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Tag: preps

  • Bracing for impact: Biden world preps for Hunter Biden fallout

    Bracing for impact: Biden world preps for Hunter Biden fallout

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    But people close to Biden still worry about the personal toll it will take on a father who has already felt anguish about a son’s struggles amid a long history of family tragedy. And they wonder how long he can compartmentalize personal anger with the attacks on Hunter and the political calculation that he’s better off not responding to it. Biden has long agonized over the fate of his surviving son, expressing that worry in phone calls with longtime friends and to Hunter himself.

    Attorneys for Hunter Biden met at Justice Department headquarters in Washington last week to discuss the tax- and gun-related case with prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. Often a signal that an investigation is concluding, such meetings are used by defense lawyers to urge prosecutors to refrain from seeking an indictment or to consider reduced charges. The probe has centered on whether Biden failed to report all of his income and whether he lied on a form for buying a gun. His attorneys declined comment.

    “Obviously, the Biden team would hope that this investigation does not result in an indictment for a multitude of reasons,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as President Barack Obama’s communications director. “But the Republicans have failed — both in the 2020 campaign and in their 2023 congressional hearings — to have questions about Hunter Biden impact public opinion and I don’t think they will succeed now, regardless of what DOJ decides.”

    There is no Hunter Biden war room at the White House, according to four people familiar granted anonymity to speak freely. Defense for the president’s son is being handled by his personal attorneys and the White House is not involved with legal matters.

    The campaign and the Democratic National Committee officials will likely take the lead in responding to political inquiries, while White House staffers will respond if the accusations touch on official government business.

    No matter what DOJ decides at the end of its six-year investigation, the decision could have significant implications for the president’s just-announced reelection bid, giving fodder to Republicans as they seek to paint the Biden family as corrupt.

    There is a sense among Biden allies that he’ll face some blowback either way. If Hunter Biden is charged with a crime, Trump and Republicans will try to link his behavior to his father’s conduct and fitness for office. And if charges are not brought, Republicans have telegraphed that they will claim that the Department of Justice was biased and that Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, rigged the decision.

    “The Biden administration is the most corrupt administration in American history. Hunter Biden is a criminal, and nothing happened to him, nothing happened,” said Trump at a recent rally. “Joe Biden is a criminal and nothing ever seems to happen to him because you know, say what you want, but the Democrats stick together.”

    Largely, aides said, the Biden campaign will continue to move forward and focus on other issues that they believe are more pertinent to voters. The White House believes that many Americans, especially those with addictions in their own family, are, and will be, sympathetic to the Bidens.

    “First of all, my son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him,” Biden said in an interview Friday with MSNBC. “It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”

    Aides to the president stress that the White House is not involved with the Department of Justice’s decision. The matter is being investigated by U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, a Trump appointee.

    The probe into Hunter Biden began in 2018 and initially centered on his finances related to overseas business ties and consulting work. Investigators later shifted their focus to whether he failed to report all of his income and whether he lied on a form for buying a gun by denying that he was a drug abuser. Hunter Biden has spoken openly about his crack addiction and other drug problems.

    The investigation into Hunter was discussed prior to launching the 2024 campaign. First lady Jill Biden made clear last year that it would not play a decisive role in whether or not the president would run for reelection. But the impact that the scrutiny of another campaign might have on Hunter Biden was weighed, according to three people not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

    Biden advisers acknowledge Republicans will revive the issue for the 2024 campaign, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions. But they also point out that Trump made many of these allegations during the 2020 campaign, even springing one of Hunter’s ex-business partners, a man named Tony Bobulinski, as a surprise guest at the last 2020 general election debate. It had little impact.

    But the claims about Hunter Biden have continued to flourish in conservative media, which has grown convinced that the 2020 attacks would have landed harder if the press corps and social media companies had not been initially skeptical of the provenance of his former laptop. POLITICO has not authenticated the hard drive files that underpinned a New York Post story about the laptop, but POLITICO confirmed the authenticity of some emails on the drive in a 2021 book.

    Republicans assert that the content of the laptop offers evidence of corrupt dealings, which has fueled investigations from the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Thursday deemed the allegations against the younger Biden as “very serious.”

    “I just hope that he is being treated like everybody else,” Hawley said. “There [are] various whistleblower allegations that there’s been interference, that people have tried to stymie the investigation. That better not have happened.”

    Biden advisers believe the focus on Hunter could backfire on Republicans and serve as another sign the GOP is out of step with normal Americans, much as polling suggests the party is on issues like abortion and guns.

    Moreover, they suggest GOP attacks could very well divert attention to Trump’s own legal peril. The former president has already been indicted in New York for falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment to a porn star and is the subject of several other probes. Moreover, Democrats have claimed that Trump’s own family benefited financially from their access to his political power and are quick to point out that Trump himself was impeached in 2019 for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Biden family’s business dealings there.

    A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

    The White House did bolster its team ahead of the 2022 midterms to prepare for a more hostile environment and a GOP House. It brought on communications specialist Ian Sams as a spokesperson and several lawyers to handle personal investigations into the president, including Dick Sauber, a longtime Washington defense attorney in investigations.

    And Hunter Biden has taken a more aggressive tack in recent months, bringing on longtime D.C. lawyer Abbe Lowell and pushing back more forcefully against Republican attacks on his personal history and how his personal effects ended up in the hands of GOP operatives like Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani. But some Democrats are anxious about talk that Hunter Biden may create a legal defense fund, which would raise scrutiny about the president’s son raising money to pay for his legal woes.

    “The president loves his son and is proud that he has overcome his addiction and is moving forward with his life,” said Sams. “Republican officials’ politically motivated, partisan attacks on the president and his family are rooted in nonsensical conspiracy theories and do nothing to address the real issues Americans care about.”

    Hunter Biden has written extensively about the challenges in his life, including his addictions and struggle to cope with the 1972 car accident that killed his mother and sister and critically injured him and his brother, Beau. He also lived much of his life in the shadow of Beau Biden, the former Delaware attorney general who died of brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 46.

    The president, some of his friends say, checks on his son nearly every day. Hunter kept a low profile during the 2020 presidential campaign but has recently taken on a more public role. He appeared with his father at events including the state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron in December. And he was a nearly constant presence at the president’s side at nearly every stop during last month’s trip to Ireland, their ancestral homeland.

    But there have been recent sightings that serve as a reminder of the unfortunate headlines that he can sometimes create.

    Hunter Biden appeared in an Arkansas courtroom this week as part of a bitter dispute with the mother of his 4-year-old child over reducing his child support payments. The mother of the child, Lunden Roberts, has accused the younger Biden of ignoring court orders to provide information about his finances and has asked a judge to declare him in contempt and have him jailed until he complies.

    The president and first lady have yet to publicly acknowledge the existence of the child, who is their seventh grandchild. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week declined to discuss the subject during her briefing.

    The Biden campaign declined to comment. Democratic lawmakers, many close to Biden personally, often decline to weigh in on the ongoing probe.

    “There’s an investigation. It’s up to the prosecutors to decide what action to take,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). “Whatever is appropriate, that’s the action that should be taken independent of what the political consequences are. It’s not our business and Congress to interfere with the prosecution.”

    Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.

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    #Bracing #impact #Biden #world #preps #Hunter #Biden #fallout
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Alia Bhatt preps for her Met Gala debut with this special companion

    Alia Bhatt preps for her Met Gala debut with this special companion

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    New York: Alia Bhatt who is all set to make her Met Gala debut this year on Saturday shared a glimpse of preparation and revealed her companion for the fashion’s biggest night out.

    Taking to Instagram story, Alia shared a couple of pictures with her cat.

    In the first picture, she can be seen facing her back towards the camera while dressed in a black strapless gown and holding her cat.

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    She wrote, “Prepping for the Met…”

    And in the next actor can be seen showering love and kisses on Edward and captioning it, “with my own Coup-Ed.”

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    On Sunday, Alia also shared a photo from her room in New York and captioned it “New York- You were missed.”

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    Before Alia, a few Indian celebrities have walked the red carpet at Met Gala. It was 2017 when the global icon Priyanka Chopra walked the red carpet in a thigh-high slit gown with a popped collar, which came with a never-ending trail that became a highlight of her look. Her last appearance at the Met Gala was in 2019.

    Deepika Padukone attended the Met Gala event several times. Her last appearance was in 2019.

    And fans are excited to see Alia’s Met Gala look. If reports are to be believed, she is expected to walk the red carpet in designer Prabal Gurung outfit.

    The 2023 Met Gala will take place on May 1st in New York City. It celebrates the opening of the Costume Institute exhibition, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.”

    This appearance of Alia will precede her Hollywood debut in ‘Heart of Stone’.

    Helmed by Tom Harper, ‘Heart of Stone’ is intended to be the first instalment in a series akin to Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission Impossible’.

    The movie stars Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighofer, Jing Lusi, and Paul Ready in addition to Gal, Jamie, and Alia.

    In Bollywood, she will be seen sharing screen space with Ranveer Singh, Dharmendra, Shabana Azmi and Jaya Bachchan in ‘Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani’, which will be out in theatres on July 28.



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    #Alia #Bhatt #preps #Met #Gala #debut #special #companion

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • GOP drops $1M on Manchin as Justice preps run

    GOP drops $1M on Manchin as Justice preps run

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    Manchin is bristling on a near-daily basis at Biden’s implementation of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and keeps declining to support the president’s reelection. But Republicans are making clear that last year’s multibillion-dollar bill will be the centerpiece of their campaign to defeat him.

    Splicing in clips of Manchin close to Biden during the law’s signing ceremony, the new ad push claims that “100,000 West Virginia jobs are at risk thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin falling in line with D.C. liberals to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.” And One Nation is signaling more is to come.

    “The so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ will hurt Americans’ quality of life in a lot of ways, and One Nation will continue to advocate against bad policies,” said the group’s president and CEO Steven Law.

    Manchin has not yet announced his own reelection plans, saying he won’t decide on his future until the end of the year. In the meantime, he’s fighting openly with the Biden administration over its implementation of the law he helped write, dinging a missed deadline on stricter sourcing requirements for electric vehicles. On Tuesday he called new EPA emission standards “dangerous.”

    He’s also acknowledged Republicans were likely to come after him for supporting the party-line bill. Manchin cut a slimmed-down deal with Schumer last summer after rejecting a more sweeping plan known as “Build Back Better” in 2021.

    “I’m fighting the administration for trying to implement a piece of legislation we didn’t pass,” Manchin said in an interview, alleging that Biden’s team is stretching the intent of the smaller bill that passed to a more progressive extent. “The intent of the bill was for energy security. And we were not energy secure … Just implement the bill that was passed, not the bill you think you wanted.”

    Manchin has faced tough races before and should never be underestimated, even in a state Biden lost by nearly 40 points. While 2024 could be even more challenging, particularly if Justice gets in, Manchin does have a couple cards up his sleeve: He has nearly $10 million in his campaign account and the support of national Democrats if he runs.

    “West Virginians know Joe Manchin’s work has decreased the deficit and made prescription drugs more affordable. One Nation should save their cash for a bloody primary that will pit Club for Growth’s carpetbagger against Mitch McConnell’s ethically challenged pick,” said Sarah Guggenheimer, a spokesperson for Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

    Polls show Manchin with an early lead against Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) in a hypothetical matchup, but with work to do against Justice. And Justice is close enough to jumping in that he’s looking at several dates for his launch, including April 27, as well as several other days.

    “I do think the governor made a decision,” the Republican strategist close to Justice said, speaking candidly on the condition of anonymity. “It’s only a matter of time.”

    However, Republicans in the state and in D.C. cautioned that Justice is a seat-of-his-pants politician, and a campaign kickoff isn’t final until the moment the governor decides. Not to mention that plenty can change in the GOP primary over the next year; the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, lost to Manchin in 2018 but decided to run for governor next year after flirting with another Senate bid.

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    #GOP #drops #Manchin #Justice #preps #run
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Biden’s poll numbers look grim as he preps for reelection bid

    Biden’s poll numbers look grim as he preps for reelection bid

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    According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s average approval rating stands at 43 percent, about 9 points lower than his 52 percent disapproval rating. That’s only 1 point higher than Trump’s FiveThirtyEight approval rating on April 15, 2019, at the same point in his one-term presidency.

    Determining the extent to which Biden’s poor job rating endangers his likely reelection bid is not just an academic exercise. A deep dive into the numbers reveals Biden isn’t just struggling with independents and near-unanimous disapproval among Republicans. He’s also soft among Democrats and left-leaning demographic groups, a weakness that suggests a diminished enthusiasm for his candidacy — though something that could be papered over by partisan voting patterns in the general election.

    That’s because the possible “alternative” to Biden next November could be Trump, whose personal favorability ratings are generally worse than Biden’s. Even as Trump has expanded his lead in the GOP presidential primary, he remains less popular than his Oval Office successor.

    For Biden, the polling presents both serious warning signs and reasons to think his peril may be overstated. Here’s why:

    Biden’s tenuous place in history

    Biden’s 43-percent approval rating at this juncture of his term puts him roughly even with past presidents who have both won — Barack Obama (43 percent), Ronald Reagan (41 percent) — and lost, like Trump (42 percent) and Jimmy Carter (40 percent).

    But to underscore how things can change between mid-April of the year before the election and the next November, both George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, sported high approval ratings at this point. George H.W. Bush was just a couple of months removed from the successful Operation Desert Storm and had an approval rating of 77 percent in mid-April, according to Gallup, which maintains the deepest archives of presidential job ratings.

    The elder Bush would go on to win only 37 percent of the vote in a three-way race with Bill Clinton (43 percent) and independent Ross Perot (19 percent), owing to economic woes that overshadowed the credit he’d gotten from the first Iraq war.

    George W. Bush had a 75 percent approval rating in a Gallup poll in mid-April 2003 — about a month into the second Iraq War. He won reelection, though by just 2 percentage points over Democrat John Kerry.

    For Biden, not only is 18 months a long time, but he faces challenges both foreign and domestic, including slowing-but-persistent inflation and a possible economic recession.

    Trouble with swing voters

    Biden ousted Trump from the White House thanks to a coalition that combined the entire Democratic base with key swing groups who don’t identify with either party. But now both blocs show significant cracks in their approval of Biden.

    Among independents, a group Biden won by double digits in 2020, the president is now underwater by a roughly 2-to-1margin, according to two polls released in late March from Fox News and Quinnipiac University.

    In the Fox News poll, only 35 percent of voters approved of the job Biden is doing, while 65 percent disapproved. In the Quinnipiac poll, Biden’s numbers with independents are even worse: just 26 percent approve, and 67 percent disapprove.

    Biden is 17 points underwater among suburban voters in the Fox News poll and 23 points in arrears in a Pew Research Center survey from late March and early April. Swingy suburban voters are a group Biden won narrowly over Trump in both the network exit poll (Biden +2 among suburban voters) and AP Votecast (Biden +10), a voter survey commissioned by The Associated Press and Fox News.

    Biden won self-described moderates by 20 to 30 points in 2020, but the same group is evenly split on his job approval, according to the Fox News poll: 47 percent approve and 51 percent disapprove.

    Softness among Democrats and core constituencies

    Perceptions of Biden’s job performance are uniquely tepid among base voters — Democrats and other left-leaning demographic groups — in ways that his most recent predecessors, Trump and Barack Obama, never experienced. Even as they inspired enmity among members of the opposite party, both Trump and Obama won the same level of approval from their own party.

    But that’s not happening with Biden. Virtually all Republicans say they disapprove of his job performance — 90 percent or greater in each of the three polls referenced above — but Democrats aren’t answering with their own approval.

    In the Fox News and Quinnipiac polls, approval of Biden’s job performance among Democrats is around 80 percent. The Pew Research Center survey combines Democrats with independents who say they lean more toward the Democratic Party — still a must-win group for Biden — and finds his approval rating lower, at 67 percent.

    Moreover, Biden is struggling with key subgroups of the Democratic base. He won around 9-in-10 Black voters in 2020, but only 59 percent of Black respondents to the Pew Research Center poll said they approve of how Biden is handling his job as president.

    So far, Biden isn’t facing a credible threat for the presidential nomination within the Democratic Party. Should he enter the race, the only announced challengers with any degree of name ID he’d face are Marianne Williamson, who dropped out of the 2020 race before voting began, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the senator whose most prominent public advocacy in recent years has been against vaccinations (according to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation polling, only 8 percent of Democrats say they won’t receive the Covid vaccine, underscoring how difficult it will be to sell primary voters on an anti-vaccination platform).

    Still, Biden faces a distinct — and without recent precedent — lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy among Democrats. In a CNN poll from last month, only 68 percent of Democrats said Biden deserves to be reelected next year.

    In this way, Biden’s approval rating might actually overstate his electoral position: Around 1-in-10 Americans who say they approve of Biden’s job performance, 11 percent, say they don’t think he deserves to be reelected. In other words, they think he’s doing a good job, but harbor doubts about another term.

    CNN noted that the 11 percent is a greater share than the overlap between Trump and Obama approvers and those who thought they deserved second terms. Those numbers were 3 and 5 percent for Trump and Obama, respectively.

    But there’s also reason to believe Democrats will come home next November. Even as his approval rating and reelection numbers lag, Biden is still running neck-and-neck with Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in general-election matchups — and winning most Democrats in the process.

    In the Quinnipiac poll, despite his 80 percent approval rating with Democratic voters, Biden wins 93 percent of Democrats in a head-to-head with Trump and 94 percent in a faceoff with DeSantis.

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    #Bidens #poll #numbers #grim #preps #reelection #bid
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ‘O.J. Simpson on steroids’: Team Trump preps for a post-indictment frenzy

    ‘O.J. Simpson on steroids’: Team Trump preps for a post-indictment frenzy

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    Trump was in Florida at his Mar-a-lago resort when the news of the indictment came down. Both he and his advisers were blindsided by it, people close to the former president say.

    But while the news was sudden, their preparations for it weren’t. Over the past two weeks, Trump and his campaign have been keeping tabs on which Republicans were dismissing the case and boosting the ex-president. After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared to mock Trump during a press conference last week for finding himself in a scandal with a porn actress, Trump lashed out, insinuating DeSantis would soon experience false accusations of his own. Unsatisfied with that Truth Social post, Trump deleted it and replaced it with another that went even further, not only suggesting without evidence DeSantis could be faced with allegations from not only a woman but a man, too, and that it could also come from someone “underage.”

    The message was deliberate and unambiguous: Defend me or else. When the time came on Thursday, Trump’s fellow Republicans did just that. DeSantis, seen as the leading 2024 primary opponent to Trump, called the indictment “un-American,” and said he would not assist with any extradition request (Trump’s lawyers have said he will turn himself in). RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel called the news “a blatant abuse of power from a DA focused on political vengeance instead of keeping people safe.” And in a pre-recorded video message, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called the indictment “wrong” and said the country was “skating on thin ice.”

    While many Republicans believe the indictment could boost Trump’s prospects by further solidifying his already-loyal base of supporters, they are also sanguine about the long-term damage it might cause. The case being brought against Trump is historic (no ex-president has ever been indicted). And future charges stemming from his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and his possession of classified documents loom and could harm him even more in a general election, should he end up the nominee.

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    #O.J #Simpson #steroids #Team #Trump #preps #postindictment #frenzy
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP quietly preps take two of its border push

    House GOP quietly preps take two of its border push

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    Republicans have pitched ideas like reviving the border wall and cracking down on asylum seekers, policies that stand no chance in the Senate but would let them claim a messaging victory — if they can manage to push them through the House.

    Underscoring how quickly one of Republicans’ biggest election talking points turned into a sore spot for old tensions, even those at the center of the intra-party debate aren’t willing to publicly bet against another derailment … at least, not yet.

    “I can’t read minds. I can’t tell fortunes,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), who chairs Judiciary’s immigration subpanel, said in a brief interview about the chances House Republicans pass a bill if they can get it out of committee and to the floor.

    The GOP’s struggle to unite on border and immigration bills isn’t new — it’s approaching a congressional cliché at this point, as both parties continuously struggle to come to any sort of agreement on comprehensive changes. But the lack of agreement sparked a bitter feud between two Texas members particularly and prompted questions from reporters over Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s leadership.

    And it could easily cut against a perennial GOP talking point that Democrats are weak on border security, which the party is sure to reuse in 2024.

    Publicly, Republicans have tried to put that message at the heart of their still-nascent majority. They’ve taken a series of trips to the U.S.-Mexico border to highlight its manifold security challenges, lambasting the Biden administration as their Democratic colleagues boycott some of their field hearings.

    The strategy has scored some wins. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz generated headlines Wednesday when asked by Green if DHS had operational control over the entire southern border, he responded: “No.”

    Green followed up with a brief clip of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas telling House lawmakers that DHS did have operational control. Ortiz declined to say if he believed the secretary was lying — a charge conservatives have made as they’ve called for Mayorkas’ impeachment.

    A DHS official, after Wednesday’s hearing, pointed to Mayorkas’ comments during a separate Senate hearing last year. He said then that based on the statutory definition of “operational control,” which Green showed during his hearing, “this country has never had operational control.” (Democrats, and even some Republicans, have defended Mayorkas arguing that the impeachment calls chalk up to policy disagreements.)

    But as Republicans publicly keep their rhetorical fire aimed at the Biden administration, they still want to pursue legislative overhauls. A leadership aide, granted anonymity to describe the private discussions, told POLITICO that there are “ongoing talks with members … and leadership about what a border package would look like.”

    And they appear to have learned a lesson from their first misstep when their attempts to quickly vote on a border bill in the first weeks of the term imploded. Instead of trying to go straight to the floor, Republicans are expected to first take their next slate of border-related bills through two committees — the Homeland Security and Judiciary panels.

    Neither committee has formally scheduled votes as the negotiations continue behind the scenes. But Green is expected to roll out a border bill within weeks, aiming to hold a panel vote in April. Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said that his goal is to start moving legislation through Judiciary by the end of March — though some aides are privately betting that it will slip into April given Congress’ typical pace.

    “We’ve got a number of bills we’re gonna look at,” Jordan said in a brief interview. “We’re just trying to be ready.”

    Jordan pointed to bills by GOP Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Tom Tiffany
    (Wis.) and Chip Roy (Texas) as options for a border security package that his committee is expected to soon consider. Roy’s bill, which critics even in his own party fear would bar asylum claims as currently known, fueled his party’s legislative heartburn earlier this year by sparking pushback from more centrist conference colleagues. That included Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who is now openly feuding with Roy over border and immigration policies.

    Roy rejected his critics’ asylum interpretation but signaled he’s willing to give leadership space, at least for now. He’s not currently asking them to move a border package to the floor, instead saying “the plan” was to take it through the Judiciary Committee. (The Homeland Security panel, where it was also sent, isn’t expected to vote on it.)

    But even if the bill clears Jordan’s panel, it’s no guarantee it can withstand scrutiny of the wider conference. Even Republican members admit the committee is more conservatively slanted than the whole of the GOP House, and leadership can only afford to lose a few members in a floor vote if all Democrats oppose any legislation.

    If committees are able to advance legislation, leadership will have to decide whether to move the bills to the floor separately or as one package. Some members have floated merging whatever comes out of the Judiciary and the Homeland Security panels into one bill, a risky move that could test Washington’s favorite deal-solving tactic of trying to give everyone buy-in by making a package too big to fail.

    But the math, GOP aides privately acknowledge, could be tricky. More border security, at a 30,000-foot rhetorical level, generally unites Republicans — until you drill down into the details. Making hardline changes to asylum policies or Temporary Protected Status (TPS) could peel off votes that Republicans can’t afford to lose.

    Meanwhile, Roy drew his own red line, warning he won’t support just throwing money at DHS: “We’re going to change the policies or we’re not going to move anything through here.”

    Another GOP aide described the effort to unite the conference on border policy as trying to collect “frogs in a bucket.” In further evidence of the challenge, no decisions have been made about when bills would come to the floor, or if it would be one package or several separate votes, according to a leadership aide.

    Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well as the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, predicted both panels will vote on border legislation within weeks, saying that he didn’t believe there was “friction” within the conference — at least when it came to timing.

    But Bishop added that he would want leadership to put a bill on the floor, even if it might fail.

    “I’m indifferent as to whether it will pass or not,” Bishop said. “I think we need to put the right bills on the floor.”

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    #House #GOP #quietly #preps #border #push
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ISRO preps for re-entry experiment of decommissioned satellite on March 7

    ISRO preps for re-entry experiment of decommissioned satellite on March 7

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    Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is preparing for a challenging experiment of controlled re-entry of a decommissioned low earth orbit satellite, Megha-Tropiques-1 (MT1), into the earth’s atmosphere on March 7.

    MT1 was launched on October 12, 2011, as a joint satellite venture of ISRO and French space agency CNES for tropical weather and climate studies.

    Although the mission life of the satellite was originally three years, the satellite continued to provide valuable data services for more than a decade supporting regional and global climate models till 2021, the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency noted in a statement on Sunday.

    UN/IADC (Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee) space debris mitigation guidelines recommend deorbiting a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) object at its end-of-life (EOL), preferably through controlled re-entry to a safe impact zone, or by bringing it to an orbit where the orbital lifetime is less than 25 years, according to ISRO.

    It is also recommended to carry out “passivation” of onboard energy sources to minimise the risk of any post-mission accidental break-up.

    The orbital lifetime of MT1, weighing about 1,000 kilograms, would have been more than 100 years in its 20 degree inclined operational orbit of 867 km altitude. About 125 kg on-board fuel remained unutilised at its end-of-mission that could pose risks for accidental break-up.

    This leftover fuel was estimated to be sufficient to achieve a fully-controlled atmospheric re-entry to impact an uninhabited location in the Pacific Ocean.

    Controlled re-entries involve deorbiting to very low altitudes to ensure impact occurs within a targeted safe zone.
    Usually, large satellites/rocket bodies which are likely to survive aero-thermal fragmentation upon re-entry are made to undergo controlled re-entry to limit ground casualty risk. However, all such satellites are specifically designed to undergo controlled re-entry at EOL.

    MT1 was not designed for EOL operations through controlled re-entry which made the entire exercise extremely challenging.
    Furthermore, the on-board constraints of the aged satellite, where several systems had lost redundancy and showed degraded performance, and maintaining subsystems under harsher environmental conditions at much lower than originally designed orbital altitude added to the operational complexities.

    Innovative workarounds were implemented by the operations team based on the study, deliberations, and exchanges among the mission, operations, flight dynamics, aerodynamics, propulsion, controls, navigation, thermal, and other subsystem design teams across the ISRO centres, which worked in synergy to surmount these challenges.

    An uninhabited area in the Pacific Ocean between 5 degrees south to 14 degrees south latitude and 119 degrees west to 100 degrees west longitude was identified as the targeted re-entry zone for MT1.

    Since August 2022, 18 orbit manoeuvres were performed to progressively lower the orbit. In between the de-orbiting, aero-braking studies at different solar panel orientations were also carried out to gain better insights into the physical process of atmospheric drag affecting the orbital decay of the satellite.

    The final de-boost strategy has been designed after taking into consideration several constraints, including visibility of the re-entry trace over ground stations, ground impact within the targeted zone, and allowable operating conditions of subsystems, especially the maximum deliverable thrust and the maximum firing duration of the thrusters.

    The final two de-boost burns followed by the ground impact are expected to take place between 16.30 hours to 19.30 hours on March 7.

    Simulations show that no large fragments of the satellites are likely to survive the aerothermal heating during the re-entry.

    “As a responsible space agency committed to safe and sustainable operations in outer space, ISRO proactively takes efforts for better compliance with the UN/IADC space debris mitigation guidelines on post-mission disposal of LEO objects,” the statement said.

    The re-entry experiment of MT1 has been undertaken as a part of the ongoing efforts as this satellite with sufficient leftover fuel presented a unique opportunity to test the relevant methodologies and understand the associated operational nuances of post mission disposal by direct re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, it was stated.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )