    With Feinstein absent and Republicans refusing to help temporarily replace her, the Judiciary Committee is now tied, hamstringing some Democratic nominees. There are 15 judges who have gone through a hearing — which can be conducted without Feinstein — and are awaiting a panel vote, according to numbers tallied by the American Constitution Society.

    Still, there are 18 judges who have already been through the committee and can be brought to a vote on the Senate floor, some of whom may be able to move without the California Democrat.

    There are some questions about whether the GOP would even fill Feinstein’s slot on Judiciary if she did resign, given that restoring Democrats’ majority on the panel effectively allows them to unilaterally confirm nominees. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said that “whether she resigns or not, it isn’t gonna make any difference.”

    But Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a Judiciary Committee member and counsel to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said that Republicans may view a Senate vacancy differently than Feinstein’s request to seek a temporary replacement.

    “Traditionally that’s when the resolution has been changed — when somebody is no longer able to serve,” Cornyn said. “There’s never been a precedent for a temporary replacement, it’s my understanding. So if the circumstances were to change, I assume that the precedent would be applied.”

    Feinstein last voted in the Senate on Feb. 16, kicking off a period in which McConnell and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) also missed significant time. McConnell and Fetterman have since returned, adding to the pressure on Feinstein. Of course, that already existed in part because her absence was the only one that meant Democrats couldn’t confirm certain judges, the most significant thing the party can unilaterally accomplish during a divided government.

    Manchin implored Durbin to send judges to the floor that have bipartisan support, which would allow Schumer to move to confirm more nominees but would also isolate a handful of more controversial nominees. Durbin said he hasn’t made the decision to do that at the moment.

    Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate Dems weighing a Clarence Thomas invite to future Supreme Court ethics hearing

    Senate Dems weighing a Clarence Thomas invite to future Supreme Court ethics hearing

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    Earlier in the day, when asked if he’d consider subpoenaing Thomas for his testimony, Durbin told reporters that his panel would “talk about a number of options.”

    Thomas’ behavior was “high on the list” of topics discussed Monday evening, said Blumenthal, who added that there is no final decision yet on who else should testify.

    Durbin has not yet confirmed that Thomas would be asked to testify. Any subpoena that Democrats might issue, should the justice turn down such an invitation, would likely be challenged and could end up before Thomas and his colleagues at the high court.

    Judiciary Democrats already sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts urging him to investigate Thomas’ undisclosed acceptance of luxury travel and gifts from wealthy GOP donor Harlan Crow. Later reports from ProPublica delved into the sale to Crow of three Georgia properties, including the home where Thomas’ mother currently lives.

    “What he did is really unprecedented, the magnitude of the gifts and luxury travel but the money changing hands and the nondisclosure,” said Blumenthal.

    Senators are still hoping that the Supreme Court will take its own action, but Durbin said his panel was also open to discussing proposals to impose a formal code of ethics on the court.

    “This reflects on the integrity of the Supreme Court. [Roberts] should take the initiative and initiate his own investigation and promise results that answer this problem directly,” the chair said on Monday.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Surprise lesson from Wisconsin: Abortion may not be panacea for Dems

    Surprise lesson from Wisconsin: Abortion may not be panacea for Dems

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    “We were careful to create a narrative early on about who Janet was, what was at stake in this election and who Dan Kelly was, and abortion fit within that,” Guarasci said. “Our paid media ends with ‘he’s an extremist that doesn’t care about us.’ Everything related back to that.”

    The insights from Protasiewicz’s campaign team offers a note of caution — and a roadmap — to Democrats who think abortion has transformed the electoral landscape in their favor. Broadly speaking, the issue plays in their favor, but the experience in Wisconsin suggests that it will take a nuanced strategy to fully reap the political benefits.

    Protasiewicz’s team clearly believed it had the right formula to make abortion work as an issue after their 11-point, 200,000-plus-vote win.

    Over 35 percent of general election TV spots from her and her allies mentioned the topic, according to data provided to POLITICO by the ad tracking firm AdImpact. But it wasn’t a “one-size-fits-all message” on abortion rights, Nuckels said. Their messaging on abortion rights played into the larger campaign strategy of painting their opponent, conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, as an extremist more broadly.

    Focusing on abortion was a message that “encouraged turnout and persuaded voters, particularly suburban voters,” in regions like Madison, Milwaukee and La Crosse, he said.

    But, notably, the reaction was regional. “In Green Bay,” said Nuckels, “it wasn’t a factor there.” In fact, he said, the campaign believed a broad advertising push on abortion in and around Green Bay would motivate more people to vote for Kelly over Protasiewicz. The campaign did not run a single broadcast television spot on abortion in the Green Bay media market.

    “We didn’t want to drive out voters for our opponent or solidify them behind him,” Nuckels said. “We needed to have much more targeted communication in places like Green Bay.”

    Instead, the campaign relied on targeted cable and satellite ads, along with digital and social media, to reach the most pro-abortion rights voters residing in the Green Bay market, an area that is still heavily Republican and remains key in any Republican turnout machine. According to data compiled by Daily Kos, Trump won over 57 percent of the vote in that market in 2020 — and Kelly won by a smaller margin, taking 53 percent of the vote.

    Protasiewicz’s team also attributed its success to a strategy to advertise early in a race where the two candidates started with fairly low name identification; “Define early, don’t play defense, be aggressive,” as Guarasci put it.

    They were able to adopt that aggressive posture in large part because they had a war chest that was basically unheard of for a down ballot statewide election. The campaign spent $15 million on TV ads alone, an unprecedented amount for a judicial race, and the campaign and state party combined to spend over $600,000 just on research efforts.

    The campaign made an effort to reach voters beyond Democratic diehards. Guarasci said it was important to reach all voters where they were, from expansive broadcast buys to even advertising on conservative radio to — in part — needle Kelly. That also meant moving off of abortion when needed. Protasiewicz’s campaign talked about crime and public safety early and often.

    In fact, crime was the top issue that Protasiewicz and her allies mentioned in TV ads, according to AdImpact data. Over 60 percent of total TV ads from her camp were about crime. Until recently, Republicans have viewed the issue as a key advantage they have over Democrats.

    “For us, abortion was the single largest driving factor for most of the state. For the Republicans, for Dan Kelly, it was crime,” Nuckels said. “And so part of our early strategy was not to give Dan Kelly a free ride on public safety and crime.”

    Protasiewicz was attacked relentlessly by Republicans on the issue — over 90 percent of their ads mentioned crime, often targeting her as a soft on crime jurist who gave too lenient sentences — but aides say their early advertising start helped inoculate her.

    Her ads often highlighted her history as a prosecutor and a judge, saying she knows what it takes to keep a community safe. Her campaign also attacked Kelly for never overseeing a criminal case and for some clients he defended as a private attorney.

    “A top line for me is do not cede public safety,” Guarasci said. “We knew that they were going to try to run up the score on that point, and if we could kind of neutralize it or not lose that issue overwhelmingly, we knew that people would hear us on abortion and all these other issues.”

    The advice that Protasiewicz team gave to Democrats heading into 2024 was, ultimately, not to be afraid to go after Republicans as too extreme — and not just on abortion. Democrats win, they said, when they establish an overarching media strategy about tying the campaign to a fight against extremism.

    “The extremism of the right is rejected by American voters writ large,” said Guarasci. “Don’t be afraid to point out this and label it an extremist agenda.”

    The campaign also benefited, they said, from having the airwaves to themselves early in the general election. Kelly’s campaign was absent on the airwaves in the early goings of the general election, while Protasiewicz went up almost immediately.

    That is not an advantage most Democrats will have in 2024. While this year’s state Supreme Court race had over $45 million of spending — the most for any judicial race in American history — that amount of money will be a small drop in the bucket next year.

    Still, Protasiewicz’s aides said, there are valuable lessons for Democrats here.

    “It’s what the electorate wanted. They wanted normalcy, they wanted common sense,” Verdin said.

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    #Surprise #lesson #Wisconsin #Abortion #panacea #Dems
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Ouster of Tennessee Dems catapults lawmakers to national political fame

    Ouster of Tennessee Dems catapults lawmakers to national political fame

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    Already, top party members are engaging. Vice President Kamala Harris plans to make an unexpected visit to Nashville to meet with the ousted lawmakers and push for gun reform, the Tennessean reported Friday.

    And it’s unlikely the pair will be gone from the state Capitol building for long – local leaders are already moving to reappoint both of them well before a special election is held. The Nashville Metro Council on Monday will consider naming Jones to his old seat, which encompasses parts of Nashville. In Person’s Memphis district, the head of the Shelby County Commission, which has a Democratic supermajority, said she could consider reappointing Pearson.

    “We are ready to go,” said Freddie O’Connell, a Nashville council member. O’Connell, a Democrat who is running for Nashville mayor, said he believes Jones has enough support from the council to return to the statehouse as soon as Monday evening.

    Jones said on CNN Friday morning that he intends to get back to the statehouse. He sees his and Pearson’s roles as being a “voice of moral dissent” and a “speed bump to try and stop them from driving this train off the cliff.”

    Following the reappointments, special elections will be held to permanently fill both seats. Jones and Pearson have already rebooted their old campaign websites and reopened their fundraising accounts. While it’s up to Republican Gov. Bill Lee to call for a new election and the state party to set deadlines, it’s likely the primary election will take place by late summer and the general election in the fall, ensuring that the pair will remain in the spotlight throughout much of the year.

    “I do not expect Justin Jones to be suffering from a lack of resources to soundly defeat anybody else who might enter that contest as a Republican,” O’Connell said. Jones was uncontested in the general after winning the Democratic primary by about 300 votes.

    State Sen. Ramumesh Akbari said Republicans’ pursuit of expulsions instead of considering gun legislation has ignited a spark among Tennesseeans, one that could backfire for the GOP.

    “A week ago, no one outside this community knew Justin Jones and Justin Pearson,” Akbar said. “Now the world is watching. Their platform and their ability to advocate for the issues they believe in has been magnified.”

    Several members of the Tennessee Democratic Party said donations have been pouring in since the Covenant School shooting and Republicans’ evictions of the so-called “Tennessee Three” who collectively represent the three largest cities in the state.

    A GoFundMe account created this week to cover the Democrats’ legal expenses, should they choose to sue GOP leadership, has raised more than $38,000. The trio gained tens of thousands of Twitter followers in the hours following the controversial vote.

    Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted that over $250,000 in donations poured into ActBlue, the fundraising platform used by many Democratic politicians and organizations, the day Jones and Pearson were expelled.

    Advocates want to redirect the attention back to the issue they were standing for: changing Tennessee’s gun safety laws. Protestors have surrounded the Capitol building for weeks, calling for lawmakers to pass gun-safety measures like red flag and safe storage laws, as well as roll back recent moves, like enacting permitless carry.

    “Since the shooting a lot of people here in Nashville, especially students and moms and educators, were all fed up,” said Zach Maaieh, a Students Demand Action leader at Vanderbilt University who has joined protestors at the Capitol. “We’re hearing about shooting after shooting. It’s heartbreaking every single time, but you don’t see anything happening from our state leaders.”

    Gun safety advocates and lawmakers point to deep red states that have enacted red flag laws, measures that allow courts to temporarily confiscate guns from someone deemed dangerous

    “Nineteen states – including Indiana and Florida – have already taken this step,” Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt said at a press conference Thursday. “Now it’s time for Tennessee to join that list.”

    The state Democratic party is salivating over the public’s sudden interest in Tennessee politics and channeling that energy toward taking down Republicans. It’s an extremely ambitious goal. Democrats in Tennessee and throughout the South have been stomped by Republicans in recent elections, a phenomenon that Democrats blame on GOP-crafted gerrymandered districts and low voter turnout.

    Dakota Galban, head of Davidson County Democrats, an area encompassing Nashville, said most of the emails and calls he’s received in recent days are from people concerned about what Republicans’ decision to oust the Democrats means for democracy.

    “We’re really trying to get as many people involved in our organization so we can mobilize and organize volunteers and voters ahead of this special election,” Galban said. “Hopefully we can build on that momentum into 2024.”

    Beyond Tennessee, the drama in the Capitol has brought disdain from national leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and ex-RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

    Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on Twitter, calling the events “the latest example of a broader erosion of civility and democratic norms.”

    “Silencing those who disagree with us is a sign of weakness, not strength, and it won’t lead to progress,” Obama said.



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    #Ouster #Tennessee #Dems #catapults #lawmakers #national #political #fame
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )