The News Caravan

Tag: skepticism

  • DeSantis confronts Hill GOP skepticism he can beat Trump

    DeSantis confronts Hill GOP skepticism he can beat Trump

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    Another two of the nine lawmakers listed as co-hosts of the event harmonized with Lee: “I’m not endorsing anybody. I just think it’s always good to see who’s out there,” Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) said, adding that he participated because of his home state’s first-in-the-nation GOP primary slot. “I support any person who wants to throw their hat in the ring.”

    “I’m not co-hosting — I’m a special guest,” quipped Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) when asked Tuesday about his involvement. He has also not endorsed in the 2024 primary.

    The DeSantis-Hill GOP meeting marks the start of a charged battle for the attention of congressional Republicans between the party’s two presumed presidential frontrunners. The favor of GOP lawmakers won’t determine the nominee, but it remains critical to campaign-trail buzz and earned media: The open distaste Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) drew from most of his Senate colleagues, for example, hurt him in the 2016 primary fight with Trump.

    And institutional support still acts as a crucial validator, particularly for a nascent candidate like DeSantis, who has faced nagging questions about his viability after recent stumbles. Just three House Republicans — and no senators — have endorsed DeSantis, compared to dozens for Trump, although Tuesday’s event is the first signal that the Florida governor is looking to change that.

    “Trump’s a known quantity. He’s not. I think he would probably benefit from sitting down and talking to people,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) of DeSantis. “Trump’s in a good spot. I think DeSantis brings a lot to the table and it would be a serious challenge for President Trump.”

    Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said in an interview on Tuesday afternoon she would attend the event as well, making her the second senator to meet with DeSantis. Asked if her appearance equaled an endorsement, she replied: “Not yet.”

    “Tim Scott is forming an exploratory committee. And … Ron DeSantis and I were very good friends in the House,” Lummis said. “We’re still in the kind of stay-tuned phase.”

    Despite the desire for new blood at the top of the ticket, Hill Republicans still prioritize avoiding Trump’s anger. And the general hesitancy to back DeSantis, who still has not officially declared his intent to run, underscores a persistent reality in GOP politics that he will have to confront: Crossing the former president remains a risky endeavor. Trump and his team are paying close attention to which members have — or have not — backed his campaign, and have been strategically rolling out endorsements from inside the Capitol in recent weeks.

    There was at least one exception, though: First-term Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), who served as DeSantis’ secretary of state until she was elected last November, endorsed DeSantis just hours before the event was set to begin Tuesday.

    “His leadership and his vision made Florida a shining beacon of freedom,” Lee said in a statement, becoming the first in the Florida delegation to back him.

    Trump’s team, though, had an answer for that. His campaign had already rolled out his endorsement from Rep. John Rutherford of Florida hours earlier, the second from the state’s delegation within 24 hours. (Rep. Greg Steube endorsed Trump on Monday night).

    Across the Capitol, Trump has nearly doubled his Senate endorsements over the past month, with nine senators now endorsing him — roughly 20 percent of the conference. That support includes Graham, Tennessee Sens. Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, as well as Sens. Ted Budd of North Carolina, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Eric Schmitt of Missouri.

    And there may be more on the way.

    “I think Trump will clean them up. I think the polls are pretty indicative of where most would be. Despite Trump’s challenges, he was the original,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate.

    And Trump started wooing members months ago. He recently held a 3.5-hour dinner with GOP lawmakers over the weekend while he was in Nashville for the RNC retreat, where he ate with Hagerty, Blackburn and Tennessee GOP Reps. Chuck Fleischmann, John Rose and Diana Harshbarger, according to Fleischmann.

    “I don’t know many people going to the DeSantis event,” Fleischmann said on Tuesday afternoon, a day after he formally endorsed the former president. “I think he and the other candidates who might seek to challenge President Trump for the nomination are going to realize very, very quickly that it’s Trump’s nomination.”

    Several House Republicans, when asked on Tuesday if they planned to attend the DeSantis meet-and-greet, cited vague scheduling conflicts.

    Another early Trump endorser, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), called the gathering “a meeting for supporters of the governor’s 2024 presidential aspirations” but declined to comment further beyond saying: “I wish the governor well.”

    It’s not yet clear exactly how many members will attend the DeSantis event: People familiar with the planning offered a variety of numbers when asked about attendance. Some GOP lawmakers on Tuesday said they hadn’t yet decided whether to go, given the busy week in D.C.

    The “special guests” listed on the invitation include Feenstra, LaHood, Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Bob Good (R-Va.) as well as Sens. Lee and Lummis — in addition to Reps. Lee, Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas), all of whom have formally endorsed the Florida governor.

    In a brief interview, Massie suggested that some members might fear their Trump-supporting voters would turn on them if they endorsed the former president’s potential opponent. He also appeared to suggest that some lawmakers might be looking for a quid-pro-quo as they try to get through their own elections.

    “I think when somebody comes out for DeSantis, it’s meaningful to DeSantis,” said Massie, who once fought for his own Trump endorsement back home. ‘When somebody comes out for Trump, it’s meaningful for the person who’s endorsing Trump, not necessarily Trump.”

    At least one Republican who doesn’t plan to attend, though, said he’s happy the Florida governor is here — and happy he’s apparently looking to enter the race.

    “I met him, great guy … But I’ve already got my candidate,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who has endorsed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. “We got a good stable to pick from … This will be competitive. We gotta win in 2024. We gotta change course.”

    Olivia Beavers contributed.

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    #DeSantis #confronts #Hill #GOP #skepticism #beat #Trump
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • McCarthy’s pitch to shrink food aid drawing skepticism from fellow Republicans

    McCarthy’s pitch to shrink food aid drawing skepticism from fellow Republicans

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    While praising the intent behind the House GOP efforts to expand work requirements for SNAP, which used to be known as food stamps, top Republican senators have sought to temper expectations about the proposal’s prospects in the upper chamber.

    “I’m sure it won’t be easy,” said John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, noting his party will get a second bite at the apple later this year during the farm bill reauthorization process.

    A GOP Senate aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, was less diplomatic: “I mean, Godspeed. Get what you can. We’re going to live in reality over here.”

    Senate Republicans have been voicing similar skepticism since House Republicans began privately pitching new proposals to rein in SNAP last year, after they won back the chamber in November.

    Asked about the prospects for such measures in the next Congress, Sen. John Boozman (Ark.) the top Republican on the Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP, said in an interview a week after the 2022 midterms that the effort “would be difficult to pass in the Senate with 60 votes,” a nod to the threshold needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.

    And, given the GOP’s unexpectedly slim majority in the House, there’s no guarantee such controversial proposals could even get out of the lower chamber, Boozman pointed out. “You look at the margin in the House,” he said, “It might be difficult to pass it in the House.”

    McCarthy and his team are now confronting that reality as they try to hold together their own caucus vis-a-vis the debt ceiling negotiations with the White House. McCarthy, Graves and other top House Republicans have briefed most of the caucus on their plans in a series of calls that stretched into the weekend. So far, leaders have avoided key defections by staying away from too much detail — for example, they have yet to outline a specific plan to close the so-called “loopholes” in the existing SNAP work requirements, which Republicans complain primarily blue states are using to waive some work requirements. Taking a tough line would please the most conservative GOP members, but alienate Republicans from swing districts, and vice versa.

    Already, the talk of shrinking SNAP, which currently serves 41 million low-income Americans, is raising pressure on many Republicans that represent districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. Several of those members have raised internal concerns, especially about proposals from their colleagues that would add work requirements for some low-income parents who have children under 18 living at home, according to two other people involved in those conversations, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal caucus matters. A handful of GOP freshmen from New York, one of the states that consistently asks the federal government to waive some work requirements for SNAP recipients, are in an especially tricky spot. Constituents have begun pressing them to oppose efforts that would further restrict SNAP and other key assistance following the loss of key pandemic-era aid — which Biden administration officials argue helped keep the country from falling into a deeper hunger crisis in the wake of Covid-19.

    At a farm bill listening session in Rep. Marc Molinaro’s (R-N.Y.) upstate district last Friday, local farmers, food bank operators and anti-hunger advocates urged lawmakers to defend and even expand current SNAP programs.

    One state administrator called for “easing burdensome and complicated work and reporting requirements” to provide better access to the program, as the administration’s pandemic-era pause on certain SNAP work requirements is set to end in July. A food bank operator warned of a looming “hunger cliff” in the country as families continue to reel from the fallout of Covid-19. She urged members of Congress “not make decisions on the back of the most vulnerable people.”

    Eric Ooms, vice president of the New York branch of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s leading agricultural lobby, told the lawmakers who attended the listening session not to think of SNAP as a “city thing,” noting that the program is a key lifeline to low-income Americans in rural areas where food insecurity “is higher than it’s ever been.”

    Molinaro, who says his family relied on food stamps during his childhood, has indicated general support for some SNAP reforms, saying he understands the “inefficiencies” of the program through his experience as a former county executive charged with overseeing it. But he has declined to say if he would support the proposals to expand work requirements that his colleagues have been pushing for months.

    In his closing remarks on Friday, Molinaro sounded a note of support for SNAP but indicated only the most needy should get aid — an argument Republicans have used in their campaign to reduce the size of the program.

    “Yes, those that struggle the hardest need to know that they have the support, not only of SNAP, but of other wrap-around services,” he said.

    Derrick Van Orden, a Trump-aligned Republican who represents a swing district in Wisconsin, spoke during the listening session of his family’s struggle with poverty and reliance on food stamps when he was a child. While he acknowledges some flaws in the current system, he said, “I’m a member of Congress because of these programs.”

    “There’s a lot of people who have not gone to bed hungry at night, and I have. And there’s no place for that in America,” Van Orden said.

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    #McCarthys #pitch #shrink #food #aid #drawing #skepticism #fellow #Republicans
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Bragg’s case against Trump hits a wall of skepticism — even from Trump’s critics

    Bragg’s case against Trump hits a wall of skepticism — even from Trump’s critics

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    “I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office. Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted to convict Trump in impeachment trials that would have rendered him ineligible to run for president. “The prosecutor’s overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public’s faith in our justice system.”

    “You’ve got to work hard to make President Trump a martyr,” added Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), another GOP lawmaker who has been critical of Trump. “Congratulations to Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, who has managed to do just that.”

    Some wondered why Bragg revived a case he had appeared to leave for dead just months ago. Others questioned the specifics — like how Bragg was able to elevate the “falsification of business records” charges against Trump into felonies, a move that requires evidence that Trump attempted to conceal a second crime. Still others focused on the delay in bringing charges — six years after the core underlying conduct — and anticipated that Trump will seek to toss the case for exceeding the statute of limitations, despite the assessment of some legal experts that the case is not time-barred.

    Bragg left those questions largely unanswered in Tuesday’s filings and public comments. When asked why he changed course and charged Trump after having reportedly expressed reservations about aspects of the investigation, Bragg declined in a press conference to offer specifics, saying only that his prosecutors had “more evidence made available to the office and the opportunity to meet with additional witnesses.”

    Legal experts who had awaited Bragg’s charging documents to resolve some of the lingering mysteries about the case remained confounded by some aspects of the prosecution.

    “It is said that if you go after the king, you should not miss,” wrote Richard Hasen, a campaign finance law expert at UCLA. “In this vein, it is very easy to see this case tossed for legal insufficiency or tied up in the courts well past the 2024 election before it might ever go to trial. It will be a circus that will embolden Trump, especially if he walks.”

    Even Ian Millhiser, the liberal legal commentator for Vox, called the legal theory on which Bragg’s case is built “dubious.”

    The dynamic underscored the extraordinary risk Bragg took in deciding to mount the first-ever criminal prosecution of a former president — particularly one who is not shy about stoking outrage at the justice system. Trump did just that in a speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, attacking not only Bragg but also the judge who will preside over the case, Juan Merchan, and the judge’s wife.

    Two former White House officials defended the case Bragg laid out, calling it legally sound and “an important case for democracy” even as they acknowledged the mixed reviews from legal experts.

    “There are a number of important critiques of the case in the furor and they are worthy of consideration,” former Obama White House ethics adviser Norm Eisen and former Nixon-era White House legal counsel John Dean wrote in a CNN op-ed Wednesday morning. “But ultimately, they are all wrong.”

    Bragg, a Democrat who colleagues say isn’t particularly politically savvy, found himself without a large number of prominent Democratic allies Tuesday. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Rep. Jamaal Bowman have been vocal supporters, with both elected officials attending a rally in support of the indictment Tuesday. Bowman has also taken to cable TV to advocate for Bragg, saying he has done “an exceptional job.”

    And at times Bragg has marshaled the support of surrogates, though mainly regarding non-legal aspects of the case. After Trump called the district attorney an “animal” last month, Bragg allies such as Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Adriano Espaillat came to his defense to ask people to “stand with us now to stare down this unprecedented attack on the foundation of our democracy,” with Espaillat later holding a rally for him.

    But Bragg hasn’t had a backer with a megaphone the size of Trump’s, and the district attorney is relatively limited in the public remarks he can make about an ongoing case — an uneven playing field that Trump has used to his advantage.

    Others in Bragg’s position have said leaving the politics to election season is the best course of action for an elected district attorney. John Flynn, the district attorney of Erie County, New York, and the president of the National District Attorneys Association, said in a radio interview last month that “you have to separate it.”

    “Once the election is over and you take over and start the job you have to remove yourself from politics. Once you do that, you can ward off the criticism,” he told Buffalo station WBEN.

    Trump sought to highlight the fissures between his political adversaries and Bragg during his remarks at Mar-a-Lago late Tuesday, but he also appeared to damage his own cause with a fusillade aimed at Merchan — just hours after the judge warned Trump’s lawyers that their client should not made any statements that “incite violate or create civil unrest.”

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    #Braggs #case #Trump #hits #wall #skepticism #Trumps #critics
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Newsom’s proposal to cap oil profits in California meets skepticism in first public hearing

    Newsom’s proposal to cap oil profits in California meets skepticism in first public hearing

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    “In our pursuit to address gasoline prices, we must ensure our actions that we take first [do] no harm to consumers,” Bradford said.

    It was the first public sign of trouble for a key Newsom initiative as he pursues a higher national profile and a possible future run for the presidency. He announced the proposal to cap industry profits and called a special session of the Legislature last summer as gas prices spiked and national anxiety about inflation overall was at a peak.

    But the idea of penalizing the industry is facing close scrutiny in a Legislature dominated by Democrats and Newsom allies.

    “There is clearly a belief out there among many people that oil companies were profiting off the backs of Californians,” said Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine). “At the same time, we don’t really have a smoking gun as far as I can see, that shows intentional collusion.”

    Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) put it most forcefully: “What I try to look for are what the hell are the unintended consequences, the possible unintended consequences that could hurt those people to a greater extent?”

    Several experts testifying before the Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee said the proposal may focus on the wrong part of the supply chain by targeting refineries because downstream market players, including gas stations, may play a larger role in prices.

    “Policies intended to affect refineries are not going to get at most of the reasons Californians are paying a higher price for gasoline,” said Severin Borenstein, a Newsom appointee on the state’s power grid operator and a UC Berkeley professor.

    Borenstein has characterized part of the gap between California gas prices and the national average as a “mystery gasoline surcharge.”

    The surcharge, according to the Energy Commission, is the extra profits oil companies earn in California above and beyond a margin that can be attributed to the state’s higher taxes and more stringent fuel standards. That margin increased after a 2015 refinery outage and grew during recent spikes.

    One thing Borenstein, other experts and even Republicans on the committee agreed on: California regulators need more information on how the complex markets work, including contracts between refiners and retailers, sales prices and other details, to understand how prices in California have soared so much higher than in other states.

    “There’s something going on downstream that I think this committee should get some answers to,” said Sen. Brian Dahle (R-Bieber).

    In the electricity and natural gas markets, many of those details are already available, experts noted.

    Newsom’s proposal, introduced by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), would enable the state Energy Commission to obtain some of the additional information the experts said is needed.

    It would also place a to-be-determined cap on oil refiners’ profits, setting a penalty through which the state would collect some of the above-limits earnings and distribute the money to residents.

    The penalty is meant to act as a deterrent, said Nicolas Maduros, director of the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration.

    “This isn’t a tax, it’s not meant to raise revenue; it’s meant to change behavior,” Maduros said.

    Maduros said the proposal would be the first of its kind in the world, differing from windfall taxes in Europe and efforts of the past due to its structure as a penalty and its focus only on profits above a set cap, rather than all earnings.

    Industry representatives and some analysts have made much of the unintended consequences lawmakers asked about, saying a profit margin cap could reduce supply in the state by encouraging companies to transport more oil to markets in neighboring states and overseas rather than selling it in California, particularly as the state weans itself off oil under long-term state mandates.

    “We are concerned the fuel refineries will shutter before the transition is complete, leaving the market dependent,” said David Hackett, chair of the board of consultant Stillwater Associates.

    Skinner pushed back on that assertion, noting that many gas-powered vehicles will still be on the road in California even if the state meets a goal of expanding electric vehicle sales to 100 percent of new car sales by 2035.

    “I still can’t see where it wouldn’t be in refineries’ interest to stop selling gasoline or refining gasoline in California,” she said.

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    #Newsoms #proposal #cap #oil #profits #California #meets #skepticism #public #hearing
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )