The News Caravan

Tag: United States News

  • Why the Senate GOP’s McDaniel for RNC caucus is surprisingly small

    Why the Senate GOP’s McDaniel for RNC caucus is surprisingly small

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    Though Cramer isn’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced, his shrug-emoji reaction is widespread among many GOP lawmakers. That has more to do with large-scale political changes than her personally: The more that super PACs, party committees and candidate fundraising have decentralized the party, the less enmeshed Republican lawmakers are in the RNC structure.

    As Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) put it on Tuesday: “I don’t know what the RNC does. I really don’t.”

    Yet McDaniel’s chilly reception from some Republicans also stems from her mixed record, which includes an eyebrow-raising move to censure two former House Republicans who joined the Jan. 6 committee. With the GOP facing an identity crisis after Donald Trump left the White House, the RNC chair is poised to play a pivotal role in the party’s navigation of an open presidential primary next year. And senior Senate Republicans aren’t exactly clamoring for two more years of McDaniel.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Whip John Thune are both avoiding an endorsement of any candidate in the RNC race. A handful of notable Republican senators do support McDaniel, including Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and her cousin Mitt Romney (Utah), who said that “we don’t always agree on all policies, but I stand with family.”

    “She has been so helpful to Iowa, in really fleshing out the first-in-the-nation caucus … she does a great job,” said No. 4 Senate Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa. “She can promote Republican candidates as much as possible and try to hold our party together. But at the end of the day, you have to have candidates that will make their case.”

    National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) also signed a letter backing McDaniel. Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for McDaniel’s RNC campaign, said that “Just like the RNC, Chairwoman McDaniel’s decision to run for re-election was member-driven.”

    “Support for the chairwoman among members and leaders from across the ecosystem has grown since her announcement,” Vaughn said.

    But most Republican senators want nothing to do with the RNC race. Several said they didn’t even know when the vote is (it’s Friday).

    “I have a lot of things on my plate. That’s not one of them. I wish them all well,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

    One thing that unites both McDaniel backers and those who care little about the race is that they don’t see the RNC as primarily accountable for the GOP’s recent election performances. That’s in part because of Trump’s outsized sway since McDaniel took over the national party.

    What’s more, the days of Howard Dean’s 50-state DNC strategy or Haley Barbour’s storied reign atop the RNC appear to be in the past. These days, there are major limitations to the level of control either the RNC or the DNC have over the two major political parties.

    “If we’re going to blame losing on a national committee chairman, we’ve got problems. They don’t control that much,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)

    One reason congressional Republicans aren’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced is that they are uncertain about her challengers. There is no GOP equivalent to Pete Buttigieg, who achieved a level of national-politics wunderkind status by running for DNC chair in 2017.

    Mike Lindell, one of McDaniel’s challengers who is colloquially called the “My Pillow Guy” in some GOP quarters, is a known commodity to several Senate Republicans, including Tuberville. But Republicans said they were not sure how serious Lindell is about running.

    Harmeet Dhillon, the other challenger to McDaniel, faces a steep path to victory among the RNC’s 168 voting members. On top of that, Senate Republicans said in interviews that they were not particularly familiar with Dhillon or her style of politics.

    By contrast, several Republican senators observed that turnout — a key RNC mandate — was high in 2022. And that’s why McDaniel’s boosters are behind her for two more years.

    “[McDaniel] knows the system. Our problems in 2022 were multiple. I don’t blame her over anything. Personally, I think continuity is good. We are in a good spot to take back the Senate in 2024, and in the presidential primaries she’s a competent, fair-minded person,” Graham said. “I have confidence in her.”

    Even so, Graham is part of an apparent minority of Hill Republicans prepared to publicly stick their necks out for the RNC chair. It is particularly telling that McConnell declined to endorse her; he blanched at the national GOP’s censures of Trump-antagonist former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) last year and was far more bearish than most Republicans on his party’s midterm election prospects.

    McConnell’s top deputy, and one of his potential successors, is joining him in the neutral zone.

    “I’m not going to wade into that. They’ll figure it out,” Thune said. “I’m guessing whatever I say, if I support someone, it’d probably hurt them.”

    Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

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    #Senate #GOPs #McDaniel #RNC #caucus #surprisingly #small
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • The improbability of George Santos’ $199 expenses

    The improbability of George Santos’ $199 expenses

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    Santos reported 40 of them.

    In fact, his campaign accounted for roughly half of all expenses by all campaigns that cost exactly $199.99 — a statistical improbability.

    The rarity of campaign expenses falling so close to the legal limit for retaining receipts has raised concerns that the Santos campaign’s disbursements were “deliberately falsified,” a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center alleges. Major questions about Santos’ campaign financing remain unanswered, including the source of $700,000 that the New York congressman ostensibly loaned to his campaign despite questions about his personal finances.

    “This was a multi-thousand dollar operation,” said Adav Noti, a former FEC attorney and senior vice president at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, which filed a complaint against Santos. “We don’t know where the money came from, we don’t know where the money went to.”

    Santos’ lawyer, Joe Murray, declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations. The congressman has previously admitted to exaggerating components of his biography but denied breaking any laws. Both local and federal prosecutors are investigating whether he may have broken the law, but has not been charged with a crime and has bucked calls to resign from fellow GOP members of the state’s congressional delegation.

    Most of the Santos campaign’s $199.99 transactions — including the eight Italian restaurant charges — date back to 2021, according to FEC reports. But like the fabricated aspects of the now-congressman’s biography, they went largely unnoticed until after the election.

    Under FEC regulations, campaigns are required to report all disbursements and maintain receipts or invoices for those valued at $200 or more. The sheer number of expenses reported as being just under the threshold for retaining receipts was among the subjects of the CLC’s complaint against the Santos campaign. The complaint also cited the $700,000 that Santos reported as a personal loan to his campaign despite questions about his finances.

    Of the more than 4,300 House and Senate campaigns that filed any FEC reports during the 2022 election cycle, fewer than 9 percent reported one or more expenditures costing between $199 and $199.99.

    Not all campaign expenditures in that narrow range raise questions. A relatively common expense this election cycle: subscriptions to the web-conferencing platform Zoom, which has a business plan priced at $199.90 per month.

    But only 25 campaign committees reported any single expense costing exactly $199.99, POLITICO’s analysis found. No campaign other than Santos’ spent that specific amount more than four times. And Santos’ campaign spent that exact figure 37 times, according to his campaign finance reports, totalling just shy of $7,400. In addition to the Italian restaurant and Miami hotel, he reported spending exactly $199.99 on 10 distinct Uber rides, four Delta Airlines flights and two Amtrak trains, among other expenses.

    These reported expenses are still a relatively small share of the more than $2.6 million that Santos’s campaign spent last cycle. But CLC’s complaint alleges that they raise questions about the accuracy of his reported disbursements.

    The FEC, which is tasked with enforcing campaign finance laws, sent more than 20 letters to Santos’ campaign asking about mathematical errors and other inconsistencies throughout the 2022 election cycle. While such letters are fairly commonplace, that number is atypical, said Noti of the Campaign Legal Center.

    The agency is not equipped to flag transactions that are suspicious based on the amounts and vendors.

    Santos’ campaign has repeatedly amended its filings both before and after the election in response to FEC letters. That included filing several updated forms on Tuesday to denote previous large contributions that should have been reported in November, as well as amendments to several quarterly reports. The amendments did not touch on the $199.99 disbursements.

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    #improbability #George #Santos #expenses
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Inflation surprise: Wage gains eclipse price spikes

    Inflation surprise: Wage gains eclipse price spikes

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    Yet that progress could be in jeopardy: As Federal Reserve officials prepare to meet next week to raise interest rates again, their inflation-fighting crusade — which Fed Chair Jerome Powell has vowed to continue — has sparked fears of a recession, meaning that workers could be forced to give up those hard-fought gains.

    The economy added 4.5 million jobs in 2022, and data to be released on Thursday is expected to show that GDP increased by an annualized 2.8 percent in the last three months of the year, defying downturn worries for the time being. But that may change since the impact of the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes has not yet been fully felt in the economy.

    Bernstein acknowledged the difficulty ahead. “A key part of our message is we’ve got more work to do,” he said.

    Prices have been cooling for the past six months. The consumer price index rose 6.5 percent across all of last year, down from 9.1 percent for the 12 months ending in June. Average hourly earnings grew more slowly — 4.6 percent — over that time period. But a steady drop in inflation in the second half of the year helped income surpass price increases, bringing real worker pay roughly to the same level it was prior to the pandemic.

    With unemployment still at modern lows, some in Washington and on Wall Street have held out hope that price spikes can cool further. Indeed, Wall Street investors expect the Fed to scale back the size of the rate hikes at its Feb. 1 meeting and beyond, partly because of the progress on inflation.

    Prices have come down in many areas, but it’s the cost of gas that has drawn the most attention. That’s partly because White House officials have driven home the price declines for months by touting them on Twitter and in speeches — though the price is driven by global factors that are mostly outside of Biden’s control.

    “When we did start to see gas prices go down, it did correspond to a period of increasing support for Biden,” Democratic pollster Carly Cooperman said, pointing to the party’s better-than-expected results in the midterm elections.

    Still, she said, inflation has to recede a lot more for Biden to reap the full political benefit. “As long as voters find that their cost of living is expensive, it’s going to be hard to convince [them] there’s real improvement,” she said.

    Workers will bear the brunt of any miscalculation by the Fed — whether it’s the central bank failing to sufficiently tame prices or hitting the brakes on the economy too hard. There’s also a danger that stronger wages themselves will stoke broader inflation, leading to even higher interest rates and perhaps a deeper economic slump in the coming years.

    Income gains have been fed by a labor market with a shortage of workers, giving people more leverage to seek higher pay, particularly when switching jobs. Powell is closely watching inflation in core services industries where paychecks are often businesses’ largest expense.

    “Inflation is coming down faster than we may have expected based on wage growth alone, but that’s unsurprising, given that inflation was driven up by factors that weren’t driven by wage growth,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist on Glassdoor’s economic research team.

    New research that has garnered attention within the administration as well as among top commentators in the field suggests there’s still a way this could end well.

    In a draft paper, economists Guido Lorenzoni and Iván Werning found that, in the wake of an economic shock, inflation-adjusted wages might drop at first but then begin to rise as part of a normal recovery. That is, there’s room for workers to increase their take-home pay without it being worrisome to the Fed.

    “You get a shock that makes the price of, say, energy inputs or microchips or lumber more expensive,” said Lorenzoni, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Firms are faster to move, so they start raising prices. Workers catch up a little slower, so at the beginning, the [inflation-adjusted] wage goes down. But then workers keep catching up. At some point, firms are happy because the shock goes away. Then workers catch up.”

    “If that’s the story, it kind of fits the data because it looks like real wages originally fell, now they’re recovering,” he said. “The important thing is, that is not a signal that things are completely out of whack.”

    Fed officials aren’t yet convinced, worrying that the rapid increase in wages will keep inflation from going all the way back down to their 2 percent target, though wage growth has already showed signs of deceleration.

    “It seems likely that returning inflation to 2 percent will require wage growth to slow substantially,” Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said in a speech last week.

    For the time being, Biden is touting the income gains. Non-supervisory workers have slightly higher incomes than they had before the pandemic, and people with low-paying jobs have fared better than their higher-earning counterparts, as restaurants, hotels, and warehouses compete for a finite pool of employees.

    “It all adds up to a real break for consumers,” Biden said earlier this month.

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    #Inflation #surprise #Wage #gains #eclipse #price #spikes
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • States look to California’s blueprint for a post-Roe world

    States look to California’s blueprint for a post-Roe world

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    Now, Maine Democrats are pushing a bill to eliminate copays for abortion, a policy California enacted last year and that Bonta is defending in court from a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.

    And in Minnesota, where Democrats flipped control of the legislature in the 2022 midterms, lawmakers are pushing the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act that replicates several California policies aimed at protecting patients and providers from legal peril.

    “One of the places we looked to for inspiration was the blueprint that came out of California,” Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade said in an interview. “Minnesota has never had a reproductive freedom majority in both chambers, ever, in its history, until now. So it was a new muscle we had to develop.”

    California’s example, she added, was “super helpful.”

    Illinois just passed a law to protect doctors treating out-of-state patients, as California did last year. And Missouri and Washington lawmakers have introduced bills similar to California’s that would prevent state officials and law enforcement from obtaining personal medical data from period trackers and other health apps.

    Massachusetts’ law to make abortion pills available on public college and university campuses, inspired by California’s and passed in July, is set to take effect later this year. And New York may be right behind them.

    “Each state is, obviously, different, but we definitely are watching what [California] is doing,” said New York Democratic Assemblymember Amy Paulin, who chairs the health committee in Albany. “Like them, we have to provide access, to the best of our ability, for people in our states and allow people to come here and avail themselves of it as well.”

    New York lawmakers also voted Tuesday to put a constitutional amendment codifying abortion rights on the ballot in 2024 — something California did last year.

    Maryland lawmakers recently invited Bonta to testify as they debated their own measures to shield abortion providers and their patients from prosecution, and California officials met with Vice President Kamala Harris, formerly the state’s attorney general, to walk her through the new policies and offer advice for other states that want to follow suit.

    The Newsom administration created a website that lists all of the actions the state has taken related to abortion — administrative, executive and legislative — with the full bill language available should any legislator in another state want to copy it.

    “The type of fight we’re having here is occurring elsewhere in the country, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” said Julia Spiegel, the deputy legal secretary for Newsom.

    Becoming an ‘abortion sanctuary’

    California’s new abortion laws were crafted to serve two purposes: To shore up protections for people seeking and providing abortions and to expand access to the procedure.

    In the first category are laws that block California law enforcement and private companies from cooperating with other states that attempt to prosecute someone over an abortion performed in California and laws that also block out-of-state subpoenas and requests for information about the procedure. There is also a new law to shield people in the state from criminal and civil liability if they experience a miscarriage — a direct response to a prosecutor in Kings County who jailed two California women in recent years over alleged drug use during pregnancy that resulted in stillbirth.

    Other new state laws are aimed at preparing California’s clinics to care for the thousands of patients from around the country who are already traveling from anti-abortion states — and making sure that influx doesn’t impede California residents’ access.

    More than $200 million in state funding has been allocated to help people from other states pay for travel, lodging and other needs, reimburse doctors for providing abortions to people unable to afford them, and help clinics hire and train more providers.

    Most of that funding has yet to be dispersed. But as clinics in the state continue to be inundated with patients six months after the fall of Roe, Dipti Singh, the general counsel for Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, said other new state laws are already having an impact. Among them: a swifter and easier process for out-of-state providers to become licensed in California provide new legal protections for medical workers who perform the procedure.

    “We were afraid many providers would say they wouldn’t do abortions [on out-of-state patients] anymore because of the personal and professional risks. But we’re just not seeing that,” she said. “And patients are continuing to come all over because California is going above and beyond to ensure it’s a reproductive freedom state.”

    State officials, including Newsom, aren’t just bracing for traveling patients — they’re actively courting them.

    In addition to paying for billboards last year in South Dakota, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas promoting the state as an “abortion sanctuary,” the Newsom administration launched an online tool to help people around the country find a California provider, make an appointment and learn about the state’s new legal protections and financial supports.

    In the four months since the site launched, the governor’s office told POLITICO, there have been nearly 60,000 unique visitors and nearly 60 percent of them are from outside of California.

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    #States #Californias #blueprint #postRoe #world
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Opinion | Sloppy Joe

    Opinion | Sloppy Joe

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    Some say it’s to Biden’s credit that he’s cooperated with investigators, unlike Donald Trump, who has variously insisted that he declassified the documents improperly stored at his residence, that they belong to him and that the documents were planted by the FBI. (I keep waiting for him to say he can wallpaper Mar-a-Lago with the docs if he wants.) But why give Biden cover because he’s acknowledging he’s in the wrong and is helping the cops instead of fighting them? Biden’s purported violations represent extreme negligence. At least Trump is forthright about his mishandling of documents. He never thought the secrecy rules applied to him, which is why he routinely leaked sensitive intelligence while president. Nobody thinks that Biden, who knows better, intentionally made off with the documents. He just shrugged off the rules like a reckless driver.

    Wasn’t it supposed to be different? Wasn’t the Biden presidency supposed to mark the return of grown-ups and professionalism to the White House? Weren’t Biden’s hallmarks his pedigree and experience, his competency and diligence? Or, setting aside his deficiencies for a moment, wasn’t Biden supposed to have surrounded himself with an able team of advisers who have been with him for decades, some back to his days in Delaware politics, to guide and protect him? What were they doing to protect Biden when the Very Important Classified Documents bled out to his think-tank office, his garage and his house, and stored for years? Or, are they just as sloppy as Biden and carriers of over-inflated reputations?

    You could attribute Biden’s document bungles to his age. He’s now 80, after all. But that excuse doesn’t stanch his self-inflected wound. Sloppiness has been Biden’s signature move for as long as he’s practiced politics. Over the course of his political career, Biden has gaffed the way Mount Etna erupts — in steady, hot, gassy burps. In 1987 while running for president, he sloppily pinched major parts of a British politician’s speech and called it his own. Last March, in a seemingly off-the-cuff statement that appeared to challenge Russia to start World War III, Biden said that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” which sounded like a direct call for regime change. The White House immediately walked back his statement, as it frequently does, saying, “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” Oh, sure. As this recent New York Post piece charting Biden’s presidential gaffes, he’s grown hotter and gassier, indicating an inability to edit or discipline himself.

    To put it in the vernacular, he’s very sloppy.

    The White House clean-up crew that follows Biden 24/7 to undo his gaffes will probably rescue him from his Very Important Classified Documents catastrophe. When the Biden doc discoveries commenced, pundits speculated that they amounted to an unintended gift to Trump: Even though the two cases are not directly comparable, it would look bad to punish Trump for making off with documents but not Biden (who can’t be indicted anyway under Department of Justice rules). But as the classified documents pile up on Biden’s door — who knows where they’ll find them next, his Rehoboth beach pad? — Trump’s document troubles now look like a gift to Biden. What Biden did was wrong, his supporters will argue, but he didn’t deliberately take them, like Trump. What’s the big deal? He’s always been sloppy Joe, this logic goes, he will always be sloppy Joe. What did you expect?

    ******

    A post-presidential fast-food franchise: Sloppy Joe’s. Hunter can run it. Send menu suggestions to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed worked at McDonald’s in its youth. My Mastodon account wants an In-N-Out Burger franchise when they come east. My Post account likes a Spicy Chicken Deluxe from Chick-fil-A. My RSS feed never stops erupting.



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    #Opinion #Sloppy #Joe
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Opinion | The Wildly Misleading 2024 Speculation Is About to Begin

    Opinion | The Wildly Misleading 2024 Speculation Is About to Begin

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    All through the second half of 2003, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was the dominant figure in the Democratic presidential primary. His full-throated denunciation of the Iraq War won him the fervent support of progressives; his campaign’s use of the Internet put him millions of dollars ahead of his rivals. An army of canvassers, clad in orange hats, were swarming through the early states. By year’s end, he was dominating the polls and had won the endorsement of both contenders for the prior Democratic nomination, Al Gore and Bill Bradley. (It was at that point that a CNN anchor asked me on air, “Is the race over?” My “no” is one of the high-water marks of my TV career). Meanwhile Sen. John Kerry was struggling to survive; he was so far underwater in Iowa and New Hampshire that some journalists were engaged in a lottery to pick the day Kerry would drop out.

    Then the voters actually got to weigh in.

    Kerry won the Iowa caucuses, with Sen. John Edwards coming in second. Dean finished a very weak third. And while coverage focused on his caucus night “scream” — a badly misreported event — that happened after Iowa Democrats had soundly rejected him and after his numbers in New Hampshire had begun to crater.

    Four years later, it was former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — “America’s Mayor” — who was dominating the Republican presidential race. He was far ahead in national polls and in the early states as well. At one point early in the race, Giuliani explained to me with enthusiasm that the delegate selection rules in places like New York and New Jersey would ensure him the lion’s share of those delegates.

    Then the voters actually got to weigh in.

    It turned out that Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire were not enthralled by a candidate who was pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control legislation. By the time the contests began, Giuliani had abandoned the early states, eventually abandoning his campaign altogether. Those delegate selection rules he had confidently seen as his ticket to the nomination helped wrap up the contest for the once left-for-dead Sen. John McCain.

    And on the Democratic side? Hillary Clinton was so far ahead in the polls that the producer of the CBS Evening News ordered up a story from me on why she was so invulnerable. I was saved from embarrassment when a shrewd Republican strategist, Michael Murphy, warned against such judgment. This is a year for a change candidate, Murphy said, and she can’t be a change candidate.

    Then the voters actually got to weigh in.

    Murphy was right. By winning the Iowa caucuses, Barack Obama not only emerged as a giant-killer; he demonstrated that a Black candidate could win a more-or-less all white state. Almost overnight, Clinton’s strength among Black Democrats — she had been splitting support roughly evenly with Obama — disintegrated. What was seen as an easy win for Clinton in mid-2003 became a hard-fought contest that extended through the primary season and that she ultimately lost.

    Are these examples too far in the past to be relevant? Well, let’s go back, all the way back to … the last presidential campaign, to see how even the start of the nominating contest may provide more noise than signal about what voters want.

    From the middle of 2019 through the first primaries in early 2020, Joe Biden was something of a pitiable figure: lagging in polls, short of money, drawing meager crowds. It was Bernie Sanders, with his massive fund-raising capabilities, and his emerging strength as the progressives’ champion, who was the candidate to beat. After his (narrow) win in New Hampshire and (landslide) win in the Nevada caucuses, much of the coverage of the race asked the question: Could Sanders amass enough delegates by Super Tuesday to be all but unstoppable?

    Then the first large contingent of Black Democratic voters weighed in. On Feb. 29 in South Carolina, Biden won with nearly 50 percent of the vote — two and a half times that of Sanders. Within 96 hours, most of Biden’s rivals had pulled out of the race and endorsed him; Biden then bulldozed through the Super Tuesday field, and the nominating contest was over.

    These examples are part of a broader picture; they don’t include the times when a candidate became the leader in the polls one week, only to be swept into insignificance the next. (At one point in these contests, Joe Lieberman, Wesley Clark, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Ben Carson all placed first in public opinion polls). They don’t include those moments in the heart of the primary season when a single event at a debate can render months’ worth of analysis inoperative. (Think of Rick Perry’s inability to remember the name of one of the Cabinet agencies he pledged to eliminate during a debate in 2011. Hint: It was the Energy Department, which he’d later lead under Donald Trump.)

    The point here is not to argue for a vow of journalistic silence in the long slog leading up to the actual contests; it’s to put that part of the process into context, along with a serious dose of humility. Yes, Trump looks weakened, but are we really ready to anoint Ron DeSantis the nominee before he proves himself on the big stage? Yes, Biden is an octogenarian whose approval rating has been underwater since August 2021, but is anyone in his party really about to challenge his hold on the White House?

    To flip the wildly overused George Santayana warning: By remembering the past hyperventilated early coverage of presidential contests, perhaps we won’t be condemned to repeat it.

    As a first step, it might be a genuine service to readers and viewers to end any 2024 stories with one last line: “Of course, none of this is likely to matter when the votes are cast.”

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    #Opinion #Wildly #Misleading #Speculation
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Frozen: Trump’s primary challengers balk at jumping into the unknown

    Frozen: Trump’s primary challengers balk at jumping into the unknown

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    “It’s very, very quiet,” said Wayne MacDonald, a New Hampshire lawmaker and former Republican Party chair in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

    It appears increasingly likely to stay that way for far longer than once expected. On Tuesday, one likely candidate, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told CBS News it may take a “handful of months” for him to decide whether to run.

    An adviser to one potential presidential candidate has discussed with members of at least two other potential candidates’ teams the advantage of multiple candidates announcing around the same time, according to one Republican strategist briefed on those talks. The conversations, which took place earlier this month, were informal. But they suggest a common recognition among Republicans of what the strategist called “strength in numbers” in a primary involving Trump.

    The proximate cause of the frozen primary is Trump, the former president and only declared candidate in the race. Finding himself on an empty primary stage, he has still managed to be tripped up by everything from classified document retention to dinners with antisemites. The former president is preparing to ramp up his campaigning in the days and weeks ahead, with pronouncements and stops in South Carolina and New Hampshire. But his bumpy start has sapped some of the sense of urgency from the cast of potential also-rans.

    “When you see Trump in a free fall, why get in the middle of that?” said a Republican strategist who has discussed the early primary calendar with several potential candidates. Or, as another prominent GOP strategist put it: “Trump’s best when he’s got an opponent, so don’t give him one.”

    For Trump’s potential opponents, it may be a matter of self-preservation. Though Trump’s support softened following a midterm election in which high-profile, Trump-endorsed candidates flopped, there is a recognition among Trump’s rivals that the ex-president — with the benefit of an opponent — can be lethal. He is still polling ahead of potential competitors in national surveys, and no Republican has forgotten his humiliation of “low-energy Jeb” Bush, “little Marco Rubio” and “lyin’ Ted Cruz” in the 2016 primaries.

    And so, everyone is waiting for the other to act. As another Republican who has spoken with multiple prospective candidates and their teams put it: “I think they think a group launch … provides them protection from Trump.”

    But waiting to jump in collectively comes at a cost. Republican presidential candidates will soon face pressures of the calendar, with the Iowa caucuses now just about a year away. Once one upper-tier candidate announces, others will be compelled to compete, lest they lose time to recruit staff, fundraisers, online support and exposure.

    “I think it’s going to be one of those deals of who’s going to break first, who’s going to be the first announced candidate,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the evangelical leader in Iowa who is influential in primary politics in the first-in-the-nation caucus state and who was a national co-chair of Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign in 2016. “Once that person gets in, you’ll see the others follow suit.”

    But with the exception of Republicans like former Rep. Liz Cheney or former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who may run primarily as anti-Trump candidates, there is almost no imperative to jump first. Instead, would-be candidates have spent last year preparing for a run without making major investments that come with actual announcements. They’ve made appearances on behalf of Republican candidates in key states. They have gone on book tours and made the rounds on TV.

    They aren’t barnstorming early nominating states. Nor are potential candidates spending significantly on digital ads to build out email contact lists of would-be voters and donors — the lifeblood of a modern presidential campaign.

    Over the last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the only candidate to approach spending six figures on digital advertising on Google or Meta — which includes Facebook and Instagram. DeSantis’ state campaign has spent $65,000 on advertising on Google platforms since the beginning of the year, and about $62,000 over the last 30 days on Meta, from Dec. 23 through Jan. 21.

    The ads have all the hallmarks of a candidate building up to a national campaign: “Stand with Gov. DeSantis against the woke left,” one such ad reads. “Add your name.” But DeSantis is the exception to the rule. No other candidate has cracked $10,000 on Google since the beginning of the year. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Stand for America PAC came the closest at $9,800. Just one hit that mark on Meta over the last 30 days: over $17,000 from Mike Pompeo’s Champion American Values PAC.

    It’s unclear how receptive audiences — on- or off-line — would be to presidential campaign messages now, anyway.

    “I think you’re seeing campaigns respond to the realities of the market, where people aren’t eager to start donating to a presidential campaign that’s over a year away,” said Eric Wilson, a GOP consultant who led Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) digital team in 2016.

    Dave Carney, the veteran Republican strategist who advises Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who hasn’t ruled out a presidential run, said it’s so early in the election cycle that “no one’s paying attention.” If a candidate announces today, he said, “what are they going to be asked about? Debt ceiling, Biden’s papers. You’re not going to be on message.”

    And even if they otherwise could stay on message, they would have Trump to knock them off.

    “As soon as someone pops their head up, Trump will be whacking on them,” Carney said. This is time, he said, for a Republican thinking about running to connect with donors, give speeches, study up and build support — all “without being out there naked running down the street.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Jammu and Kashmir: Important Update For All Government Employees- Read Order Copy Here – Kashmir News

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    Jammu and Kashmir: Important Update For All Government Employees- Read Order Copy Here

    The government on Thursday issued a reminder to its employees for filling details of annual property return as well as action over its non-submission by the end of this month.

    “Vide Circular No. 52-JK(GAD) of 2022 dated 22.12.2022, all the employees working under Jammu and Kashmir Government have been advised to file their property returns for the year 2022 on the PRS portal, which is accessible on https://prs.ik.gov.in from 1st of January,2023 to 31 of January, 2023,” reads a fresh government circular.

    However, the circular noted, that that a “sizeable” number of employees are yet to submit their property returns.

    “The last date for filing of property returns is fixed for 31st of January, 2023, beyond which the Portal would automatically not accept the submission of the property returns and moreover, no manual submission shall be accepted in any case,”

    READ FULL ORDER COPY BELOW

    IMG 20230125 WA0006

    ALSO READ: J&K Govt Issues Superannuation Notice For Retirement of Officers/Officials- Check Name Wise List

     

    ALSO READ: JKPSC: Important Update For The Candidates Who Have Appeared For Various Posts

     


    Post Views: 921

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    #Jammu #Kashmir #Important #Update #Government #Employees #Read #Order #Copy #Kashmir #News

    ( With inputs from : kashmirnews.in )

  • Govt reminds employees about filing APRs, action for non-submission

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    Srinagar, Jan 25 (GNS): The government on Thursday issued a reminder to its employees for filling details of annual property return as well as action over its non-submission by the end of this month.

    “Vide Circular No. 52-JK(GAD) of 2022 dated 22.12.2022, all the employees working under Jammu and Kashmir Government have been advised to file their property returns for the year 2022 on the PRS portal, which is accessible on https://prs.ik.gov.in from 1st of January,2023 to 31 of January, 2023,” reads a fresh government circular, a copy of which lies with GNS.
    However, the circular noted, that that a “sizeable” number of employees are yet to submit their property returns.

    “The last date for filing of property returns is fixed for 31st of January, 2023, beyond which the Portal would automatically not accept the submission of the property returns and moreover, no manual submission shall be accepted in any case,” it said, adding, “It is clarified that non submission of property returns shall invite action against such defaulting employees under relevant provisions of law and shall result in denial of vigilance clearance as well.”

    Accordingly, the government directed all the employees who are yet to submit their annual property returns for the year 2022 to submit the same immediately, well before the specified timeline of January 31.

    “It is further enjoined upon all the Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOS) to ensure compliance with regard to filing of property returns by all the employees of their establishment. Further, Administrative Departments shall also assess the progress in this regard,” the circular added. (GNS)

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    #Govt #reminds #employees #filing #APRs #action #nonsubmission

    ( With inputs from : thegnskashmir.com )

  • Govt Reminds Employees About Filing APRs, Action For Non-Submission

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    SRINAGAR: The government on Thursday issued a reminder to its employees for filling details of annual property return as well as action over its non-submission by the end of this month.

    “Vide Circular No. 52-JK(GAD) of 2022 dated 22.12.2022, all the employees working under Jammu and Kashmir Government have been advised to file their property returns for the year 2022 on the PRS portal, which is accessible on https://prs.ik.gov.in from 1st of January,2023 to 31 of January, 2023,” news agency GNS quoted government circular as having said.

    However, the circular noted, that that a “sizeable” number of employees are yet to submit their property returns.

    “The last date for filing of property returns is fixed for 31st of January, 2023, beyond which the Portal would automatically not accept the submission of the property returns and moreover, no manual submission shall be accepted in any case,” it said, adding, “It is clarified that non submission of property returns shall invite action against such defaulting employees under relevant provisions of law and shall result in denial of vigilance clearance as well.”

    Accordingly, the government directed all the employees who are yet to submit their annual property returns for the year 2022 to submit the same immediately, well before the specified timeline of January 31.

    “It is further enjoined upon all the Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOS) to ensure compliance with regard to filing of property returns by all the employees of their establishment. Further, Administrative Departments shall also assess the progress in this regard,” the circular added.

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    #Govt #Reminds #Employees #Filing #APRs #Action #NonSubmission

    ( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )