Tag: GOPs

GOP’s climate counter punch: pushing more fossil fuels

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But so far, the voters they’re hoping to attract don’t seem to care.
The party’s early messaging promoting the bill amplifies attacks that fell flat for Republicans in the 2022 midterms. And new polling shared with POLITICO shows that the GOP’s legislative achievements aren’t energizing voters in some key states on the 2024 map, threatening their ambitions once again to win the Senate and White House.
Most Republicans and independents — 59 and 66 percent, respectively — in Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and West Virginia had heard nothing or little about efforts to speed up federal permitting of energy infrastructure projects, a centerpiece of Republicans’ agenda, according to a Public Opinion Strategies survey of 1,200 registered voters.
Building America’s Future, a lobbying effort that supports the permitting changes, paid for the polling. The group is backed by GOP operatives with ties to former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Republicans, however, have faith in the message, even as they acknowledge the difficulty in translating energy permitting into campaign trail slogans.
“It’s resonating,” Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) said of the Republican energy agenda. “You can’t take a subject as complex as energy and try to message every little nuance.”
The GOP is using increasingly aggressive tactics to back up its bet that Americans will back its message. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tied the fate of a debt limit increase to H.R. 1, raising the stakes of negotiations that Biden administration officials warn could lead to economic catastrophe.
Democrats, however, were skeptical that the GOP plan would succeed.

“I don’t think Republicans are going to get very far on this,” said Rep. Ro Khanna. “People want a government that works, they want to build things. That’s way down in the weeds.”
The House energy bill, which the lower chamber passed last month with near-unanimous Republican support and votes from four Democrats, aims to expand oil and gas drilling and exports, ease the environmental permitting review process, and repeal many of the $369 billion of climate and clean energy incentives enacted in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
Targeting those IRA measures could present risks to the GOP, however: Companies have announced at least $243 billion in investments in battery plants, electric vehicles factories and other green energy projects since Biden signed the law in August. And the vast majority of those projects are set to be built in red districts, according to analyses by POLITICO and Climate Power, an environmental organization paid media operation.
But when pollsters frame the GOP’s energy and permitting proposals as efforts to fight inflation, the ideas fared much better with voters, the survey showed. Seventy-one percent were more likely — including 38 percent who were “much more likely” — to back permitting changes when told they would lower grocery, gasoline and power bills.
That gives Republicans hope that their broader strategy might gain traction.
“It’s impossible to make permitting a relevant issue unless you’re focused on how does it impact American families directly,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and co-founder and partner of bipartisan public affairs and communications firm ROKK Solutions. “This is not just placing a gambling bet on whether energy prices will be higher or lower at the time of the election … This is showing a solution.”
It’s not hard to see why Republicans would want to focus on energy. The party’s unity on the issue stands in contrast to other flashpoints like abortion, where Republicans have struggled to align on navigating a debate that has energized Democratic voters. And while inflation has moderated in the past few months, it remains a top worry for voters.
“Would you rather pay more at the pump or less at the pump? Would you rather have a lower utility bill or a higher utility bill? Would you rather pay more for heating oil or less for heating oil?” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said of Republicans’ credo. “I don’t know how to wordsmith that, but it’s something along those lines.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee plans to use Democrats’ votes against H.R. 1 as a primary line of attack in frontline House districts where voters might lean more moderately and be open to Republicans’ focus on inflation.
On April 17, the NRCC sent out a memo hitting Democratic Reps. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Yadira Caraveo of Colorado for voting against the bill, calling their opposition “likely the beginning of the end of their reelection campaign” given the size of their states’ oil and gas industries.
The NRCC slammed 12 House Democrats when the bill passed in March, saying they “chose the extreme left” in opposing the legislation while citing how much energy and gas costs had risen under Biden.
Outside groups aligned with Republicans are pouring money into efforts to turn energy policy into a national campaign liability for Democrats. American Action Network, a 501(c)(4) group that is allowed to promote issues without disclosing donors, ran advertisements in Democratic swing districts urging them to vote for H.R. 1. Two such Democrats — Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez of Washington and Jared Golden of Maine — backed the bill.
Republicans believe their energy message answers voters’ kitchen table concerns and will appeal to the independents and moderates they will need to win the White House and Senate. Relaxing permitting rules will help both clean energy and fossil fuels, they contend, and they say their legislation will ease pressure on global oil and gas markets while thwarting rivals like China and Russia.
“Whether it wins elections or not, this is something that we truly need to focus on for our constituencies,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said.
Still, even though the House passed the H.R. 1, dubbed the Lower Energy Costs Act, Republicans are a long way from enacting the measures, which need to pass in the Democratically controlled Senate.
And a focus on energy prices didn’t fare well in the 2022 midterm elections, even in a year when gasoline prices hit all-time highs and home heating costs surged. Those early year price spikes had moderated by the time voters went to the polls, and are even lower now.
That pullback in prices may have helped turn the anticipated red wave at the ballot box into a red ripple, giving the Republicans a thin majority in the House and keeping the Senate in Democrats’ hands.
Ernst defended the focus on energy prices last year, and blamed the poor Republican election result instead on weak candidates, many of whom embraced former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.
Democrats maintain that Republicans are presenting a feeble and incoherent agenda, not least because GOP lawmakers have championed various portions of their package. Some have touted the permitting aspect, which they note would help speed development of all types of energy sources — both fossil fuel projects as well as the clean energy projects that Democrats prefer.
Others, such as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, have focused on their bill’s goal to spur more oil and gas production — enabling Democrats to make the case that the GOP plan benefits a fossil fuel industry that overwhelmingly donates to Republican candidates.
“That bill is fundamentally a message bill they are trying to use to set up this fake argument that the reason energy prices are going up is because of something that we’ve done,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said in an interview. She added, “In fact, the reason energy prices have gone up is because the big oil companies don’t want to invest like they used to want to invest because they know the tide has turned when it comes to investors.”
Republicans contend the wide array of policy issues in the 207-page bill benefits their members, allowing them to tailor its message to their own districts.
“You can argue, ‘Y’all need to be more concise.’ But because energy is so pervasive, it does affect inflation — this helps those families who’ve been pushed into poverty,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) said.
“It does affect grocery prices,” he said. “This does create better job opportunities in the United States. This does resist China and helps to put us in a stronger position. So it does solve a lot of different things.”
And if gasoline prices shoot up again, that could make voters more receptive to Republicans’ call to increase oil and gas production. An April Gallup survey showed a 14-percentage-point jump since 2018 in the number of Americans who believe that national policies should encourage more oil and gas drilling. Thirty-five percent supported that position this time.
Even that, though, doesn’t represent a clear win for Republicans: A majority of Americans — 59 percent — still believe national policies should place a priority on alternative energy instead of oil and gas, according to the Gallup poll.
That included 62 percent of independents, the type of voters Republicans want to pull to win the White House and pivotal congressional races. And fewer Americans said they see the energy situation as “very serious” than one year ago — 44 percent then versus 34 percent now.
Brittany Gibson contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 27, 2023
The GOP’s new electability problem: North Carolina

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In a state where surveys show a majority of voters favor keeping abortion legal, he has compared the procedure to murder. And even some Republicans in North Carolina see him as a liability.
“Because of his comments, he will nationalize the gubernatorial race in North Carolina for the Democrats, which will open the door for them in raising tens of millions of dollars across the country,” said Paul Shumaker, a Republican consultant in the state.
But as he launches his campaign in rural Alamance County, Robinson will need to do what many high-profile, controversial Republicans failed to accomplish in last year’s midterms — overcome his past comments that could be deeply unpopular with general election voters.
It is a critical test for the GOP in the post-Trump era, after a slate of problematic nominees cost Republicans a number of winnable governor and U.S. Senate races in 2022.
The opportunity for Republicans in North Carolina is enormous. Democrats haven’t won a presidential or U.S. Senate race there since 2008. And with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper leaving office — a candidate who won twice as Donald Trump took the state in both 2016 and 2020 — Tarheel Democrats are staring down an election without their best candidate in a generation.

With Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper leaving office, Tarheel Democrats are staring down an election without their best candidate in a generation.
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Hannah Schoenbaum/AP Photo
Robinson will be boosted by an existing small-dollar fundraising operation and a flurry of earned media on conservative platforms, where he has raised his profile in recent years. And he’ll have the backing of fiery grassroots supporters that dominate the GOP base in North Carolina. None of the negative headlines have so far stopped his meteoric rise in state politics, riding a viral video of him giving public comment about gun rights at a city council meeting in 2018 to being elected to the state’s second-highest office a little over two years later. And even after in-state media uncovered a past comment by Robinson — a staunch abortion opponent — that he and his wife had terminated a pregnancy decades ago, his standing remained virtually unchanged, Raleigh’s WRAL found in a survey.
Still, he could face a potentially bruising challenge in the primary — largely focused on other Republicans’ concerns that he is not electable in the fall.
Mark Walker, a former Greensboro-area congressman who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Senate last year, is publicly mulling a run, and is expected to enter the race in the coming weeks.

Walker acknowledged in an interview that most political observers in the state see Robinson as the “strong favorite” to win the GOP nomination, but he repeatedly suggested that Robinson would not be a good general election candidate because of baggage he carried. Walker, who is being advised by National Public Affairs, a political consulting group run by Bill Stepien and other Trump alumni, said he was “disappointed that [Robinson] would not be honest with the people of North Carolina about all different things,” declining to elaborate further.
Walker’s criticism carries a bit of irony since he helped launch Robinson’s political career by sharing that 2018 viral video on Facebook. He insisted there was “nothing personal” about potentially running against Robinson, only that Republicans needed to nominate a winning candidate for the fall.
Even if Walker does not get in, Robinson is facing other challengers in the Republican primary. Already in the race is Dale Folwell, the state treasurer first elected in 2016, who cast himself as an alternative to Robinson in part because he is “not a gamble on the ballot.”
But any challenger to Robinson faces a tough path. Members of North Carolina’s Republican legislative leadership are largely supportive of Robinson’s primary bid, according to four state GOP insiders. Legislative leaders gave him an unusually prominent perch earlier this year, tapping Robinson to give the response to Cooper’s state of the state address — a spot where Robinson tried to shed at least some of his usual bomb-throwing persona.
And Republican legislators are expected to be among those supporting Robinson at his announcement Saturday.
Early polling on the general election race shows it’s likely to be a dead-heat. Carolina Forward, a progressive advocacy group, released a survey this fall that showed state Attorney General Josh Stein — who Democrats have coalesced around — at 44 percent support, compared to Robinson’s 42 percent. But among independents — a key voting bloc in North Carolina — Robinson was up slightly.

A progressive advocacy group released a survey this fall that showed state Attorney General Josh Stein at 44 percent support, compared to Robinson’s 42 percent.
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Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
“You’re going to have two absolute juggernauts from either party, with Robinson and Stein raising, I predict, more money than we’ve ever seen in a governor’s race in this state,” said Conrad Pogorzelski III, Robinson’s top political strategist.
While it remains to be seen how Robinson’s past scandals and history of heated rhetoric will play out under greater scrutiny this election cycle, those close to the lieutenant governor have advised him to proceed as if the primary is already over — and to focus more on the general electorate than dishing out more red meat to the base. Saturday’s rally could be an early sign of whether he’ll actually embrace that advice.
Robinson — the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, who worked a manufacturing job up until his recent political career launch — has sought to emphasize his relatability to average people when confronted with past news coverage about his personal financial mismanagement and other missteps.
“It’s a quasi-populist message that’s about going after the elites, and that’s what Trump was able to channel very effectively when he carried the state of North Carolina twice,” said Jonathan Felts, a Republican strategist who most recently advised Sen. Ted Budd’s midterm campaign. “It’s not just a fringe-right phenomenon — it’s something that percolates across the political spectrum and something that pollsters and the D.C. consultant class have gotten wrong since 2016.”
If he wins the primary, Robinson’s traits will be contrasted with the mild-mannered persona of Stein, a Dartmouth and Harvard-educated lawyer who has served two terms as the state’s top prosecutor. But it’s one that Democrats eagerly embrace.
“You couldn’t have a bigger contrast between these two candidates,” said Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist who advises both Cooper and Stein. “Mark Robinsion is the most far-right extreme candidate who has ever run in the history of North Carolina.”
The race comes at a dire moment for the Democratic Party in North Carolina.
The state was supposed to be the swing state of the future for Democrats, after then-candidate Barack Obama won a squeaker in 2008 and Kay Hagan won an open Senate seat by over 8 points that year. But Democrats have not won a statewide federal race since then — losing a string of close Senate and presidential contests that have thrown into question the true tossup nature of the state.
Democrats have fared far better on the statewide level. Republicans have won just one governor race in the last 30 years, and there has been a single Republican attorney general in the last century. Even so, Cooper, the most successful Democrat in North Carolina in any recent history, is term-limited out. And Republicans hold supermajorities in both state legislative chambers.
“This could be the culmination of 15 years of [Republican] work, in the sense of a consolidation of power by any means,” said Democratic state House Minority Leader Robert Reives.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 22, 2023
House GOP’s debt-limit plan seeks to repeal major parts of Democrats’ climate law

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McCarthy is eyeing to pass his plan in the House next week, setting up a showdown with Democrats amid worries that the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June.
The Republicans’ 300-page-plus bill amounts to a legislative wish list of measures that have no future in the Senate, whose Democratic leaders have joined Biden in refusing to negotiate policy changes as part of the debt ceiling. They argue that lawmakers should raise the borrowing cap — and avert global economic havoc — without conditions, as Congress repeatedly did under former President Donald Trump.
Biden derided McCarthy’s plan during an appearance Wednesday in Maryland, and vowed to reject GOP demands that he roll back his administration’s accomplishments.
“They’re in Congress threatening to undo all the stuff that you helped me get done,” Biden said during an appearance at a Maryland union hall. “You and the American people should know about the competing economic visions of the country that are at stake right now.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) likewise dismissed the Republican proposal. “It’s pathetic,” he said.
The GOP bill would enact the party’s marquee energy bill, H.R.1 (218), which the House already passed last month. That bill includes an easing of permitting rules for new energy infrastructure and mining projects that Republicans say would promote economic growth, and which might find some appeal among Democrats.
The Republican proposal also includes more partisan elements of their energy bill, which would mandate more oil and gas lease sales on federal lands, ease restrictions on natural gas exports, and repeal a fee that the IRA imposed on methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
Republicans have lambasted the IRA’s clean energy incentives, saying they’re wasteful and distort markets.

“These spending limits are not draconian,” McCarthy said in a Wednesday floor speech ahead of the bill release. “They are responsible. We’re going to save taxpayers money. It will end the green giveaways for companies that distort the market and waste taxpayers’ money.”
Republicans are seeking to repeal the IRA’s zero-emission nuclear power production, clean hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel tax credits. Their bill would also eliminate the law’s bonus provisions aimed at placing solar and wind facilities in low-income communities and that allow some entities to receive direct payments of the credits.
“We have to create situations where traditional, reliable, resilient energy can compete in the marketplace,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) told POLITICO. “If that’s getting rid of some of the crazy renewable tax credits in the IRA, I am all for it.”
Republicans are also proposing to modify several other existing tax credits under the law, including by reestablishing the previous investment and production tax credits for solar and wind that the IRA had extended and increased. The GOP would nix both the production and investments tax credits for green sources after 2024, as well as incentives for paying prevailing wage, using domestic content and placing facilities in communities historically dependent on fossil fuels.
The proposal would eliminate changes to some tax credits that existed before Democrats’ IRA was enacted, including for carbon sequestration.
And it would make major changes in the IRA’s electric vehicle tax credit, whose implementation by the Biden administration has taken bipartisan criticism. The GOP proposal would revive a prior $7,500 tax credit for qualifying electric vehicles, but would restore that tax break’s per-manufacturer limit of 200,000 vehicles. It would entirely repeal the IRA’s new incentives for critical battery minerals that are extracted from the U.S. or a close trading partner, and for batteries manufactured or assembled in North America.
While some moderate Republicans called for party leaders to place a priority on policy measures that could draw bipartisan support — such as overhaul permitting rules — as part of the debt ceiling package, conservatives pushed for more partisan measures targeting Democrats’ climate law.
But that could put some Republicans in a tricky spot, because many projects that could receive the IRA’s tax credits are set to be built in congressional districts represented by GOP lawmakers. Recent analysis from the American Clean Power Association found that there have been $150 billion in new clean power capital investments since the law’s August passage, including 46 utility-scale solar, battery and wind manufacturing facilities or facility expansions.
Of the manufacturing announcements tracked by ACP where a congressional district was known, the majority of those facilities were in red districts.
“There is a lot of stuff in the Inflation Reduction Act that should be repealed,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) told POLITICO. “But there is some common sense stuff that was in there as well.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 20, 2023
Opinion | The GOP’s Moderate Frontrunner

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Back in 2016, the most moderate Republican candidate in the race was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who lost everywhere except his home state.
Perhaps the most moderate candidate in the GOP field as of this moment is former President Donald Trump.
He established himself as a different sort of Republican beginning in 2015. If you want a Republican who won’t cut spending or start foreign wars, he is still your man.
Added to this now is clearly a discomfort with the fight over abortion in the post-Roe environment.
Trump’s main line of attack against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is from the left. He’s hitting the Florida governor hard for his past support for reining in Social Security and Medicare. His super PAC’s ad on this theme is functionally indistinguishable from the countless spots Democrats have run over the years attacking Republicans for even looking at entitlements crosswise.
All that’s missing is an image of DeSantis pushing an elderly person in a wheelchair over a cliff, although Trump made a favorable reference to that infamous anti-Paul Ryan ad in a Truth Social post.
He’s also called the governor’s culture-war clash with Disney “so unnecessary” and “a political stunt,” while not entering the fray in the conservative war with Bud Light.
Of course, Trump’s personal power is such that he’s made loyalty to himself and to his claims that the 2020 election was stolen the standard for being considered right-wing — orthodox conservatives who reject Trump are more apt to be labeled moderates than Trump himself.

The substantive definition of the right is also up for grabs. What is the more right-wing position? Trump saying that he’ll end the Ukraine war in a day through his personal diplomacy — the kind of naive position once associated with soft-headed Democrats — or a hawk saying that he’ll continue to arm Ukraine to the hilt? It depends who you ask.
All of this is an indication of how Trump can be ideologically difficult to pin down, which benefited him in 2016 — both in the primaries and in the general — and could work for him again.
The alleged radicalism of Donald Trump has mostly to do with his personal conduct, his outrageous statements, his conspiracy theories and his contempt for norms and rules. None of these are to be dismissed lightly — indeed, they made for a toxic brew after his loss in the 2020 election — but none of them is ideological, either.
In theory, it’d be possible to be perfectly polite and support a border wall (in fact, this describes most Republicans), or be in favor of open borders and be just as fond as Trump is of coming up with insulting nicknames for rivals.
If Trump were given a magic wand to move America in his direction policy-wise on his core commitments, and we had a secure border, more tariffs, fewer foreign entanglements, greater domestic energy production, the status-quo on entitlements, and a step toward the center-right and away from what Trump calls the “radical-left lunatics” on most cultural issues, no one would think he or she were living in a right-wing dystopia — at least not if they didn’t know who was wielding the wand.
It’s Trump’s unique contribution to take an issue mix that could have broad appeal and make it toxic by association with himself.
In the 2016 nomination fight, Trump’s approach — getting to the rest of the field’s right on some issues (immigration, China) and to its left on others (especially entitlements) — paved his path to the nomination. That road didn’t run through self-described “very conservative” voters, but “somewhat” conservatives.
Ted Cruz put up the stiffest resistance, but winning the very conservatives, or winning them overall by a relatively small margin (42-36 percent according to an ABC News analysis), wasn’t enough for him to overcome Trump’s standing with the somewhat conservatives and moderates.
The crucial South Carolina primary illustrated the dynamic perfectly. According to the exit polling, Cruz won very conservative voters, with 35 percent to Trump’s 29 and Rubio’s 19.
Trump won somewhat conservatives, with 35 percent to Rubio’s 25 and Cruz’s 17. And Trump won moderates, with 34 percent to Rubio’s 23 and Kasich’s 21.
In other words, Trump was competitive with the very conservatives while besting the other candidates with the other two factions.
Now, Trump has reversed the poles of his support. He’s most formidable with very conservatives and DeSantis is strongest with somewhat conservatives. The governor’s strategy of trying to peel off Trump supporters among the very conservative voters by getting to his right on substance, while appealing to the center-right with an electability argument, makes sense in theory.
On the one hand, it’s possible that Trump, by softening on abortion and other culture-war issues, is doing DeSantis’ work for him, especially in the crucial early state of Iowa. On the other hand, the governor could lose voters who care about electability if a sense takes hold that his six-week abortion ban, anti-woke educational initiatives and war on Disney go too far for voters in a general election; there are mutterings about this among donors and politicos. Trump’s distinctive moderation plays into his counter-electability case — according to the latest Yahoo poll, a majority of Republicans think Trump is a better bet to win a general than DeSantis.
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, Barry Goldwater famously said in his signature riff in his 1964 acceptance speech. That may be true enough, but Donald Trump, of all people, is out to demonstrate that it could be a virtue in pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 20, 2023
House points to Jan. 6 committee in defending GOP’s right to subpoena ex-Bragg aide

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Bragg’s lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, seeks a court order preventing the House from enforcing the subpoena. An initial hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
As precedent for courts rejecting recent challenges to congressional subpoenas in recent months, the House’s brief cites the Jan. 6 committee’s litigation against four people: John Eastman, a top architect of the former president’s bid to overturn the 2020 election; Katherine Friess, a lawyer working with Trump ally Rudy Giuliani; Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona GOP; and Mark Meadows, former Trump chief of staff.
Pomerantz, a former assistant DA, resigned from Bragg’s office in February 2022 amid frustration at the DA’s apparent reluctance to bring a case against Trump. Pomerantz has since written a book — The People vs. Donald Trump — that describes his work on that case and offers his unvarnished views about Trump himself.
Though the court fight is laden with the Judiciary Committee’s charged political rhetoric related to Trump’s indictment in New York, it’s also a reminder that courts are generally reluctant to stand in the way of congressional subpoenas, especially in politically sensitive matters.
While Congress has some narrow limits on its investigative powers, courts generally defer to lawmakers’ broad authority to investigate anything with a conceivable “legislative purpose.” Bragg has contended that no such purpose exists behind the Judiciary panel’s bid to subpoena Pomerantz and delve into the decision-making behind Bragg’s indictment of Trump earlier this month.
The Judiciary panel, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), also specifically argues that Bragg’s lawsuit to block the Pomerantz subpoena is barred by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause. That provision gives lawmakers formidable protection against attempted lawsuits by outside actors over their official work.
The Judiciary panel has contended that it wants to study the ramifications of a local criminal indictment on a former president, for both its security implications and its potential chilling effect on officeholders. Bragg’s office countered by describing that purpose as a pretense to undermine a state-level criminal probe, arguing that Congress has no jurisdiction in the area.
On Monday, Jordan’s Judiciary Committee also sought to undermine Bragg’s credibility by questioning his criminal justice policies during a “field hearing” in Manhattan. For four hours, Republicans heard testimony from victims of violent crime — including a formerly incarcerated bodega clerk and the mother of a homicide victim — who accused Bragg of failing to address their needs. Democrats at the hearing, however, claimed Jordan and his counterparts were there to do “the bidding of Donald Trump,” as Rep. Jerry Nadler put it.

During the proceeding, several Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), echoed Trump’s criticism of Bragg as having been funded by billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, an effort Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) decried as anti-Semitic.
In its court filing in the Bragg lawsuit, the Judiciary Committee repeatedly emphasized that Pomerantz’s willingness to share internal details of the Bragg office’s Trump probe in his book undercut any potential privilege claims he might make against a subpoena. Bragg, the committee noted, didn’t take legal action to block Pomerantz’s book or his subsequent media interviews about it.
The House committee also rejected Bragg’s efforts to bolster his opposition to the subpoena by citing another Trump-related matter — the Democratic push to obtain the former president’s financial records from an accounting firm.
That 2017 Democratic effort led to a Supreme Court case that described some limits on congressional efforts to obtain the personal information of a sitting president. But the House argues that the ruling has no relevance to the DA’s bid to stop a former subordinate from testifying.
For his part, Pomerantz indicated Monday that he backs Bragg’s effort to block the subpoena. He argued in a declaration filed with the court that he has no relevant knowledge to share with the committee, since he left the office long before Bragg decided to indict Trump.
He added that he’s in an “impossible position” thanks to the competing demands of Bragg’s office — which has instructed Pomerantz not to testify — and Jordan’s threat to enforce the subpoena.
“If I refuse to provide information to the Committee, I risk being held in contempt of Congress and referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution,” Pomerantz said in a. “If, on the other hand, I defy the District Attorney’s instructions and answer questions, I face possible legal or ethical consequences, including criminal prosecution.”
Erica Orden contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 17, 2023
Why Tennessee GOP’s effort to oust 3 Dem lawmakers is so unusual

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“It will echo across the country. I think it will have a chilling effect on all states where there’s supermajorities or very red states,” Rep. Gloria Johnson, one of the Democrats under threat of expulsion, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “This is chipping away at our democracy, there’s no question, because everybody’s going to wonder, ‘am I next?’”
The ACLU in Tennessee also issued a warning the effort “undermines Democracy.”
“Expulsion is an extreme measure that is used very infrequently in our state and our country because it strips voters of representation by the people they elected,” Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the ACLU in Tennessee, said in a statement.
State legislatures often go decades without taking such an action against members.
The dustup began last week, when hundreds of protestors gathered at the capitol in Nashville to urge lawmakers to pass gun safety measures in the aftermath of a shooting at a local school that left three adults and three children dead.
Amid the protests that leaked into the building, Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson led chants on the House floor in which they called on their colleagues to pass new gun laws. The lawmakers were aided by a bullhorn.
Their stunt enraged Republicans, who promptly introduced resolutions calling for their removal, sparking further chaos on the House floor.
Now, Republican leaders — who likened those actions to an “insurrection” — will vote Thursday on whether the members should be allowed to continue serving in the House or be removed from office. The Democrats have already been stripped of their committee assignments.

Resolutions filed against the three declared that they had participated in “disorderly behavior” and “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”
Critics of the move to evict the members argued that Republicans have failed in the past to remove their members of their own party who acted egregiously, such as a former representative who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers when he was a basketball coach.
“It’s morally insane that a week after a mass shooting took six lives in our community, House Republicans only response is to expel us for standing with our constituents to call for gun control,” Jones tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “What’s happening in Tennessee is a clear danger to democracy all across this nation.”
The group of Democrats faces tough odds surviving the vote: Both chambers of the Tennessee legislature are controlled by a Republican supermajority. Special elections will be held if the resolutions pass.
Johnson, a former teacher who survived a school shooting that left one student dead, said she plans to bring an attorney to Thursday’s vote and “defend herself.”
“I’m happy to show up and make my case heard, because I will always lift up the voices of the people in my district who want to see gun sense legislation,” Johnson said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
House GOP’s Biden investigations sputter out of the gate

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“All of us hear from constituents that they’re very anxious for results. And our task, part of our task, is explaining to people what this process is about, and what to expect,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of House GOP leadership, said in a brief interview. “I think some people get anxious because they just want immediate results.”
Republicans have fired off scores of letters, issued subpoenas and initial reports and held a handful of hearings. But part of the problem is the lofty expectations they set coming in.
Long before GOP lawmakers settled their speakership fight, they promised voters they’d deploy the chamber’s oversight power against President Joe Biden on a host of issues. They vowed to find a smoking gun that links Biden to his family’s overseas business dealings. They even embraced comparisons of their investigative efforts to Congress’ storied 1970s Church Committee, which uncovered significant abuses by the intelligence community.
The pressure on Republicans stems chiefly from the gap between their voters’ hopes and Washington reality — for example, Johnson said some of his constituents want them making indictments and arrests, which Congress doesn’t have the power to do. But Republicans also acknowledge some of their problems are self-inflicted as they face growing pains readjusting to the majority.
One GOP aide, granted anonymity to speak frankly, described an internal perception that the politicized government subpanel run by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had gotten off to a “rocky start” after its initial hearing revealed little new information. That same hearing sparked public kvetching among outside groups and high-profile pundits, who questioned both the structure and the strategy of the panel.
“There’s always going to be people who want to go 110 miles an hour and get frustrated with the pace of how things work,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a member of both the politicized government panel and the Oversight Committee. He noted many House Republicans are new to life in the majority.
Then there’s Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.). He’s in a perilous position for a leading Republican, facing skepticism from some Fox News figures who have publicly questioned if he’ll be able to back up his goals for a Hunter Biden probe, given that the president’s son has been under a separate federal investigation for roughly five years.
“I see people go on TV and comment on — ’we should be doing this or we should be doing that’ — but a lot of those people have … been involved in investigations in the past and I don’t think they ever got any information,” Comer said, noting that he’s only been officially wielding the gavel for two months.

Additionally, the Oversight chair has to step lightly around potential turf wars as he pursues a broad scope of investigations that risk elbowing into the jurisdiction of other committees. Comer shot down talk of internal conflict, particularly with the Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subpanel chief, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). The two men share a home state and are close, Comer said; if they had an argument, “it wouldn’t be over baby formula.”
Republicans have also faced staffing issues. Reps. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) brought up concerns about personnel as part of a strategy meeting with Jordan earlier this year. And while the House Judiciary Committee now has more than 50 GOP staffers, and requested a budget bump, it’s still shaking off a public perception that a core group of Jordan confidants are running it.
Gaetz, asked about the meeting, said members left the regularly scheduled sitdown feeling like they were all on the same page. And Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye said in a statement that the subpanel had “hired a talented and aggressive team,” in addition to an existing Judiciary Committee roster that led former President Donald Trump’s defense during House impeachment inquiries.
Regardless, there are fresh signs that the GOP conference’s investigative focus is diverging.
Gaetz crossed wires with Comer after the Florida Republican tweeted that he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), with the chair’s “blessing,” would conduct a transcribed interview with a woman who has accused Biden of sexual assault, an allegation the president denies. Comer countered that there had been a “miscommunication” and that Gaetz, who is not a member of the Oversight, hadn’t spoken with him before the tweet.
“We’re following the money, we’re following the bank records. … We’re not going to get distracted on anything else, any sideshows,” Comer said, adding that Gaetz “can do whatever he wants” in the Judiciary Committee or its politicized government subpanel.
Both Comer’s and Jordan’s committees have been highly productive, but only a slice of what they’ve done so far has gained traction beyond friendly GOP outlets. As of Monday, the Judiciary Committee has sent 148 letters, received nearly 114,000 documents, issued 11 subpoenas, conducted six transcribed interviews and scheduled nine interviews or depositions. They’ve also put out two reports and issued a brief to members on subpoena compliance, with Jordan signaling he intends to dole out information to the public as he gets it.
“[We’re] going as aggressive but thorough and consistent with the Constitution as we can,” Jordan said. He dismissed any Church Committee comparison, because the decades-old panel is linked to a foreign intelligence surveillance law that Republicans have “all kinds of concerns with.”
Comer released a report last month focused on Hunter Biden and other Biden family members’ receipt of more than $1 million from an associate who made a deal with a Chinese energy company — though Republicans didn’t draw a direct link to the president, which has been their stated goal.
The Treasury Department also has granted Comer’s panel access to so-called suspicious activity reports related to Hunter Biden and associates. But the committee has yet to release any new findings from those activity reports, which are records submitted by banks that don’t necessarily indicate wrongdoing.
“I get a lot of advice, but we’ve had a strategy and we’ve been very transparent about it. … I feel like in two short months we’ve made a significant amount of progress,” Comer said.
Comer waved off questions about when he would subpoena Hunter Biden, accusing Biden world and the media of having “just assumed” that was a step he would quickly take. And while he said he’s purposely conducted his investigation more privately, he said he released the report on the financial payments in part because “I was seeing criticism from the left and the right that we hadn’t issued any subpoenas — when we had, we just hadn’t talked about it.”
But those movements still haven’t hooked some of Comer and Jordan’s more centrist party colleagues.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he gets asked about the investigations back home “primarily from Republican activists” but added that “I don’t pay much attention to it.” Another GOP lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly, shrugged off investigations as designed to “make you feel good” but “never yield anything.”
And while Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) characterized Comer’s work as “important,” he described a split among constituents: Some conservatives positively cite Comer’s frequent TV hits, but among another “tuned-in” group he outlined “a frustration that … when is anyone going to be held accountable?”
As for himself? Barr said his focus is “not on those things,” pointing to issues like bank solvency.
“We all have a role to play, and I’ve got enough on my plate right now,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 4, 2023
‘Normalize’ doomsday? Dems lambaste GOP’s latest debt-limit gambit

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While Republican supporters bill the measure as a way of reducing blowback, Democratic leaders argue that even debating it fuels a risky and dishonest theory that it’s possible to avert irreparable economic damage without raising the debt limit. Since GOP lawmakers keep talking it up, however, Democrats are happy to exploit the tricky politics of the convoluted proposal.
“As a Democrat, I actually look forward to them voting to put foreign investors ahead of American families for payment,” said Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “I’m not sure that’s the message they want to take to the public in 2024, but God bless them if they do.”
The reality that the GOP bill would prioritize foreign obligations over domestic bills, from paying the military to food stamps, might seem like a political gift to Democrats. But President Joe Biden’s party is also concerned about the effort for a wonkier reason, warning that it’s a ploy to make the public more comfortable with taking the country up to and even beyond, the debt-limit brink for the first time in history.

Some of the same players on the House GOP right flank who slowed Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid are pushing their own strategy to theoretically ease fiscal calamity if the ceiling is breached.
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Francis Chung/POLITICO
And Democrats say that attitude from their opponents could portend economic trouble this summer as investors gauge Congress’ appetite for risk.
“They are composing an imaginary world in which the debt limit has been breached and there is not catastrophe,” Whitehouse said. “This bill normalizes that. I think it’s a very dangerous thing.”
The House bill now awaits floor action after earning committee approval earlier this month from the chamber’s tax panel. A vote hasn’t been scheduled, but McCarthy promised it would come to the floor as part of his list of January commitments to lock in his leadership post.
Supporters of the bill are now seeking the same style of last-ditch, closed-door concessions on the debt limit, Whitehouse said, accusing Republicans of using the issue as a “hand grenade” to “force Biden into a back room where they can make some deal without the public knowing what they want.”
GOP leaders have added more exceptions to their plan, giving the Biden administration the authority to dole out Social Security and Medicare benefits by borrowing beyond the debt limit.

“I’m actually surprised my colleagues on the other side aren’t supportive of this legislation,” House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said before his panel approved the measure this month. “After all, the bill says we will never default on our debt and seniors will always be protected.”
Under the bill, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen would have to prioritize making payments to the Pentagon and veterans. But the secretary couldn’t borrow extra money to do so. Payments for items like government travel and lawmakers’ salaries would be put last.
Yellen and many Treasury secretaries before her have said government systems aren’t capable of carrying out an elaborate prioritization scheme, that adjusting millions of payments from the federal coffers each day would be logistically impossible. Plus, the bill’s opponents say freezing payments for government contractors, the entire federal workforce, retirees with government-backed pensions, state and local governments — and everything else besides Social Security, Medicare and U.S. debt holders — would be economically calamitous alone.
But arguments that the bill won’t become law and wouldn’t work anyway are minor, Democrats say, compared to the main point: the message it sends to the public.
“It is acknowledging that a default is okay, which is absolutely ridiculous and dangerous,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Small Business Committee.
“If we don’t pay our bills on time to anyone, it’s a default,” Cardin added. “The credit cost of the United States goes up immediately. Our bond ratings change. It is a disastrous course.”
Of course, Democrats’ doomsday predictions play in their favor in debt-limit negotiations. Historically, every time the two parties have debated a remedy right up to the deadline, they struck a last-minute bipartisan deal to head off economic havoc as Wall Street investors grew increasingly skittish.
“A responsible president would stand up and say, under no circumstances whatsoever will the United States default on its debt. Biden doesn’t want to say that because he wants to scare the markets by threatening a default,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Over the last decade, Cruz has stayed an outsider as his GOP colleagues repeatedly helped Democrats raise the debt limit at the last minute, alienating the most fiscally conservative lawmakers in both chambers who weren’t ready to cut deals until their demands were met.
In 2013, when he was a first-term senator, the Texan insisted Obamacare be defunded as a condition of raising the nation’s borrowing limit. That demand led to a 16-day government shutdown and took the country within one day of defaulting.
Now, Cruz argues that House Republicans’ bill to limit the effects of default would ensure Democrats can’t use the fear of economic calamity to avoid negotiating fiscal changes.
“To date, Democrats have opposed that because they would rather scaremonger than actually reach a reasonable compromise on spending and debt,” Cruz said.
Republicans’ gambit feels all too familiar for the lawmakers who were around 12 years ago when the debt-limit standoff spurred a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating for the first time in American history. Republicans were also advocating debt prioritization bills back then.
“What we’re seeing is a rewind of 2011 on steroids,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who was a House member then. “They really need to pull back from the brink, because they’re gonna crush the American economy if they stay on this path.”
The U.S. could fully exhaust its borrowing authority in less than three months, as early as June if revenue comes in lower than usual this tax season. At best, the Treasury Department will be able to scrap along through summer and possibly into the fall using the cash-conservation tactics the government calls “extraordinary measures.”
“Nobody knows exactly how long the extraordinary measures last. Well, what if it doesn’t last as long?” said one Republican lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid being associated with concerns about defaulting.
“I don’t think we should be dinking around with it.”
Olivia Beavers and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 21, 2023
The GOP’s newest culture war target: College diversity programs

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“We are not going to back down to the woke mob, and we will expose the scams they are trying to push onto students across the country,” said DeSantis, who held a roundtable this month on what he called divisive concepts. “Florida students will receive an education, not a political indoctrination.”
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott also stepped into this fight, issuing a directive last month instructing public universities across the state to stop considering DEI statements in their hiring practices. GOP-controlled statehouses in Iowa, Missouri and elsewhere are also scrutinizing higher education diversity initiatives, and legislation has been introduced in at least a dozen states aimed at cutting DEI spending and rewriting hiring guidelines at colleges and universities.
DEI programs have existed for decades across school and government with the goal of both increasing the share of people on campus or in the office from communities historically discriminated against, such as women and religious minorities, and making them feel accepted once they arrive.
“In American higher education, we have been working to make campuses diverse and inclusive for well over 100 years,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, which represents the nation’s colleges and universities. “This is not about teaching white students to be ashamed or teaching Black students to hate white students. This is about making campuses inclusive communities where everybody can prosper.”
But after corporate and educational efforts to supercharge diversity, equity and inclusion programs following the public outrage over George Floyd’s police killing in 2020, many Republicans believe the initiatives promote exclusion and division based on race, a critique that has resonated with conservative voters. It’s a flurry of legislative and executive activity that is advancing as the U.S. Supreme Court also seems poised to ban the use of affirmative action in college admissions later this year.
“It’s good for universities to aspire to be welcoming places to people from many backgrounds, many different experiences, many different perspectives,” said Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy. “But that very good thing has mutated into something not good. … Simply because we like the word diversity and we like the word inclusion … doesn’t mean that DEI initiatives are good.”
According to Greene, GOP lawmakers are looking to dismantle DEI in at least three different ways: striking down the use of diversity statements used for hiring or promotions, ending required social curriculum, and eliminating what they call the “DEI bureaucracy” — practitioners on campus in charge of facilitating diversity efforts. But it does not mean conservatives are against diversity, he said.
Colleges and practitioners, however, argue that these measures could stifle academic freedom and halt diversity efforts needed to ensure a welcoming environment for students, especially those from marginalized backgrounds.

“I don’t use the acronym D-E-I any longer because it’s been conflated with something that has been weaponized against the breadth and the depth of the work that’s being done on campus communities,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of National Association Diversity Officers and Higher Education. “I don’t believe that there is a deep understanding of what this might mean to campuses.”
Granberry Russell, whose group is composed of diversity practitioners, scholars and researchers at universities, said her members are concerned about how the rollback of these initiatives will affect their jobs. They question what programming and professional development they could have, and what message these practices will send to prospective students and job applicants.
Abbott, who barred universities state agencies from using DEI statements, said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers: “Diversity is something that we support.”
But in a February letter first reported by the Texas Tribune, Abbott’s chief of staff Gardner Pate wrote that using the statements during the hiring process violates federal and state employment laws. Public colleges in the state were quick to abide by it.
Texas A&M University announced this month that it would no longer have diversity statements when hiring. University of Houston Chancellor Renu Khator soon followed, saying her institution “will not support or use DEI statements or factors in hiring or promotion anywhere in the University of Houston System” to stay in compliance with state law.
The University of Texas Board of Regents also paused any new policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion and are seeking a report on current policies across their campuses. While UT still strives for diversity on campus, Board Chair Kevin Eltife said “certain DEI efforts have strayed from the original intent to now imposing requirements and actions that, rightfully so, has raised the concerns of our policymakers around those efforts on campuses across our entire state.”
Greene, of the Heritage Foundation, said using diversity statements in hiring, promotions or assessing faculty tenure “seems to bear a lot of resemblance to loyalty oaths that were required during the McCarthy era where people had to declare that they weren’t communists.”
In Georgia, Republicans lawmakers are also looking to ban DEI in education hiring practices through a bill dubbed the “End Political Litmus Tests In Education Act,” SB 261. The Missouri legislature is considering a similar measure to ban public colleges from requiring applicants to submit DEI statements.
This month, South Carolina lawmakers sparred over eliminating funding for DEI efforts from the state’s public colleges during its broader budget negotiations. In Iowa, the Board of Regents announced that it is taking on a comprehensive review of all DEI programs and efforts and pausing any new ones at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.
Meanwhile in Florida, lawmakers advanced the wide-ranging measure sought by DeSantis that would bar universities and colleges from spending on programs linked to diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory.
The legislation also calls on the state university system’s Board of Governors to direct schools to remove any major or minor of study that is “based on or otherwise utilizes pedagogical methodology” tied to critical race theory. This includes Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Radical Feminist Theory, Radical Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Critical Social Justice, or Intersectionality.
Critical race theory is an analytical framework for examining how racism has been systemic to American society and institutions after centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. Many conservatives use critical race theory as shorthand for a broader critique of how race and social issues are being taught in the K-12 education system.
The bill would also weaken or eliminate the roles created at institutions to support students. Recognizing the needs of students based on how they identify, and providing academic and social support is a key role diversity practitioners have long taken on in higher education, Granberry Russell said.
“If we go back to a time when those needs were ignored, not specifically addressed, not tailored to what those students’ needs are,” she said, “what does that represent? You’re not welcome here.”
Andrew Atterbury contributed to this report.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 19, 2023
Schumer slams House GOP’s energy permitting bid

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The bill combines measures to streamline permitting reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act for energy projects and mines, which Republicans hope will form a basis to negotiate with Senate Democrats, with longtime partisan priorities like prohibiting a ban on fracking, mandating oil and gas lease sales and disapproving of President Joe Biden’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. But these provisions are unlikely to gain traction in the upper chamber given Democratic opposition.
The bill, which is expected to receive a vote on the floor the last week of March, would also repeal major programs in the Inflation Reduction Act such as the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and the methane tax.
Schumer criticized the GOP’s opening bid on easing the permitting review process, saying it includes “none of the important permitting reforms that would help bring transmission and clean energy online faster.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) introduced a permitting proposal last Congress — backed by Schumer and the White House — that was rejected by most Republicans and failed to pass that would have set targets on the length of environmental reviews under NEPA. It also would have granted more authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to site transmission lines needed to connect wind and solar generation to far away demand centers.
Despite that failure, House Republicans have insisted they’re serious about negotiating with Democrats on a permitting bill.
While their “all of the above” energy bill is designed to unite the GOP’s fractious conference around combating high oil and gasoline prices, Speaker Kevin McCarthy told POLITICO Tuesday in a statement that he aims to work with Democrats to pass a permitting bill into law once the partisan phase is over.
“It’s no secret that permitting reform is a top priority for House Republicans,” McCarthy said. “I’m pleased to see more Democrats join us in working to address this issue. We’re long overdue in addressing this challenge, and House Republicans will start by passing H.R. 1.”
Schumer, despite his criticism of the GOP’s effort, held out the potential for bipartisan talks.

“I’m glad that there are good-faith talks underway right now between both parties in both houses to figure out what sort of permitting deal is possible,” Schumer said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 15, 2023