It has been quite a week in our World as the war in Ukraine raged on, The Israel-Gaza War continued, US Elections plowed on, Indonesia elected a new President, Pakistan had an election, and as in Russia, the leading opposition leader to Vladimir Putin died in prison.
Our team pulled together a snapshot of the week that was during our weekly Virtual Route 66 with thoughts courtesy of Crooked Media, The Economist of London, The Financial Times, Crystal Ball, and Heather Cox Richardson:
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Politics
India opposition alliance fractures as support for Narendra Modi soars
Coalition seeking to unseat powerful prime minister hit by infighting, defections and arrests FEBRUARY 14, 2024 by John Reed and Jyotsna Singh in New Delhi |
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Table 1: Crystal Ball Senate rating change
The Hogan Factor
Last week, on what could have been a slow Friday in the political world, the nation’s attention turned to Maryland. On the final day of candidate filing, now-former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) entered his state’s open-seat Senate race. Though Maryland is one of the bluest states—it was Donald Trump’s third-worst state in 2020—Hogan, in office, routinely ranked among the most popular governors in the country, often sporting positive approval ratings with Democrats. Hogan’s move was a surprise, considering he resisted pressure to enter his state’s 2022 Senate race, and, as of last year, did not seem interested in running for anything below the presidency. Though Hogan’s entry gives Republicans their best possible recruit in a rough state, Senate races are different than gubernatorial contests. In response to Hogan’s announcement, we downgraded our rating for Maryland from Safe Democratic to Likely Democratic. Are Republicans favored now? No, not even close—Democrats are still strongly favored to hold this open seat. But are Hogan’s chances zero? We don’t think so. Simply put, despite the terrain of the state, Maryland is now more of a live contest in a way that it wasn’t at the start of the month. Part of the reason that we moved this race after Hogan’s announcement is that we figured that initial polling would show the race as competitive, making it harder to ignore in the short term. This morning, the first post-Hogan announcement poll came out, from Emerson College, DC News Now, and The Hill. Hogan is tied 42%-42% with Rep. David Trone (D, MD-6) and up 44%-37% on the lesser-known other major Democratic candidate, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks. Again, we fully expect the eventual Democratic nominee to take a clear lead in this race later on down the line—but this has gone from a total snoozer of a race to one that national Democrats at least have to monitor and perhaps even fund, depending on how it develops. We also feel that Hogan-type candidates should be afforded an extra modicum of respect, even in states that clearly do not favor their party at the federal level. In 2022, for instance, had then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) challenged Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), we probably would have shifted our rating for Louisiana from Safe Republican to the somewhat more competitive Likely Republican—even though, considering how the Deep South shaped up that year, Kennedy would have probably won outright in the first round of the state’s top-two voting system. That said, we feel like we’ve seen this movie before. Over the last decade or so, several sitting (or former) governors have tried to run for the Senate in states that lean against their party in presidential contests. While they often overperform the presidential number, the national nature of Senate contests has proven tough to overcome. In 2012, for instance, Republicans were excited to land former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, who, like Hogan, found herself recently termed out of office. But in President Obama’s best, and native, state, Lingle lost by 25 points instead of Mitt Romney’s 43. In 2018, Democrats recruited former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who in his 2006 reelection to the governorship carried all 95 counties in his state. But in a federal race against then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R)—who was, arguably, not the strongest candidate Republicans could have fielded—Bredesen only carried the same three counties that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, although he outperformed her by 15 points. In 2020, then-Gov. Steve Bullock (D) challenged Sen. Steve Daines, who now serves as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, in Montana. Though polls pointed to a close race, Daines won 55%-45%, though his margin was 6 points worse than Trump’s. The most recent Senate cycle, 2022, was a bit of an exception here: no sitting or former governors ran for the Senate as challengers or for open seats. Earlier in the cycle, it seemed that New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) would jump into his state’s contest that year, while national Republicans reportedly lobbied outgoing Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) to run for Senate. Both New Hampshire and Arizona backed Biden in 2020, although they are much more competitive than a state like Maryland. The most recent “crossover” governor to win a Senate race was Joe Manchin (D-WV), right next door to Hogan’s Maryland, when he was elected in a 2010 special election (we are excluding Maine’s Democratic-caucusing independent Angus King here). West Virginia had become reliably Republican at the presidential level even at that time, but the state was still dominated at the local level by Democrats—the retiring Manchin is the last remaining prominent elected Democrat in that state. Governors who have come to the Senate more recently—such as Colorado’s John Hickenlooper (D) and Florida’s Rick Scott (R)—hail from states that routinely back their respective party’s national ticket. On the Democratic side, the May 14 primary will essentially be a two-way race between the aforementioned Trone and Alsobrooks. Before he won a House seat in 2018, Trone founded Total Wine & More—giving him an immense amount of personal wealth—while Alsobrooks has held elected office in the state’s second-largest county for over a dozen years, and she was an early supporter of now-Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD). Hogan may become something of a bogeyman in the Democratic primary and force voters to consider the idea of electability—which could possibly benefit Trone, who can self-fund in the general election. Still, we feel that whichever Democrat emerges from the primary would be acceptable to voters who may approve of Hogan personally but wouldn’t want a Republican-controlled Senate (probably a substantial bloc of the electorate). A key factor in a Hogan victory would be a subpar, or significantly weakened, Democratic nominee. We’ll watch how the primary develops but for now, it doesn’t seem like that’ll be something Republicans can count on. Speaking of the primary, something we’ll also be watching on May 14 is how much of a protest vote materializes against Hogan. Aside from the former governor, there are a handful of lesser or perennial GOP contenders who will be on the ballot. While we’d be truly shocked if Hogan actually lost the nomination, his vocal criticism of Trump may give some partisans reason to pass him over. Hogan was easily leading the GOP primary in the aforementioned Emerson poll, but with just 43% overall (Trone led Alsobrooks 32%-17% in the Democratic primary). In 2022, Maryland Republican primary voters showed that they weren’t concerned with electability, and gave Hogan something of a black eye on his way out the door. In a contested primary, they snubbed Hogan’s preferred candidate, former Hogan administration official Kelly Schulz, for Del. Dan Cox, a pro-Trump Republican. Cox, with strong support in areas of the state that lean GOP in general elections, won the nomination by 10 points and went on to lose to Moore by 2-to-1 in the general election. As an aside, Cox is running for Trone’s open Biden +10 6th District, although he is not guaranteed the nomination. Honestly, we found it notable that Hogan is even running as a Republican. Occasionally over the last few cycles, Democratic-aligned candidates in red states have avoided party labels to run as independents—though this has not led to GOP defeats, the nominal independents have come closer than Democrats would have. Two years ago, for instance, Evan McMullin, a former Republican who ran as an anti-Trump third party presidential candidate in 2016, challenged GOP Sen. Mike Lee in Utah. With McMullin in the race, Democrats did not field their own candidate—Lee was ultimately reelected by 10 points, but the result marked the closest Utah Senate race in nearly five decades. Similarly, Eric Cunningham of Elections Daily mused that ditching the partisan label may be a template for popular governors in states that would lean against their party federally. But, with his stances against Trump in mind, Maryland Republicans may not have been willing to defer to an independent Hogan as the Utah Democrats gave McMullin a pass. Daines, in his capacity as the NRSC’s leader, released a statement praising Hogan, though he stopped short of offering an endorsement, while both Alsobrooks and Trone have fundraised off of Hogan’s entrance into the race. Republicans have not won a Senate election in Maryland since 1980, one of their longest Senate dry spells in the country. The Democrats should win Maryland for president by (at a bare minimum) 25 points, requiring Hogan to generate a level of ticket-splitting that is very difficult to imagine in this day and age. |
Western races shape up
Aside from Hogan, another consequential Senate announcement came on Friday from a Maryland native, but it came in Daines’s state (we’re being a little facetious here). After dragging his feet for some time, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R, MT-2) announced he’d run for a rematch against Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). Rosendale is originally from Baltimore and spent much of his business career in Maryland, a fact that the Tester campaign used in 2018 to question its opponent’s Big Sky credentials in what can be a parochial state. As with Hogan, Rosendale’s announcement came as at least something of a surprise—last quarter, he only raised a paltry $98,000, a total that did not suggest he was gearing up for a statewide run. Still, Rosendale enters the race with slightly more cash on hand than his leading opponent, former Navy SEAL and first-time candidate Tim Sheehy. Sheehy has been the favorite of national Republicans, and on Friday, he received a coveted Trump endorsement. During the 15-round House Speaker vote last year, Rosendale, one of the anti-Kevin McCarthy holdouts, was photographed refusing to accept a phone call from Trump—considering the premium that Trump is known to put on loyalty, Rosendale’s snub was almost certainly a factor in the former president’s thinking. Trump, in this instance, could also be acting as a team player—Daines, who was early to endorse Trump’s third GOP presidential bid, has telegraphed his preference for Sheehy. With Republicans set to decide on a nominee in early June, Democratic-aligned groups, as they did in 2022, are already essentially playing in the primary—a group connected to Democratic outside spending giant Senate Majority PAC has spent millions trying to rough up Sheehy. Rosendale, who already lost to Tester and is considered Republicans’ less-electable option (though he’d still be capable of winning), would seem the likely beneficiary of any continued meddling. In Arizona, the NRSC endorsed Kari Lake, the GOP’s losing 2022 gubernatorial nominee with a reputation as a vocal election denier, earlier this week. A few weeks ago, a leaked recording surfaced of then-state GOP chairman Jeff DeWit trying to dissuade Lake from staying in the race—the episode ended with DeWit’s resignation. Lake’s most prominent opponent in the late July Republican primary is Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb. On the Democratic side, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D, AZ-3) is campaigning as the presumptive Democratic nominee. One of the biggest, and last, question marks hanging over the Senate landscape is whether Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and was elected as one in 2018, will run again. Arizona’s filing deadline is April 8, so perhaps we’ll have a better idea of the dynamics of the race in several weeks. Last quarter, Sinema raised just $595,000—if she were still in the House, that would make for a good figure, but it is far below what’s needed to compete in what seems likely to become a marquee Senate race. As Matt Holt, a Senate reporter, pointed out, it may be telling that Sinema spent nothing on ballot access petitioning. |
The Democrats’ downside risk
As a concluding thought for this week, it has been obvious all cycle how exposed Democrats are in the Senate—all three races we’ve discussed in some depth during this edition are in states that elected Democrats in 2018. They are defending the only three seats they hold in states that Donald Trump won in 2020—Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia, with the Mountain State essentially a guaranteed loss with Manchin’s retirement. In addition to those seats, Democrats are defending an additional five seats in states that Joe Biden won, but by less than his roughly 4.5-point national margin: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If Republicans win the presidency, they will carry at least some, and perhaps even all, of these aforementioned states. Given the growing convergence between presidential and Senate results, Republicans could then also win a number of the Senate seats in these states. If that happens, Republicans could hypothetically not just win the Senate this year, but also build a decent-sized majority that Democrats would have a hard time erasing in the short term. CNN’s Ron Brownstein recently wrote about this downside risk for Democrats in the Senate, and he included some observations from us. Check out his piece for much more on this dynamic. -- Crystal Ball Managing Editor Kyle Kondik and intern Tanish Gupta contributed to this piece. |
Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating change
Suozzi’s big victory
Rep.-elect Tom Suozzi’s (D) impressive victory in NY-3 should, like all special elections, be kept in context: Special elections can be influenced by unique local factors, and they are often not predictive of the future. Democrats have been doing well in these races, generally speaking, since the Dobbs decision in 2022, and a much bigger November electorate will be different and quite possibly less friendly.
That said, Democrats needed a shot in the arm following gloomy polling and questions about President Biden that were exacerbated by a classic “feeding frenzy”—to borrow a phrase coined by our Editor in Chief, Larry Sabato—over a special counsel report that contributed to preexisting doubts about Biden’s age. They got it. And, crucially, Democrats have an extra seat in the House, a seat they should be able to hold in November, when they now need to win only four additional seats beyond what they hold now at full strength in order to win the House majority. That is a doable task—even if the presidential race gets away from them. In this race, it appears that Suozzi will roughly match Biden’s 2020 8-point margin in this district. That is a strong showing for Democrats in a place many believe is trending away from them.
Turnout in the NY-3 special was about 170,000 based on reporting Wednesday morning, with probably some small number of votes outstanding. Back in 2022, about 270,000 votes were cast in the congressional race, so this turnout was a little under two-thirds of that total. That turnout for a February special strikes us as relatively decent although certainly not overwhelming. Just as a point of comparison, the last major New York special House election—the old version of the Hudson Valley’s NY-19 in August 2022—saw a turnout of about 130,000 voters, which was less than half of the turnout from the 2018 midterm (which featured higher overall New York turnout than 2022—we can’t compare that NY-19 special to the 2022 midterm because the district lines were redrawn). Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux keeps a running tally of special House elections going back decades—you’ll see that in terms of total votes cast, NY-3 was reasonably high for a standalone special not held in conjunction with another election. However, some other famous special elections of recent vintage—like the Democratic win in PA-18 in March 2018, the Republican win in OH-12 later that year in August, and a 2018 do-over election in September 2019 won by Republicans in NC-9—all saw clearly higher raw vote totals than this election. A snowstorm on the morning of Election Day may have reduced turnout in NY-3, perhaps aiding Democrats who disproportionately banked their votes by voting early or by mail (which is of course the point of having those options in the first place—people can vote in advance and thus avoid some Election Day curveball, weather or otherwise, from keeping them from the polls). It appeared that the weather got better as the day progressed and polls in New York don’t close until 9 p.m., so the storm may not have actually had that much effect.
Democrats did have some key advantages in this race. Collectively, Suozzi and his Democratic allies outspent Pilip by a roughly $13.5 million to $8 million spread, according to AdImpact. The Republican ad spending came later on in the campaign—indeed, the late-breaking investments by GOP outside groups contributed to the belief, shared by both parties and many analysts, that the race was close and hard to call. Suozzi has been involved in local politics for decades and recently represented the old version of this seat prior to a quixotic gubernatorial bid in 2022. He ran a better-funded and more spirited race than local legislator Mazi Pilip (R).
The fairly impressive victory by Suozzi also could be seen as a broader test case for Democrats in fending off Republican attacks on immigration. Suozzi, to his credit, used his own advertising to defend himself from attacks on the issue, suggesting a path for other Democratic campaigns in the fall. In the leadup to this election, Republicans were salivating over President Biden’s horrible approval rating on immigration and the prospect of it being a giant weapon in this and future elections. It was not that kind of weapon in NY-3, and congressional Republicans’ decision to not even attempt to pass a border security package negotiated by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate gives Democrats some ammo on this issue, too.
There is an old saying that “Good government is good politics,” although the way the Republicans are handling immigration is essentially “Bad government is good politics.” That actually makes some cold-blooded political sense because the party that does not hold the White House has an incentive to make the president look as bad as possible. But Republicans do hold the House majority, so they have a seat at the table in policymaking, and Suozzi attacked Pilip and Republicans more broadly for not backing the bipartisan border legislation. It’s impossible to know exactly what effect this had—perhaps a lot, perhaps not much at all—but it’s hard to come out of this election and say that the Republicans are wielding a political superweapon on immigration (had Pilip won, there would have been widespread belief that they in fact did have such a weapon).
This result also makes the Democrats’ horrible 2022 showing in New York look like a little bit more of a fluke that will be harder to replicate in an environment less GOP-leaning than 2022 was (at least in New York). This has consequences for the other House district that covers Nassau County, NY-4, which Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R, NY-4) won in November. NY-4 is, by presidential partisanship, the most Democratic seat held by any Republican, at Biden +14.5 points. After tonight, D’Esposito should probably be looked at as an outright underdog, but there’s one thing that’s holding us back from just moving him from Toss-up to Leans Democratic: redistricting.
The state’s redistricting commission is poised to vote on a new congressional map proposal tomorrow, after the state’s highest court reopened the redistricting process in a victory for Democrats. Democrats in the state legislature may eventually get a crack at a new gerrymander, and we’re hesitant to change any ratings before that happens, beyond giving Suozzi the benefit of the doubt as a Leans Democratic incumbent following his victory. We find it hard to imagine Suozzi would get a worse district than the one he just won, and we also suspect that D’Esposito’s district won’t change much—in which case we are very likely going to move his seat to Leans Democratic. Democrats do not necessarily need a new gerrymander in New York to win back several seats there, and it may be that the redistricting process results in a compromise map that marginally improves the Democrats’ overall position.
With NY-3 now a Leans Democratic district, we have 212 seats rated as Safe, Likely, or Leaning Republican, 204 Safe/Likely/Leaning Democratic, and 19 Toss-ups. We suspect the new map in New York will prompt additional changes that are positive for Democrats—we have already telegraphed one, in NY-4—and that would bring our House ratings further in line with our overall assessment of the House: a true coin flip.
A few other notes on the House
We devoted two issues to the race for the House last week. Part one looked at ticket-splitting in the House, specifically in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election cycles, and part two described some rating changes. We had a few other observations about the House that didn’t make it into those two reports but that we still wanted to share:
-- Our recent rating changes that moved Reps. Don Bacon (R, NE-2) and Jared Golden (D, ME-2) into the Toss-up column means that an even greater number of “crossover” House members—those who hold districts that the other party won for president—are in the Toss-up category.
-- On the Democratic side, 3 of the 5 Trump-district Democrats are now in Toss-up: Golden as well as Rep. Matt Cartwright (D, PA-8) in northeast Pennsylvania and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D, WA-3) in a district that includes part of the Portland, OR metro area. Meanwhile, Reps. Mary Peltola (D, AK-AL) and Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9) in the Toledo area remain in Leans Democratic. Kaptur dominated J.R. Majewski (R) in a 2022 contest, and Majewski is running again; if Majewski loses the primary, the race could more easily end up as a Toss-up. Peltola, meanwhile, still boasts good favorability numbers in her statewide seat, but her numbers have been slightly declining over time in state pollster Ivan Moore’s surveys. Republicans are excited by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (R) as their candidate, but Alaska’s quirky top-4 voting system could aid Peltola as 2022 candidate Nick Begich (R) is still in the race. Dahlstrom’s 2023 fourth quarter fundraising, roughly $200,000, wasn’t that great either, particularly because Peltola raised over $1.1 million over the last quarter (although Dahlstrom only entered the race in the middle of the quarter, and she has time to pick up the pace). National Republicans basically gave up on these two races in 2022 but seem eager to more fully engage this cycle, which makes sense in a presidential year in districts that will (Alaska) and likely will (OH-9) vote Republican for president again.
-- While there are only five Democrats in Trump seats—excluding three redrawn Democratic-held seats in North Carolina where redistricting turned Biden seats into Trump districts and prompted the Democratic incumbents to not seek reelection—there are a number of marginal Biden-won districts in our Toss-up column. These include two open seats in Michigan, Lansing-based MI-7 (Biden +0.5) and Flint-centric MI-8 (Biden +2); Rep. Susan Wild’s (D) Lehigh Valley-based PA-7 (Biden +0.6); Rep. Emilia Sykes’s (D) Akron/Canton district OH-13 (Biden +2.8); and Rep. Don Davis’s (D) redrawn NC-1 in northeastern North Carolina (Biden +1.7). Hypothetically, if the national popular vote in the presidential race is more like a tie than Biden’s +4.5 2020 margin, all of these districts could vote Republican for president, which would force Democrats to run ahead of the top of the ticket to hold them (which they very well may be able to do, to at least some extent, and Republican candidates generally have a fair amount to prove in this group of districts).
-- Suozzi’s victory reduces the number of Republican-held Biden-won seats from 18 to 17, a tally that also excludes a pair of redrawn Republican-held districts in Alabama and Louisiana that flipped from Trump seats to Biden seats and are likely to flip to Democrats this year. Of those 17, 10 are in the Toss-up column: Four in New York and three in California, as well as Rep. David Schweikert’s (R) AZ-1, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s (R) Portland-to-Bend OR-5, and Bacon’s aforementioned NE-2 in Omaha. Of these, Schweikert’s would realistically be the most gettable for Trump, given that Biden’s margin there was just 1.5 points. Biden’s margin was better than his national margin in the other nine. New York’s looming redistricting of course could scramble the numbers in at least some of the districts there.
-- One GOP-held district that seems a little more interesting than it was before is IA-3, a narrow Trump +0.3 Des Moines-based district that Rep. Zach Nunn (R) narrowly flipped last year. For much of 2023, the district seemed like a recruiting hole for Democrats, but Lanon Baccam, a veteran and former U.S. Department of Agriculture official and Biden campaign staffer, entered the race in November and turned in a solid initial fundraising quarter, outraising Nunn $507,000 to $426,000 (although Nunn still has a huge 3.5-to-1 cash on hand edge). This remains a Leans Republican seat in our ratings.
-- If Baccam had a strong quarter, a Democratic challenger closer to our home base did not. Democrats have been excited by veteran Missy Cotter Smasal’s candidacy in the Virginia Beach-based VA-2, a competitive Biden +1.9 seat that Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) flipped last cycle. But Cotter Smasal only raised a little over $100,000, and Kiggans is sitting on a $1.5 million warchest. Democrats argue that congressional fundraising can get a bit later of a start in Virginia given a donor focus on odd-numbered year state-level elections, and there may be some truth to that from history. For instance, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D, VA-7), who is leaving the House this year in advance of a 2025 gubernatorial run, only raised $140,000 in 2017’s fourth quarter before later becoming a fundraising machine. Cotter Smasal was just endorsed by EMILYs List, which could help jumpstart her fundraising, although another Democrat, attorney Jake Denton, recently entered the race. For now, Kiggans looks like one of the better-positioned Biden-district Republicans (her race remains rated Leans Republican). This is another marginal Biden-won seat that could vote Republican for president in 2024. (Presidential district-level numbers and fundraising tallies cited in this article come courtesy of our friends at Daily Kos Elections.)
Global Economy
UK economy contracts more than expected
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Today House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) canceled tomorrow’s votes and sent the House of Representatives into recess until February 28.
Before recessing, Johnson refused to take up the national security supplemental bill the Senate passed early Tuesday morning, providing aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and humanitarian aid for Gaza. Johnson said the House must “work its own will” rather than vote on the bill at hand because the measure did not include border security measures.
Yesterday, Johnson told House Republicans that the House will not be “rushed” into passing foreign aid, despite the fact that Ukraine’s desperate need for ammunition is enabling Russia to regain some of the territory Ukraine’s troops reclaimed over the past year.
But is it a rush? President Biden asked for additional national security funding in October 2023. A majority of lawmakers in the Senate and the House support such a measure, but Johnson bowed to the demands of MAGA Republicans and said he would not bring such a bill up for a vote unless it contained border security measures to address what they insisted was a crisis at the southern border of the U.S., apparently banking on the idea that such a compromise was impossible.
But Democrats were so desperate to pass the Ukraine funding they see as crucial to our national security that they agreed to give up their demand for a path to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, those brought to the United States as children and reared here but now stuck in citizenship limbo. So, after four months of work, Senate negotiators produced a bill that offered much of what Republicans demanded.
Once it was clear a deal was going to materialize, Trump demanded it be shut down, likely because he has promised his base that on his first day back in office, he will “begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” and a new border measure would both undermine his campaign message and stymie his plans. Although the border patrol officers union endorsed the Senate national security measure that included border security provisions, Republicans killed it.
Senators immediately went to work on a national security supplemental without the border measure, passing it with 70 votes on Tuesday morning. Johnson indicated he would not take it up, right about the same time that Trump renewed his attack on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that underpins U.S. and global security.
“House Republicans are…siding with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Tehran against our defense industrial base, against NATO, against Ukraine, against our interests in the Indo-Pacific,” the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said yesterday, and President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned that “[f]ailure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.” But Republicans, too—including Trump’s vice president Mike Pence—are begging House Republicans to pass a version of the measure.
Perhaps to pressure Johnson, House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH), who is a strong supporter of aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia, yesterday released information about “a serious national security threat,” urged all members of Congress to view the intelligence, and called on Biden to declassify all information relating to it. That threat appears to be antisatellite weapons Russia is developing, but they are not yet operational. Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) of the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed concern that the disclosure might have revealed intelligence sources and methods.
And now, rather than taking up the national security measure, the House has recessed.
National security and border measures are not the only things the House is ignoring. Since this is a leap year, putting February 29 on the calendar, the recess will give the House just three working days to pass appropriations measures for the 2024 budget before the stopgap continuing resolution to fund the government expires on March 1.
The appropriations process is so far overdue that it threatens to become tangled in that for 2025, which is set to begin March 11, when the White House is expected to release its budget proposal for the year.
While they have been unable to make headway on these measures, on Tuesday night, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to impeach Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, blaming him for an increase in migrants at the border. Johnson has named as impeachment managers a number of Republican extremists, including Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Clay Higgins (R-LA), and Harriet Hageman (R-WY).
As Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News reported: “This is the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades covering Congress. It started this way under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and has gotten worse under Johnson.”
Trump and his MAGA supporters are demonstrating their power over the Republican Party. Trump is trying to install hand-picked loyalists, including his daughter-in-law, at the head of the Republican National Committee, where she vows that “[e]very single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC—that is electing Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.”
When Trump was in office, his team installed loyalists at the head of state parties, where they have worked to purge all but Trump loyalists. MAGA Republicans are continuing that process. After Senator James Lankford (R-OK), a reliable conservative tapped by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to negotiate a border measure, produced one that favored Republican positions, right-wing provocateur Benny Johnson called those like Lankford “traitors…spineless scum” who must “be criminally prosecuted.”
That demand for purity appears to be radicalizing the House as Republicans inclined to get things done, including five committee chairs, have announced they will not run for reelection. Meanwhile, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene yesterday said that British foreign secretary David Cameron, who is urging Congress to pass Ukraine aid, “can kiss my ass.”
But the MAGA agenda is falling apart in the courts. True the Vote, the right-wing organization that insisted it had evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, has told a Georgia judge that, in fact, it has no such evidence. Their claims provided the basis for the arguments about voter fraud highlighted in right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza’s film 2000 Mules.
Today a grand jury convened by Special Counsel David Weiss, whom Trump appointed to investigate Hunter Biden, indicted former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov for making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record about Hunter Biden. Smirnov has been a key witness for Republican allegations about Biden’s “corruption” since Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released Smirnov’s unverified claims about a year ago and other MAGA figures spread them. Matthew Gertz of Media Matters noted that Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity’s show highlighted these allegations in at least 85 separate segments last year, including 28 monologues. Now a grand jury has grounds to think Smirnov lied.
Trump’s personal problems also continue to mount.
Today Judge Juan Merchan confirmed that Trump is going to trial on his criminal election interference case, with jury selection beginning on March 25. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 felonies for falsifying business records in order to hide critical information from voters before the 2016 election. Prosecutors say that Trump defrauded voters by illegally hiding payments he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their affair before the election. As Andrew Warren put it in The Daily Beast, the case “is about a plot to deprive voters of information about a candidate for president—information that Trump and his allies believed to be damaging enough to hide.”
And yet Trump’s MAGA Republicans are calling the shots in the House, and their refusal to support Ukraine threatens to empower Russian president Vladimir Putin and thus to lay waste to the rules-based international order that has helped to prevent world war since 1945. Conservative pundit Bill Kristol noted earlier this month that “politics is often a stage on which people act in bad faith. Still, the demagogic opposition of House Republicans to the border/Ukraine bill, when they've all said the border is an emergency and that Putin should be stopped, is just about the baddest bad faith ever.”
The implications of that bad faith for the country—and the world—are huge.
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Notes:
https://www.house.gov/
https://www.fedweek.com/
https://www.nationalreview.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/
https://apnews.com/article/
https://punchbowl.news/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/
https://www.politico.com/news/
https://www.washingtonpost.
Twitter (X):
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“History is watching,” President Joe Biden said this afternoon. He warned “Republicans in Congress who think they can oppose funding for Ukraine and not be held accountable” that “[f]ailure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”
At about 5:00 this morning, the Senate passed a $95 billion national security supplemental bill, providing funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Most of the money in the measure will stay in the United States, paying defense contractors to restock the matériel the U.S. sends to Ukraine.
The vote was 70–29 and was strongly bipartisan. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats in support of the bill, overcoming the opposition of far-right Republicans.
The measure went to the House of Representatives, where House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he will not take it up, even though his far-right supporters acknowledged that a majority of the representatives supported it and that if it did come to the floor, it would pass.
Yesterday, House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH)—who had just returned from his third trip to Ukraine, where he told President Volodymyr Zelensky that reinforcements were coming—told Politico’s Rachel Bade: “We have to get this done…. This is no longer an issue of, ‘When do we support Ukraine?’ If we do not move, this will be abandoning Ukraine.”
“The speaker will need to bring it to the floor,” Turner said. “You’re either for or against the authoritarian governments invading democratic countries.… You’re either for or against the killing of innocent civilians. You’re either for or against Russia reconstituting the Soviet Union.”
Today, Biden spoke to the press to “call on the Speaker to let the full House speak its mind and not allow a minority of the most extreme voices in the House to block this bill even from being voted on—even from being voted on. This is a critical act for the House to move. It needs to move.”
Bipartisan support for Ukraine “sends a clear message to Ukrainians and to our partners and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom,” he said. “We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone, and certainly not to Vladimir Putin.”
“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin. Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”
“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen. And that’s because the former President has sent a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world” Biden said, referring to Trump’s statement on Saturday night that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the 75-year-old collective security organization that spans North America and Europe—but are not devoting 2% of the gross domestic product to their militaries.
Trump’s invitation to Putin to invade our NATO allies was “dumb,…shameful,…dangerous, [and] un-American,” Biden said. “When America gives its word, it means something. When we make a commitment, we keep it. And NATO is a sacred commitment.” NATO, Biden said, is “the alliance that protects America and the world.”
“[O]ur adversaries have long sought to create cracks in the Alliance. The greatest hope of all those who wish America harm is for NATO to fall apart. And you can be sure that they all cheered when they heard [what] Donald Trump…said.”
“Our nation stands at…an inflection point in history…where the decisions we make now are going to determine the course of our future for decades to come. This is one of those moments.
And I say to the House members, House Republicans: You’ve got to decide. Are you going to stand up for freedom, or are you going to side with terror and tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine, or are you going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America or…with Trump?”
“Republicans and Democrats in the Senate came together to send a message of unity to the world. It’s time for the House Republicans to do the same thing: to pass this bill immediately, to stand for decency, stand for democracy, to stand up to a so-called leader hellbent on weakening American security,” Biden said.
“And I mean this sincerely: History is watching. History is watching.”
But instead of taking up the supplemental national security bill tonight, House speaker Johnson took advantage of the fact that Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) has returned to Washington after a stem cell transplant to battle his multiple myeloma and that Judy Chu (D-CA) is absent because she has Covid to make a second attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors” for his oversight of the southern border of the United States.
Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas by a vote of 214 to 213. The vote catered to far-right Republicans, but impeachment will go nowhere in the Senate.
“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” Biden said in a statement. He called on the House to pass the border security measure Republicans killed last week on Trump’s orders, and to pass the national security supplemental bill.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has said he will use every possible tool to force a vote on the national security supplemental bill. In contrast, as Biden noted, House Republicans are taking their cue from former president Trump, who does not want aid to Ukraine to pass and who last night demonstrated that he is trying to consolidate his power over the party by installing hand-picked loyalists, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who is married to his son Eric, at the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC).
This move is likely due in part to outgoing RNC chair Ronna McDaniel’s having said the RNC could not pay Trump’s legal bills once he declared himself a presidential candidate. After his political action committees dropped $50 million on legal fees last year, he could likely use another pipeline, and even closer loyalists might give him one.
In addition, Trump probably recognizes that he might well lose the protective legal bulwark of the Trump Organization when Judge Arthur Engoron hands down his verdict in Trump’s $370 million civil fraud trial. New York attorney general Letitia James is seeking not only monetary penalties but also a ban on Trump’s ability to conduct business in the New York real estate industry. In that event, the RNC could become a base of operations for Trump if he succeeds in taking it over entirely.
But it is not clear that all Republican lawmakers will follow him into that takeover, as his demands from the party not only put it out of step with the majority of the American people but also now clearly threaten to blow up global security. “Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told his colleagues as he urged them to vote for the national security supplemental bill.
Politicians should recognize that Trump’s determination to win doesn’t help them much: it is all about him and does not extend to any down-ballot races.
Indeed, the attempt of a Republican minority to impose its will on the majority of Americans appears to be sparking a backlash. In today’s election in New York’s Third Congressional District to replace indicted serial liar George Santos, a loyal Trump Republican, voters chose Democrat Tom Suozzi by about 8 points. CNN’s Dana Bash tonight said voters had told her they voted against the Republican candidate because Republicans, on Trump’s orders, killed the bipartisan border deal. The shift both cuts down the Republican majority in the House and suggests that going into 2024, suburban swing voters are breaking for Democrats.
As Trump tries to complete his takeover of the formerly grand old Republican Party, its members have to decide whether to capitulate.
History is watching.
—
[If you prefer to hear me read this letter, it will be available tomorrow, at about noon, at these sites (for free):
On Substack: https://heathercoxrichardson.
On Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/...
—
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/
https://www.politico.com/news/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/
https://www.cnn.com/politics/
https://www.businessinsider.
https://www.cbsnews.com/
https://punchbowl.news/
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