Tag: GOP

Once an albatross around Trump’s neck, Jan. 6 is now taboo in the GOP primary

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If any subject is verboten in the early stages of the Republican presidential primary, it’s the insurrection that once served as a defining point in 2024 frontrunner Donald Trump’s career. Whereas Republicans once talked openly about it being disqualifying for the former president, today it is little more than a litmus test in GOP circles of a candidate’s MAGA bona fides. None of them want any part of it.
For a primary candidate, said Scott Walker, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, going after Trump for Jan. 6 is “a huge risk.”
The Jan. 6 avoidance is not just in DeSantis’ book. Mike Pence, the former vice president and likely presidential candidate, is preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena for testimony about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, seeing only political landmines in testifying. Nikki Haley, asked on a podcast recently if she would describe the riot at the Capitol as an “insurrection, a riot, or a coup,” went instead with a more banal — and safer — description: “a sad day in America.”
In the primary, said Dave Carney, a national Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, “I don’t think January 6th will come up, period.”
The insurrection wasn’t always destined to be taboo in GOP primary politics. In the immediate aftermath, the riot appeared to provide an opening not only for Trump’s loudest critics in the party, but also for more mainstream, otherwise-Trumpian Republicans seeking to distinguish themselves from him ahead of 2024.
It was Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, who once said she was angry and “disgusted” with Trump and told Republican National Committee members that his “actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.” Pence made his first post-presidential break with Trump by declaring that he and Trump might never “see eye to eye” on the insurrection. DeSantis once openly criticized “the rioting and disorder” at the Capitol.
“The calculation was that this is clearly indefensible, he’s not going to have a place in the party going forward,” said one Republican strategist and former congressional aide. “That clearly hasn’t happened … January 6th is advantageous for Trump in a Republican primary now. Nobody’s going to hit him on January 6th.”
The advantages for Trump, if they do exist, were in plain view at the gathering of conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference. At the yearly confab — held this year outside of Washington — some attendees wore their connection to Jan. 6 as a badge of honor and found sympathetic ears.

Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt — the protester shot and killed by Capital police at the riot as she tried to break down a door inside the building — appeared on set with Donald Trump Jr. outside the convention’s main stage. There were two booths in the CPAC exhibition hall focused on Jan. 6 defendants. And it was standing room only for a breakout session at the conference titled: “True Stories of January 6: The Prosecuted Speak.” Speakers included Jan. 6 defendants Brandon Straka, Simone Gold, West Virginia legislator Derrick Evans, John Strand and Geri Perna, the aunt of Matthew Perna, who died by suicide after pleading guilty to four charges related to the Capitol riot.
In the halls, it wasn’t unusual to bump into people who were protesting on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. Deborah Gordon, a retiree from Maryland, said it was “disgusting” that politicians didn’t talk about Jan. 6 more. “I was there,” Gordon said. Bruce Cherry, the chair of Seminole County Republican executive committee in Florida, said it was important to reelect Trump “to pardon those people.” Melissa Cornwell, who attended CPAC from Beaumont, Texas, called Jan. 6 a “non-event,” adding that the “real insurrection” was the riots that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020.
If anything, the tone and tenor of the conference suggested that Republican presidential candidates may feel pressure from corners of the base to talk about Jan. 6 in positive terms — and rally to the defense of people arrested following the riot.
“I can tell you that just interacting with a lot of the activists here, there is concern that the violations of protocol and civil rights around the Jan. 6 issue haven’t gotten sufficient attention from the Congress, and that’s really a matter for us in the House majority more so than 2024 candidates,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said on the sidelines of CPAC.
Already, the Trump world attacks on potential 2024 contenders for not being sufficiently supportive of the Jan. 6 protesters are coming. Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist and influencer close to the Trumps, said others who could seek the nomination have shown they “don’t care” about Jan. 6 defendants “because they’re going to lose out on the Wall Street money, they hate Trump and his base.” Bruesewitz himself was summoned by the Jan. 6 committee but reportedly pleaded the Fifth when asked to testify about the events on that day. He once said he would help pay for the legal defense of accused Capitol rioters, while Trump has suggested pardoning some Jan. 6 defendants and even collaborated on a song with some of them.
CPAC has grown increasingly aligned with Trump, making it difficult to assess how representative its gathering is of broader Republican politics. Indeed, last August, the conference featured a fake jail cell where a convicted Capitol rioter sat, fake cried, and prayed with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Still, the crowd assembled there was full of precisely the kind of hardline activists critical to presidential contenders in a GOP primary.
In the broader GOP ecosystem, even more moderate Republicans see little upside in mentioning the riot.
“I’m not trying to downplay January 6th and how terrible it was, but really, a lot of us just want to move past this guy, right?” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who worked on George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign. “We want to move past him, and move past the awfulness, which culminated on January 6th. That was the peak of Trump awfulness.”
But Graul added that anyone running to be the GOP standard-bearer understood the calculations that come with it.
“We’re still in this stage where if you’re running for the Republican nomination, you’re going to need to get votes from people who voted for Donald Trump,” he said.
Indeed, polls show that there just isn’t much of a constituency in the GOP primary for anyone criticizing Trump on Jan. 6. More than two years after the riot, the share of Republicans who disapprove of Trump supporters taking over the Capitol building has fallen to 49 percent, from 74 percent in 2021, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll. And even if Republicans didn’t like what they saw that day, a majority of them don’t blame Trump.
Two years ago, Walker said, Jan. 6 was worthy of condemnation. He said so at the time. But it makes no sense for presidential candidates to be talking about it now, he added, when most people have moved on.
Anymore, he said, “Nobody cares.”
Natalie Allison contributed to this report.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 6, 2023
House GOP readies its first big agenda push: A massive energy bill

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“Everybody will have a little different perspective. But when you want to attack inflation in this country, it starts with an all-of-the-above energy policy, and I think that will be the more unifying thing,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).

Miles of unused pipe, prepared for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, sit in a lot on October 14, 2014 outside Gascoyne, North Dakota.
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Andrew Burton/Getty Images
While each of the 20 or so bills getting united for the House package has broad support in committee, senior Republicans are still deciding how exactly to maneuver on the floor. While conservatives have demanded a kind of “open season” for amendments, GOP leaders sense that could be a risky strategy for such a high-stakes bill — one that’s likely to be a key plank in their 2024 platform. They’re still undecided on whether to allow a so-called “open rule,” according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
“That’s the five-vote majority problem,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), noting that the GOP has already seen energy issues like offshore drilling pit cause intra-party tension on the floor — most recently pitting drill-skeptical Florida Republicans against their colleagues. “If you have a delegation that has a problem, you have a bill problem.”
The big energy package has long been atop the GOP’s agenda, not all of which has gone smoothly after a dragged-out speaker’s race and slow start to legislating. While House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had pledged to bring up bills on the southern border, criminal justice and abortion insurance restrictions within the first two weeks of the new majority, those bills have all stalled amid resistance within the conference.
And there’s another big reason House Republicans are relishing the chance to bring this to the floor. It’s considered their opening bid on the wonky yet critical issue of energy permitting — a rare policy area that both parties believe could lead to a bipartisan deal that President Joe Biden’s willing to sign.
They know that their package’s pro-fossil-fuel proposals and its targeting of Biden’s progressive climate policies are unlikely to garner bipartisan support, but GOP lawmakers hope the permitting plank in particular represents an aggressive starting point for negotiations with Senate Democrats. Perhaps their most politically vulnerable centrist, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), watched his permitting reform plan fall short last year even as his party controlled both the House and Senate.
“The dynamics of the last Congress, with Manchin leading it, weren’t really conducive to getting something done. And this approach of doing something that originates in the House is a better start,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a McCarthy ally and party leader on energy issues.
Graves crafted the main permitting measure in the House GOP package, which would overhaul rules for reviews conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act — a bedrock environmental law adopted in 1970 — for energy infrastructure, be it pipelines or wind turbines.

Manchin had demanded his party attempt to pass a similar effort but failed thanks in part to Republicans who were peeved by his support for Democrats’ party-line tax, health care and climate bill.
From his perch atop the Energy Committee, Manchin is still joining with the White House to press for a congressional permitting modernization that would, they say, help companies take full advantage of the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that the party-line deal devoted to expanding clean energy.
“I wouldn’t expect their [Republicans’] first bill to be something the Democrats could support,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a centrist who is talking to House Republicans about permitting. “It is true we have an interest, as climate action advocates, to move things along in a way I am not sure the current law accommodates.”
Most of the rest of Republicans’ legislative package, though, is dead on arrival in the Senate. Instead, it serves mostly political purposes for a GOP that hammered the issue for months during the midterm campaign.
The effort follows components of a broader energy strategy that McCarthy released last summer, calling for measures to stimulate oil and gas production, ease permitting regulations and reduce reliance on China for critical materials used in green energy technologies.
McCarthy’s strategy stemmed from an “energy, climate, and conservation task force” he created ahead of the midterms, chaired by Graves, that incorporated legislative ideas from across the conference. That work drew support from leaders of key committees, including Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) of Energy & Commerce, Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) of Natural Resources, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) of Science, and Sam Graves (R-Mo.) of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“It’s energy security, it’s domestic production, and it’s inflation,” Westerman said. “It’s all of the above energy.”
The GOP effort, notably, started off at least partly with climate change in mind, as McCarthy recognized the political liability that his party faces on an issue which animates young voters on both sides of the aisle.
But in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which spiked oil and natural gas prices, most Republicans are downplaying elements of their forthcoming package that could potentially boost clean energy and help address climate change. Instead, Republicans are arguing that Democratic climate policies have stoked inflation by slowing oil and gas production — even though output of both has climbed under Biden.
“Their agenda is just all in for the polluters and Big Oil,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who led the Select Climate Crisis Committee last Congress alongside Graves (Republicans have since disbanded it). “There is such dissonance there. It’s confusing, to say the least.”
Republicans counter that their agenda — promoting production and export of all forms of energy, including renewables and other carbon-free sources — makes more sense since Russia’s continental aggression underscored the importance of maintaining ample supplies of oil and gas even as the world transitions off fossil fuels.
“It’s a really good time to merge energy and climate policy with rational approaches to being cleaner,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who chairs the nearly 80-member Conservative Climate Caucus. “Before, maybe the whole conversation was on being clean. Now, it’s about being affordable, reliable, safe, and clean. That’s a good nexus for a lot of us.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 6, 2023
DeSantis and Florida GOP push hard-right agenda, including expanding ‘Don’t Say Gay’

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“Whether it is education or health, keeping parents in the dark is unacceptable,” state Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said in a statement. “Our schools should be teaching students to respect and obey their parents, not hiding critical information from them.”
Republican policymakers are looking to reshape education in Florida’s K-12 and universities, much like they did during the 2022 legislation sessions when GOP legislators approved bills that rooted out all traces of critical race theory within the state school system or banned educators from leading classroom lessons on gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade.
But this year, there is added pressure as DeSantis prepares for a likely 2024 presidential bid, which he’s expected to announce in late spring after Florida lawmakers complete the legislative session. The GOP governor has made education a vital part of his agenda and vows to continue to do so as he tours Florida and the nation.
“Are these public institutions supported by your tax dollars that should be serving the interest of what the public deems is the best interest? Or do they just get to do whatever they want and impose a political agenda regardless of elections and regardless of anything that happens?” DeSantis said last week during a book tour event in Miami. “We believe that, obviously, in a democratic society, these government institutions funded by your tax dollars need to be held accountable for performance and they need to be serving the mission that we as voters and elected officials set out for them to do.”
The proposed policies are already scoring criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups that argue some proposals would ostracize LGBTQ students and their parents.
“Governor DeSantis and the lawmakers following him are hellbent on policing language, curriculum, and culture. Free states don’t ban books or people,” Equality Florida Public Policy Director Jon Harris Maurer said in a statement.
Expanding ‘Don’t Say Gay’
One idea introduced ahead of session is to update to the Parental Rights in Education law passed in 2022, labeled as “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics. Lawmakers recently filed bills in the House and Senate that target the use of pronouns by LGBTQ students and teachers alike.
The bills, FL HB 1223 and FL SB 1320, stipulate that school employees can’t ask students for their preferred pronouns and restricts school staff from sharing their pronouns with students if they “do not correspond” with their sex. Both bills also widen Florida’s prohibition on teaching about sexual identity and gender orientation from kindergarten through third grade to pre-k through eighth grade.

One group labeled the measure the “Don’t Say They” bill.
“This legislation is about a fake moral panic, cooked up by Governor DeSantis to demonize LGBTQ people for his own political career,” Maurer said.
Republicans contend the parental rights law is necessary to ensure the state’s youngest students learn about sexual orientation and gender identity from their parents — not at school.
“We want parents to be more responsible for their children,” state Rep. Ralph Massullo (R-Lecanto), who chairs the top House education committee, said in an interview. “And we believe … preteens shouldn’t be sexualized in schools by our education system.”
The two bills do have key differences, like how HB 1223 expands the parental rights policies to charter schools, something that would be a significant tweak from current law. And SB 1320 would create a new health education standard statewide requiring schools teach that “biological males impregnate biological females.”
This provision, which is part of a separate bill in the House, FL HB 1069, also clarifies in law that these “reproductive roles are binary, stable, and unchangeable.” Another idea in these proposals stipulates that the Florida Department of Education, not local school boards, would approve sex education materials.
Additionally, these two bills also broaden the state’s school library transparency laws, which were passed last year to give parents a better idea what books are available to students and a way to challenge titles they find objectionable. The legislation would extend school board authority to classroom libraries and require any book to be removed the shelves as soon as it’s flagged. Critics argue this is a “harmful and censorious” proposal to ban books that amounts to a “heckler’s veto” that could remove any book about which there is the slightest bit of disagreement.
Most of the education proposals floated by conservatives are likely to face vocal opposition from Democrats. But this session, the minority party has even less representation in Florida following midterm elections that saw Republicans dominate the statehouse down to local school boards bolstered by endorsements from DeSantis and other lawmakers.
“I just don’t understand how the policies are not starting with the need,” state Sen. Rosalind Osgood (D-Tamarac), a former Broward County school board member, said in an interview. “I’m not able to identify the need for all these bills, or the problems that we’re trying to fix.”
On the financial side, DeSantis wants to spend an additional $200 million on teacher salaries and bring the total to $1 billion for next school year. At the same time, DeSantis wants the Legislature to pass new restrictions for teachers unions such as a requirement that union officials can’t be paid more than the highest member and preventing union dues from being automatically deducted from paychecks.
“We don’t need these partisan unions being involved in the school system like they are, where they try to distort and use our schools for partisan purposes,” DeSantis said recently in Miami.
Lawmakers are pushing these policies in FL SB 256, which has been scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday and is opposed by the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
“This attack on educators’ freedom to join in union with their colleagues is just one more in a long line of insults and injuries to public schools and institutions of higher education, our students and us as professionals,” FEA President Andrew Spar said in a statement.
Higher Education and Beyond
Florida’s higher education system also is slated for notable reforms this year as conservatives in the state continue to rail on “wokeness” in colleges.
One proposed package introduced several ideas suggested by DeSantis, such as prohibiting universities from spending funds on programs linked to diversity, equity and inclusion programs — as well as critical race theory. This measure forbids schools from offering majors or minors in critical race theory and gender studies, plus gives trustee boards power to launch a tenure review at any time.
Through policies like this, DeSantis said Florida would be “saving academia from itself.”
“It’s about time that our higher education institutions reflected the values of the community that funds them,” DeSantis said at an event Tuesday in the Villages.
In some other proposals, the Legislature this year is again going to consider whether school board races should be labeled as partisan and if they should have shorter term limits after introducing them last year. There are bills in the Florida House that could bring about significant changes to school start times for middle and high school students. House leadership also has signaled a willingness to scale back students’ access to cell phones during class.
And in what could be the most wide-ranging piece of education legislation to come out of Tallahassee this year, Florida Republicans in 2023 are also advancing a major plan to scale up state-funded vouchers for private schools. These proposals would open the Family Empowerment Scholarship to all K-12 students regardless of income and allow home schooled students access to a voucher for the first time.
“We can put that choice back in the hands of families, where I think it should have been to begin with,” Massullo said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 5, 2023
Sununu: If GOP primary were today, DeSantis would win New Hampshire

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“I’m not really focusing on the decision right now, there will be plenty of time for that,” Sununu said. “Right now my mission is making sure we’re making this party bigger, frankly. You can’t govern if you don’t win, and so I’m really focused on how do we win?”
DeSantis has also not yet announced plans to run in 2024, though he is widely expected to join what could become a crowded Republican primary — a race that so far includes former President Donald Trump, former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Polls identify DeSantis as the only Republican who has anywhere near the current support of Trump.
Sununu, known for being outspoken against Trump, also told Todd he would support the Republican nominee, whoever it may be — but he remains convinced that someone will defeat the former president in the primary.
“I’m a lifelong Republican. I’m going to support the Republican nominee,” Sununu said. “As far as a former President Trump, I think he’s going to run — obviously he’s in the race. He’s not going to be the nominee. That’s just not going to happen.”
“I just don’t believe the Republican Party is going to say that the best leadership for America tomorrow is yesterday’s leadership,” Sununu added. “That doesn’t make any sense. That is not in our DNA as Americans.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 5, 2023
Biden won’t veto GOP effort to repeal D.C. crime law

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“I think that’s where most of the caucus is. Most of the caucus sees the mayor in a reasonable position as saying: 95 percent of this is really good, some of this is problematic. And we need to keep working on it,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said after the meeting.
Biden’s much-anticipated Thursday remarks end several weeks of mystery surrounding his handling of a politically perilous vote for his party. And it comes as the president moves to strengthen the ties with Hill Democrats that propelled him to the party’s nomination.
The president also told Senate Democrats during their meeting that he wants to see immigration reform on the floor, according to Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and left several Democratic senators with the distinct impression that he’s running for reelection. In addition, Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said that Biden addressed the debt ceiling by remarking that he’s waiting for Republicans to show him a budget.
Following their meeting, Schumer also told reporters that the president would support Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and J.D. Vance’s (R-Ohio) bill on railroad protections following the East Palestine train derailment in their state, along with tackling insulin prices for people under 65. The debt limit and budget, along with an “online protection tech bill for kids,” were also discussed, Schumer said.
“We had a great meeting,” Schumer said as he exited the meeting with Biden. “We talked about implementing the great accomplishments of the president of the last two years. We believe we can get a lot of good bipartisan stuff done in these two years. We are filled with unity, optimism, and optimism about 2024.”
But Biden’s most potent comments came on the GOP efforts to unravel the criminal code reform that the D.C. Council passed over Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto. That citywide legislation would scrap some mandatory minimum sentences and change some criminal penalties. Senators cannot filibuster the rollback as a result of the Home Rule Act, which gives Congress special oversight over local Washington affairs.
After the meeting, Biden tweeted that he supports D.C. statehood and local autonomy but does not “support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections — such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did — I’ll sign it.”
Senate Democrats have squirmed for two-plus weeks over the vote, which Republicans plan to force to the floor as soon as next week and would be the first congressional override of local D.C. affairs since 1991. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) predicted that “there will be substantial bipartisan support for a resolution to reject the proposed changes.”

Besides the obvious implications of a vote on the potent political issue of crime, some Senate Democrats are plainly uncomfortable with congressional intervention in D.C.’s affairs.
“I’m disappointed. First of all, I hope the Senate would not pass it. But I think it’s pretty clear they will,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “And to me, the Congress should not substitute its judgment for the elected representatives of the people of the District of Columbia.”
Yet it appears that Democrats’ discomfort with the D.C. law — a near-rewrite of the capital’s criminal code — is carrying more weight than their natural inclination not to interfere.
“I guess [Biden] thinks it’s too far — a bridge too far, which it really is. I’m glad he said that,” Manchin said leaving the meeting, adding that he clapped loudly when Biden disclosed his view to his fellow Democrats.
House Republicans first teed up the bill in February, amid a highly public clash between D.C.’s council and its mayor over the sweeping crime bill. In the House, the GOP-led bill won support from 31 Democrats, many of them moderates who have already called for stronger action on nationwide rise in crime since the pandemic. One swing-seat Democrat who backed the bill, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), voted for it mere hours after she was assaulted in her D.C. apartment building.
Biden’s move to let Congress stop the criminal code changes in D.C. may aggravate locals, but will be a relief to many congressional Democrats who are weary of GOP attacks on them over progressive urban crime proposals. And it comes as prominent Democrats are talking less about Biden’s age or whether he should run again and more about working together heading into the 2024 election.
In the meeting on Thursday, Biden’s reelection campaign did not explicitly come up but it was mostly assumed he’s running again: “I didn’t hear negative vibes on that,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).
“The pieces are together. He’ll run again. And he’ll get full support from the caucus,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “It’s a good feel overall.”
But not everyone is feeling the love. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), an outspoken progressive who’s mostly pro-Biden, said he’s had a couple issues lately with the president. He cited the administration’s new effort to restrict asylum in certain migration cases — “that’s a bad policy,” he said — and then a lack of public follow-through on an environmental justice initiative.
And this week, Bowman said he was “hurt” by the Biden team’s handling of a Black History Month celebration at the White House, which he said was so crowded that several of his colleagues left early rather than try to fight for space.
“They had us packed in the room like sardines,” Bowman said of the White House event, comparing it to better-planned events that span multiple rooms, like the annual Christmas party. “That was, to me, very disrespectful. A slap in the face.”
For now, though, Bowman’s view is an outlier. And Biden got a warm welcome Wednesday night when he visited a group of House Democrats in Baltimore at their annual policy retreat.
Reflecting on their much-improved rapport with Biden since last year’s squabbling over his party-line agenda, many Democrats said there was little doubt he would glide to the nomination in 2024.
“If we, the elected officials, are not with him. I think he’s going to have a very difficult time winning reelection. I gotta tell you, I just don’t see people being against him,” said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.).
“I look at everybody else who’s out there. I mean, he’s a little old. That’s true, he’s gotta address that. But other than his age, he’s the best guy we have in my opinion.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 3, 2023
Trump’s loosening grip on GOP defines early 2024 campaign

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The Kentucky Republican is far from the only one-time Trump ally who’s staying away from the former president, despite his lead in every major poll so far. Some are looking more seriously at his would-be rivals like DeSantis or Gov. Nikki Haley. Others are intentionally staying on the sidelines but privately hoping he stumbles. That sentiment is deepening throughout the Republican Party — but no segment of the party illustrates the shift as vividly as the House GOP, whose members almost universally backed Trump in both previous races.
As of March 1, fewer than 20 House Republicans have formally endorsed Trump in the four months since he declared his third campaign, according to a POLITICO analysis. Roughly another dozen have publicly supported Trump in some way, though short of a formal endorsement. Just one member of House leadership, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), is included in those endorsements.
For now, Trump’s campaign doesn’t appear concerned about their tally of congressional support. Members of Trump’s team are in regular contact with lawmakers and they expect to roll out more endorsements soon, according to an adviser to Trump.
“We have an upcoming slate of national and statewide endorsements that will show the unmatched strength of President Trump’s campaign,” Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, said in a statement.
“Our current list of powerful endorsers far outweighs and dwarfs any other campaign or prospective campaign in support.”
The widespread hesitancy would not be notable in another era — or if a former president was not already in the race. But in this instance, the lack of public support is perhaps the clearest sign yet that members feel Trump’s support is no longer a prerequisite for political survival. Trump’s vengeance is now barely registering as a threat, after years as one of the most dominant forces in politics.
“I’m the last person that would worry about that,” Massie said of possible retribution for not supporting Trump. “It backfires. You can’t attack too many of your own party.”
Of course, the presidential primaries don’t begin for a year, and the field has yet to fully take shape. So far, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is the only other prominent declared GOP presidential candidate. DeSantis is not expected to launch a bid until the spring at the earliest, while Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has said he is still mulling over the decision. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are other possible candidates.

In interviews with nearly 20 House Republicans, many cited the uncertainty in the field as reason to keep quiet for now.
“We don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end of the day,” said Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), whose suburban St. Louis district took a hard lurch to the left in the Trump era. “People should be keeping their powder dry.”
Some went even further, suggesting it might be time for the party to move on — even as they refrained from invoking the former president’s name.
“Primaries really need to be involved in a conversation about the future of the party,” said centrist Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), when asked if he planned to endorse in the race. He warned against a “coronation.”
“I’m for generational change in both parties,” said Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), a McCarthy ally and one-time Trump supporter who said he probably would not endorse in the race.
“With Governor DeSantis’ book coming out this week — I’m seeing him a lot these days,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who also attended the Florida governor’s recent retreat. “I’ll look forward to hearing from him a little more.”
Each of them endorsed Trump in 2020.
Diminished threat of a vengeful Trump
Few Republicans are willing to openly speculate whether Trump’s current tepid level of support on Capitol Hill is an omen for the next two years. What is clear, though, is that crossing Trump is considered far less threatening.
Trump has been crusading since his 2016 election to remake the Republican Party in his image and oust any members who resist. In the past two years alone, he has sought retribution on GOP members who voted for impeachment (only two of the 10 were reelected last year) and those who supported a bipartisan infrastructure package.
And if Trump wasn’t driving the revenge train himself, his supporters waded in on his behalf. The House Republicans who voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attacks saw a surge in primary challengers, and many who won saw their primary margins dive dangerously even though they were facing under-funded opponents.
But the specter of those tough races don’t seem to have driven members toward Trump for political inoculation.
“I’m not planning on endorsing anybody,” said Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), who was forced into a surprise primary runoff in 2022 after a challenger weaponized his vote for the Jan. 6 commission. “It’s too early at this point.”
And while Trump has the field mostly to himself so far, few of the GOP lawmakers interviewed said they’ve heard from him or his team directly. One notable exception: Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) said he received a call from home-state Sen. Lindsay Graham, a top Trump ally.
Timmons said the decision was easy for him, despite the other South Carolinans who are likely to get in the race. “Trump’s Trump. Cross him at your peril.”
But not all his colleagues assessed the situation similarly. Another South Carolina Republican, Rep. Ralph Norman, endorsed Haley when she launched her bid last month. Norman served with her in the South Carolina state House but was previously a devoted ally of Trump.
As a sign of respect, Norman said he called the former president before he endorsed but did not fear any political repercussions: “Donald Trump was magnanimous and he understood, and I will never have a negative word about Donald Trump.”
He’s far from the only House Republican who feels like they’re forced to choose sides between long-time friends and colleagues.
“I consider Tim Scott a friend,” said Rep. David Schweikert, who is not yet sure if he will endorse this cycle. The Arizona Republican served with both Scott and DeSantis in the House. “Ron is someone we also used to hang out with. I have great respect for him.
Multiple GOP members said Trump and his team had not conducted any extensive congressional outreach yet. Some members said they received emails from Trump’s political operation but not any specific endorsement requests.
“I haven’t gotten a call from him, or Nikki Haley, or Gov. DeSantis or Mike Pompeo or Tim Scott or any of the other folks,” said Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.). That seems to be true across the GOP conference. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), who has also refrained from an endorsement so far, said he didn’t know anyone in his delegation who had gotten calls yet on the subject: “That decision will probably be made easier for me when the asks are made.”
Trump’s House loyalists
So far, Trump and his inner circle don’t seem to be sweating its lack of Hill endorsements. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who endorsed Trump even before his third campaign became official, said he hasn’t been asked to dial up any of his on-the-fence colleagues but is ready to when asked: “I’ve never hidden it, and I’m not going to hide it now.”
And it’d be tough to find a House Republican more loyal to Trump than Van Drew: the New Jersey lawmaker switched parties in his first term as a Democrat after some personal wooing from Trump a week before his first impeachment vote.
“When I was going through a really difficult time, some real challenges, He was there,” Van Drew said. “Despite what people say about him, any time that guy’s looked me in the eye — rough around the edges as he may be — he’s always told me the truth.”
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), is another GOP lawmaker who was quick to endorse Trump’s comeback bid, in part because of the former president’s support in own political career.
“He’s been very good to me. Loyalty matters to him, loyalty matters a lot to me,” Hunt said. After he lost his first race in 2020, Trump stuck by him and was critical to helping Hunt survive a 10-person primary two years later. “It made a huge difference in my race.”
Olivia Beavers, Meridith McGraw, Anthony Adragna and Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 2, 2023
GOP rams through TikTok ban bill over Dem objections

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The vote came after a lengthy back-and-forth on Tuesday, with Republicans repeatedly shooting down Democratic amendments meant to rein in different parts of the legislation. In a brief interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of Tuesday’s markup, McCaul said he hoped the split wasn’t the start of a broader collapse of bipartisanship on issues related to Chinese tech.

The committee ultimately advanced McCaul’s DATA Act on Wednesday morning.
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
“We’ve been negotiating this for a solid month, without a whole lot of progress,” McCaul said. “The bottom line is, [Democrats are] not prepared to go forward on any measure related to TikTok. They would prefer to defer to the CFIUS process, where we want to move forward as a Congress.” McCaul was referring to a long-running security review of the risks posed by TikTok by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, has long denied any association with Beijing’s surveillance or propaganda operations. Its critics, however, point to requirements in Chinese law that require companies based in-country to comply with any and all requests from state intelligence services.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the committee’s ranking member, disputed the notion that Democrats would oppose any bill that targets TikTok. In a brief conversation with reporters on Tuesday, he said Democrats are open to “more conversation and dialogue” on a TikTok ban — but, he added, “we have to have all of the facts.”
“I don’t want to supersede CFIUS,” Meeks said. “In the meanwhile, we can be having hearings and conversations, bringing in witnesses and experts on sanctions.”
Meeks said the DATA Act was “unvetted” and had been thrust on his staff with little warning. “We could have held hearings before the markup and carefully crafted bipartisan legislation together,” Meeks said Tuesday. “Instead, my staff and I received the text of this legislation a little over a week ago, and have only had several days to review a bill that would dramatically rewrite the rules-based international economic order.”
Aside from that debate on process, Tuesday’s markup discussion revealed a widening gap in how Republicans and Democrats perceive the threat they say TikTok poses. The GOP increasingly frames the company as a willing participant in Beijing’s espionage activities — McCaul called it a “spy balloon in your phone.” But Democrats appear hesitant to ban an app that roughly 100 million Americans use each month.
“We cannot act rashly without consideration of the very real soft power, free speech and economic consequences of a ban,” Meeks said on Tuesday. He later warned his colleagues against using the tactics of “fear” to pass a TikTok ban. “I’ve seen that tactic utilized before — fear that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, without evidence or proof,” he said.

In response to the Wednesday vote, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said that a “U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide.”
“We’re disappointed to see this rushed piece of legislation move forward, despite its considerable negative impact on the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use and love TikTok,” Oberwetter added.
The DATA Act would alter a portion of U.S. law known as the Berman amendments — which allow for the free flow of “informational material” from hostile countries — to provide what McCaul called a “constitutional framework” that would let the president ban a foreign app. In 2020, TikTok invoked the Beman amendments as part of its successful court effort to block an attempted Trump administration ban.
The bill would also require the president to impose sanctions on companies with ties to Chinese-owned apps that are “reasonable [sic] believed to have facilitated or may be facilitating or contributing to” a broad slate of nefarious activities by Beijing.
On Tuesday, Meeks called that language “dangerously overbroad.” He warned it would inadvertently impose sanctions on a wide swath of U.S. and allied companies that do business with Chinese firms, including independent subsidiaries that operate outside the reach of Beijing.
The DATA Act has already prompted outside pushback. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter on Monday that urged lawmakers to oppose the bill, which it called “vague and overbroad” as well as a violation of the First Amendment. On Tuesday, progressive tech group Fight for the Future launched a “#DontBanTikTok” campaign opposing the legislation.
While McCaul’s TikTok bill is the first to pass out of committee this Congress, it’s not the only legislation percolating on Capitol Hill. In January, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) unveiled their own TikTok ban bill. And in February Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla). introduced legislation to ban the app. A previous version of that bill was backed late last year by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who now chairs the new Select Committee on China.
Gavin Bade contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
Trump ties GOP in knots over Medicare and Social Security

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“It got him elected the first time, and I think it will get him elected the second time,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Budget Committee’s top Republican, said of Trump’s rhetoric. “But it doesn’t do anything for our children and grandchildren that aren’t going to have a program that I’m enjoying right now.”
Others say the GOP has changed for the better in the past 10 years — finally accepting that the voters aren’t as divided as elected officials over whether to touch the two decades-old programs, as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) put it.
“I distinctly remember somebody basically ran a presidential campaign on this in 2012: the Paul Ryan budget, the austerity budget,” Hawley said, invoking the former GOP vice presidential nominee’s famous fiscal hawkishness. “I don’t recall that ticket performing very well. I personally don’t care to go back to that.”
Trump’s pugnacious messaging comes at a crossroads for the party internally, as a group of senators quietly meets about possible changes to endorse on Medicare and Social Security. And Trump’s tactics have some Republicans clamming up or endorsing more modest ideas aimed at ensuring the programs don’t go bankrupt, despite projections that both may be headed for insolvency in about a decade.
Among the alternate GOP suggestions as the party shapes its approach to the upcoming debt-limit fight: targeting fraud and waste; imposing work requirements or raising the eligibility age; and other benefits formula changes. A number of Republicans have also pointed to legislation from Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that would create “rescue committees” aimed at negotiating changes designed to save the programs in the long term.
It’s enough to send Republican eyes rolling up and down the Capitol.
“The best thing to do is just ignore him,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of Trump. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) called Trump’s attack on DeSantis “very unfortunate.”
“We need an adult as president who is going to take on the tough challenges, the tough problems, and be prepared to share with the American people how serious it is. That we use facts. And not scare tactics,” said Rounds, a member of the Senate’s working group on entitlements.

But Trump clearly sees a promise to leave Medicare and Social Security alone as a winning message. He assailed primary opponent Nikki Haley for decade-old comments about even considering entitlement cuts in order to slow the growth of the government.
Trump’s also broken on the matter with DeSantis, who as a congressman voted on three non-binding budgets that called for gradually raising Medicare’s eligibility age, and his former vice president (Mike Pence said on CNBC recently that Social Security and Medicare should be “on the table in the long term”).
DeSantis, Pence and Haley aren’t alone in potential vulnerability to attack from Trump over the issue. Other possible presidential candidates, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), have supported entitlement changes.
As GOP debate over entitlements first stirred last month, Trump delivered a brushback pitch to congressional Republicans in a video warning them not to lay a finger on Social Security or Medicare as part of the debt ceiling showdown. Aides say he will continue to make the issue of entitlement reform a key part of his campaign, despite GOP handwringing.
“It goes to the broader picture of how this isn’t just Trump against Democrats — it’s Trump against the establishment,” said a Trump adviser who sought anonymity to speak. “This is a defining policy moment for a lot of Republicans.”
Republicans have long struggled to trim popular programs, from former President George W. Bush’s failed Social Security privatization plan to the GOP’s bids to repeal Obamacare and scale back its Medicaid expansion. Party leaders are currently vowing to stay away from entitlements as they pursue still-unspecified spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, harmonizing with Trump.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last month that Social Security and Medicare cuts are “completely off the table.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said while Trump is “gifted at making the complex simple,” he is irked by the former president’s “intellectually dishonest” campaign rhetoric on entitlements. Trump’s allies see it differently, calling out a party they say focused too much on trimming or changing the eligibility age for some of the government’s most popular programs.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said talking about entitlement cuts is “politically stupid.”
“I really don’t like the political attitude that so many people take where they will take a set of programs that are wildly popular and very beneficial for Republican voters, and point to all of the other things that are more important than them,” said Vance, who has endorsed Trump.
Notably, Trump’s past budgets haven’t exactly aligned with his argument against cutting entitlements. His fiscal 2021 budget, for example, sought steep safety net cuts, including tens of billions of dollars in reductions to Social Security benefits for disabled workers and Medicare changes designed to yield about $500 billion in savings without reducing benefits.
Democrats have shown little interest in uniting around any proposed entitlement changes of their own despite dire projections for the programs’ fiscal future. But they see an advantage in the GOP split.
Republican division on the matter “shows a lack of discipline,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “You would not think it’s a group of individuals that have an organized plan on how we deal with our budget, debt and deficit over a long period of time.”
And the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee gave Trump begrudging credit for resonating with his base.
“I give the devil his due,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said. “I think he has a better finger on the pulse of the Republican primary electorate than the Romney-Ryan wing.”
Exploiting their opponents’ internal feud could also help Democrats after a midterm campaign that left Republicans acknowledging the success of entitlement-themed attacks on GOP Senate candidates. Last year’s Arizona Senate nominee Blake Masters, toyed with the idea of privatizing Social Security before backtracking.
“Telling old folk … that Blake Masters wants to privatize Social Security is probably going to scare them a little bit,” Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson said of Masters, who’s considering another run in 2024.
Meridith McGraw and Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
DeSantis is championing medical freedom. GOP state lawmakers like what they see.

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DeSantis’ attention to the issue is having real-world impact — and not just in Florida. GOP lawmakers across the country, in some cases emboldened by DeSantis’ ramped-up rhetoric, have introduced hundreds of bills this year under the medical freedom banner, including proposals to put lawmakers in charge of immunization requirements, ban the government from creating non-school-based vaccine mandates and allow citizens to challenge public health disaster declarations.
“Governor DeSantis has been leading the way,” said Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer, chair of the Texas Freedom Caucus, who sponsored his state’s public health disaster declaration bill. “A lot of people are looking to DeSantis to see what he’s doing at this point, and it gives cover to other governors, I think, to step out there.”
DeSantis’ spotlight on medical freedom, which grew in popularity during the pandemic, comes as routine childhood vaccine rates are dropping and trust in government and science is low. Public health experts fear the entrenched political polarization around vaccinations and public health will lead to eliminated diseases, such as polio and measles, gaining footholds in communities and diminish the nation’s ability to respond effectively to future health crises.
The momentum also highlights one of DeSantis’ biggest strengths heading into the 2024 election cycle: his handling of Covid-19 in the third-most populous state. Conservatives across the country have praised DeSantis’ rejection of vaccine mandates and masking students in schools, fueling the governor’s popularity.
“If he runs, it’s just going to bring more prominence to this ideology, and that’s my concern,” said Rupali Limaye, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This idea of — we are going to reject, essentially, anything that is science-based because that’s part of our identity. The government can’t tell us what’s true, what’s not true. We make our own decisions. We make our own truth.”
Most of the medical freedom bills introduced in statehouses this year aren’t likely to go anywhere, observers say, but their volume speaks to the backlash federal pandemic policies engendered and how DeSantis’ proposals could be the inevitable result of so many Americans losing trust in local, state and federal health officials.
“I think he’s presenting an alternative. Is the alternative being presented in a political way? Yes. That doesn’t make it less valid,” said Brian Miller, a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Taking a different approach in public health requires a lot of guts. The public health community has historically not done a good job in integrating centrist, conservative and libertarian viewpoints.”
Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ deputy press secretary, said that recent research raising questions about the efficacy of masks in preventing infection indicates that when it comes to getting rid of mask mandates, “Governor DeSantis was right all along.”

And while state lawmakers around the country who have been committed to medical freedom since before the pandemic see DeSantis as a relative newcomer to the movement, they welcome the national attention he brings.
“I definitely appreciate his effort to do that,” said Indiana GOP state Rep. Becky Cash. “Quite honestly, if he’s going to run for president, I like what I see.”
DeSantis’ adroitness at positioning himself as a national leader in a series of high-profile culture war issues has helped secure him a spot as one of the country’s most popular governors — and most powerful Republicans.
He’s used funds linked to Covid-19 relief to transport migrants on airplanes from Texas to the liberal enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, traveled to blue states to talk about rising crime, undermined Disney’s special tax status after the company rebuked Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, restricted abortion rights, targeted gender-affirming care and barred high school students from taking a new advanced placement course on African American studies.
The stance that DeSantis, a leading skeptic of masks and lockdowns, has taken on “protecting Floridians from the biomedical security state” and his attacks on former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, have earned him wide acclaim on the right and plenty of leeway from Florida’s GOP supermajority legislature which, during a 2021 special session, passed a law banning Covid vaccine mandates.
“He’s never been wrong,” said Florida House Health and Human Services Committee Chair Randy Fine, a Republican. He added that DeSantis’ policy will have no problem clearing the Republican-controlled House. “What would make anyone think he’s wrong now?”
Some Florida physicians worry DeSantis’ efforts are putting Floridians at risk. Routine vaccinations among Florida kindergartners have been dropping, with fewer kids being immunized against measles, polio, chickenpox and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
“We have an incredible amount of vaccine hesitancy that has only grown worse,” said Greg Savel, a pediatrician in Clearwater, Fla. “Whatever Governor DeSantis says goes around here.”
And while DeSantis is garnering most of the attention, the positions he espouses have been quietly gaining ground outside of Florida.
Between January 2021 and May 2022, legislators enacted 65 laws in 25 states that now limit public health authorities’ power to react during an emergency, according to research by Temple University.
This year, state lawmakers have introduced more than 400 bills promoting a small-government vision for public health, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. Some are Covid-specific, such as a bill in Indiana that would prohibit employers from requiring routine testing for the virus, and a bill in Idaho that would prevent the government from mandating the Covid vaccine to receive government services, enter a government venue or work for the state.
Other proposals would make significant changes to the mandate-driven approach to public health.
Schaefer’s bill in Texas, for instance, would allow individuals to challenge any disaster, public health disaster, public health emergency or control measure order issued by the governor “if the provision is alleged to cause injury to the person or burden a right of the person that is protected by the state or federal constitution or by a state or federal law.”
“It is the historical legal tradition of the United States of America that when your rights are infringed, there’s some way to get into a court and get a hearing, even a preliminary hearing. There’s some due processes that’s involved. But in Texas, and I’m sure in many other states as well, no one could get standing,” Schaefer said. “A lot of this is just simply restoring due process.”
Two bills in Mississippi, meanwhile, would require state health officer orders to be approved by the governor. Legislation in Iowa would prohibit health officials from conducting contact tracing; a proposal in Wyoming would prohibit the use of CDC and WHO requirements, mandates, recommendations, instructions or guidance to justify mask, vaccine or medical testing requirements and a bill in Idaho would make it a misdemeanor to administer any mRNA-based vaccine.
Several states — Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas — have also introduced bills that would take the power to set school-based immunization requirements away from state health officials and put it in the hands of the legislature.
Lawmakers who have long been involved with the medical freedom movement say they’re starting to see more interest from their GOP colleagues in embracing the issue.
“We’re trying to do what Governor DeSantis is doing there,” Cash said. “God bless Governor DeSantis for what he’s doing, but it’s coming from the executive branch, and we really need legislative branches, that are elected by the people, to make the laws to do this.”
The question of individual freedom versus federal and state power to impose measures to protect the public’s health has also shown up in court. In most cases, public health authorities were upheld, but there were a series of high-profile and potentially influential wins for supporters of religious liberty and those who seek to limit the scope of health authorities, including in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Florida, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those wins would not have escaped DeSantis’ attention, said Wendy Parmet, faculty co-director at the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University. But, she added, he’s playing “a precarious game.”
“You don’t know how serious the next problem is going to be,” she said. “You don’t know how it’s going to be transmitted. You don’t know the groups who will be most affected. You want to say the health department can’t close schools, but what if the next pandemic has a 50 percent fatality rate for kids, but adults are fine?”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
GOP divided on how to respond to ‘lab leak’ report

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Others are calling for the White House to hold classified briefings on what they knew about Covid-19’s origins, when they knew it, and what led to the latest agency assessment. And still more hope to use the lab leak assessment as momentum for sanctions and investment restrictions on the world’s second-largest economy.
The spectrum of responses played out on Tuesday across nearly a dozen hearings and legislation markups aimed at deterring what GOP lawmakers say is increasingly aggressive behavior from China that the Biden administration has not effectively addressed.
The Covid news “reinforces the vigilance we’re going to have to have vis a vis China on just about every front,” said Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.). “It takes a little time to get momentum, but you’re going to see a lot of fresh China-countering policies from this Congress.”
The U.S. government has not reached a consensus on how the coronavirus pandemic started. But The Wall Street Journal’s weekend report that the Energy Department made a “low confidence” endorsement of the lab leak theory provided fresh ammunition for those who have long accused the federal government of misleading the public about Covid-19, potentially sowing more distrust about the threat the virus still poses.
But even as some Republicans argued the Energy Department news vindicates the lab leak theory they’ve promoted for years, they warned against focusing on the past at the expense of current threats.
“Most certainly, we can have additional hearings, but I think there are other priorities right now,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told POLITICO. “We’ve got a war in Europe right now. We’ve got a new peer competitor in China right now that is growing faster than we are in terms of military capabilities. We’ve got challenges within our own country in terms of a huge debt that we really have to address. So, when we look at the pandemic and talk about assigning blame, I think most of us have already assigned it.”
Going forward, Republicans say they hope to cobble together a China-Covid strategy that includes both fact-finding missions and new policies to counter threats in the U.S. and abroad.
“We should protest that China tried to cover this up, because that delayed our ability to respond,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Senate’s top Republican appropriator and member of the Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO. “We also need to take a look at the kind of research that was being done at that lab, and whether it did receive American tax dollars to support it, which is an open question right now.”

The GOP policymaking, however, got off to a sputtering start on Tuesday. The House Financial Services Committee advanced 10 bipartisan bills, but skirted any meaningful new restrictions on the Chinese economy. The House Foreign Affairs Committee also advanced a handful of bipartisan messaging bills, while clashing over a proposed ban for the Chinese social media app TikTok.
And in the House Science Committee, Republicans broke with their committee chair on Tuesday over what kind of restrictions to impose on Chinese scientists working in the U.S. and Chinese collaborations with American scientists overseas.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) called for curbs on what information U.S. universities share with China, while freshman Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) pushed for ramped-up surveillance of Chinese students and STEM researchers who work in the United States.
Federal law enforcement “should probably be keeping a pretty close eye on” them, he said. “Because there’s significant links back to the place where they come from, including the family that remains in place.”
Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) stopped short of endorsing those moves, though he agreed that Beijing has made efforts “to steal the results of our research and innovations — whether that’s through cyberattacks, forced intellectual property acquisition or malicious recruitment initiatives like the Thousand Talents Program,” which aims to lure academic talent to China from other countries.
Several Republicans said the DOE assessment has revived the caucus’ interest in bills of theirs that failed to advance last year.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said the Energy Department report could be a “breakthrough” for his legislation to declassify intelligence around the origin of Covid.
“I’m guessing this is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back on this issue,” he said. “It’s going to cascade.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was similarly confident Tuesday that the revelation would lend momentum to his bill to create a 9/11-style, nonpartisan commission to study Covid’s origin — a provision that was left out of the spending bill that passed in December — though he noted that conversations are at the staff level and haven’t yet progressed to members.
Several lawmakers told POLITICO they need more information before they can decide how best to proceed when it comes to U.S.-China policy.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who sits on the Oversight subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Tuesday that he’s requested a classified briefing from the Energy Department and has yet to receive a response.
“I don’t think we’ve been given a straight story,” he said. “So obviously, when they came up with this observation, I wanted more information.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023