News
Latest
Bloomberg Markets and Finance, August 12, 2022 – 12:00 pm (ET)
Bloomberg Markets and Finance, Steve Rattner – August 5, 2022 (07:03)
Steve Rattner, Willett Advisors Chairman & CEO, breaks down the Inflation Reduction Act and what it means for investors and why there is a cost to addressing climate.
Vox, Stewart, Zhou, & Leber – August 7, 2022
The climate bill is also a health care bill (and it does a few things on taxes, too).
The biggest effort to tackle climate change — ever
The Inflation Reduction Act would be the biggest thing the US has ever done to tackle climate change, and climate makes up the largest share of the bill’s spending: nearly $370 billion.
Helping people afford health insurance for longer
The climate parts of the bill have gotten the most attention. But the bill also includes some significant steps on health care, including shoring up an expansion to the Affordable Care Act.
Negotiating prescription drug prices
For years, Democrats have told voters that they will take on policies that reduce the costs of prescription drugs, only to be blocked by Republicans and fall short. This bill allows them to finally fulfill that campaign promise by enabling Medicare to negotiate on prescription drugs — a major change that could lead to significant cost reductions for a small subset of drugs.
Closing a loophole to make corporations pay more taxes
The agreement also includes a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion. Senate Democrats note that while the current corporate tax rate is 21 percent, dozens of major companies, including AT&T, Amazon, and ExxonMobil, pay much less than that. The proposal says that the provision would raise $313 billion, though as Politico notes, there’s debate among tax experts about how and whether this would work.
PBS NewsHour – August 7, 2022 (05:47)
How the Inflation Reduction Act aims to reduce prescription drug costs
48 million Americans get prescription drugs through Medicare Part D, but Medicare has had no ability to negotiate prices. A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act would change that in some cases. The bill would also cap out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients. Stacy Dusetzina from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.
Politico, David Siders : Analysis et al.
Roe jolts the midterms — 5 takeaways from a key primary night
The Roe earthquake is real
Republicans make it easier on themselves
The Meijer name wasn’t enough to overcome political gravity in West Michigan
Election denialism is still flourishing
And yet … Trump takes a hit
PBS NewsHour – August 5, 2022 (12:14)
New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including how Democrats are moving closer to passing a new climate and spending bill and a look at Tuesday’s primary election results and how they could shake up the midterm election landscape.
Spotlight
Bloomberg Markets and Finance, August 12, 2022 – 12:00 pm (ET)
Bloomberg Markets and Finance, Steve Rattner – August 5, 2022 (07:03)
Steve Rattner, Willett Advisors Chairman & CEO, breaks down the Inflation Reduction Act and what it means for investors and why there is a cost to addressing climate.
Vox, Stewart, Zhou, & Leber – August 7, 2022
The climate bill is also a health care bill (and it does a few things on taxes, too).
The biggest effort to tackle climate change — ever
The Inflation Reduction Act would be the biggest thing the US has ever done to tackle climate change, and climate makes up the largest share of the bill’s spending: nearly $370 billion.
Helping people afford health insurance for longer
The climate parts of the bill have gotten the most attention. But the bill also includes some significant steps on health care, including shoring up an expansion to the Affordable Care Act.
Negotiating prescription drug prices
For years, Democrats have told voters that they will take on policies that reduce the costs of prescription drugs, only to be blocked by Republicans and fall short. This bill allows them to finally fulfill that campaign promise by enabling Medicare to negotiate on prescription drugs — a major change that could lead to significant cost reductions for a small subset of drugs.
Closing a loophole to make corporations pay more taxes
The agreement also includes a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion. Senate Democrats note that while the current corporate tax rate is 21 percent, dozens of major companies, including AT&T, Amazon, and ExxonMobil, pay much less than that. The proposal says that the provision would raise $313 billion, though as Politico notes, there’s debate among tax experts about how and whether this would work.
PBS NewsHour – August 7, 2022 (05:47)
How the Inflation Reduction Act aims to reduce prescription drug costs
48 million Americans get prescription drugs through Medicare Part D, but Medicare has had no ability to negotiate prices. A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act would change that in some cases. The bill would also cap out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients. Stacy Dusetzina from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.
Politico, David Siders : Analysis et al.
Roe jolts the midterms — 5 takeaways from a key primary night
The Roe earthquake is real
Republicans make it easier on themselves
The Meijer name wasn’t enough to overcome political gravity in West Michigan
Election denialism is still flourishing
And yet … Trump takes a hit
PBS NewsHour – August 5, 2022 (12:14)
New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including how Democrats are moving closer to passing a new climate and spending bill and a look at Tuesday’s primary election results and how they could shake up the midterm election landscape.
FivethirtyEight, Nate Silver – August 5, 2022
It’s Hard To Win A Senate Race When You’ve Never Won An Election Before
Politics doesn’t have a farm system in the way that professional baseball does. But it has a hierarchy of its own for cultivating political prospects. The path usually goes something like this: First, a candidate wins some relatively minor, local office like city council or state representative. Then, they either win a seat in the U.S. House or a statewide office like attorney general. Only then do they run for U.S. Senate or governor.
Most of the Democrats running in competitive Senate and gubernatorial races have followed a version of this course. For instance, John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, for 13 years before being elected as the state’s lieutenant governor in 2018.
But most of the Republicans haven’t. As a group, they have little experience running for office, and even less experience at actually winning general elections. Historically, such candidates have a poor track record — and in 2022 they could cost Republicans key gubernatorial races as well as control of the Senate.
CNN, Richard Galant – August 7, 2022
Opinion: What started in Kansas upends American politics
In “The Wizard of Oz,” a tornado sends Dorothy and her Kansas home spinning into the “Merry Old Land of Oz.” Last week it was what Politico called a “political earthquake” in Kansas that sent the national debate over abortion into a new phase with many unknowns.
China fired off missiles, flew jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and called off talks with the US on issues such as climate change and military relations. The reason: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which China sees as part of its territory.
A Texas jury ordered incendiary radio host Alex Jones to pay a combined $49.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting 10 years ago. Jones’ legal troubles aren’t over by any means: he faces two more such trials.
Politico, Michael Kruse – August 7, 2022
‘There’s Never Been Anybody Like Him in the United States Senate’
Raphael Warnock won his seat running as an activist preacher. To keep it he’ll have to persuade voters he’s the rare senator who actually gets stuff done.
More broadly, though, the way Warnock has operated in the last year and a half in the Senate as well as the way he’s vying now for a full six-year term are natural extensions of the tensions that have animated his life and his work — the “double-consciousness” of the Black church, as he describes it in the 2014 book drawn from his doctoral dissertation, the “complementary yet competing sensibilities” of “revivalistic piety and radical protest,” the saving of souls and the salvation of society, what King called “long white robes over yonder” and “a suit and some shoes to wear down here.”
In strictly political terms, this tension and connection might be expressed as purity versus pragmatism. And for Warnock, ever the reverend, the balancing act between the high and the low, the eternal and the utterly quotidian, sometimes means taking a run-of-the-mill legislative compromise — one that doesn’t even allocate any actual money for the asphalt — and attempting to frame it as the apotheosis of our ongoing experiment of representative self-government.
Associated Press, C. Cassidy & T. Richmond – August 7, 2022
GOP seeking power over elections in Wisconsin, Minnesota
Wisconsin’s secretary of state has no role in elections, but that could change if Republicans are able to flip the seat this year and pass a law that would empower the office with far more responsibilities.
All three GOP candidates competing for the nomination in Tuesday’s primary support the shift and echo former President Donald Trump’s false claims that fraud cost him the 2020 election.
If successful, the move would be a bold attempt to shift power to an office Republicans hope to control going into the 2024 presidential election and would represent a reversal from just six years ago when Republicans established the Wisconsin Elections Commission with bipartisan support. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes in the presidential race.
PBS NewsHour – August 6, 2022 (03:24)
News Wrap: Indiana passes new law banning nearly all abortions
In our news wrap Saturday, Indiana has passed new legislation banning nearly all abortions, the U.S. Senate is working to pass a major health, climate and tax reform bill, President Biden tests negative for COVID again after a rebound case, China cuts communications with the U.S. after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and violence escalates in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s airstrikes Friday.
CNN, Zachary B. Wolf – August 6, 2022
Why the most competitive congressional districts are disappearing
Republicans probably did not end up redrawing their way into the five congressional seats they need to take control of the House of Representatives, at least not on paper.
Instead, matching GOP gains in places like Texas and Florida with Democratic gains in blue states, Republicans nationwide ended up with nine new seats leaning toward them compared to eight now-Democratic seats based on their 2020 presidential performance, according to a 50-state analysis of the new congressional map by CNN’s political and data teams. It has the latest new congressional map for each state.
The larger story may not be that one party or the other gained seats, but rather that the number of competitive seats dropped by 17, part of a decades-long trend of polarization among voters and consolidation of power by political parties.
Associated Press, Amanda Seitz – August 5, 2022
Meta trims election misinformation efforts as midterms loom
Facebook owner Meta is quietly curtailing some of the safeguards designed to thwart voting misinformation or foreign interference in U.S. elections as the November midterm vote approaches.
It’s a sharp departure from the social media giant’s multibillion-dollar efforts to enhance the accuracy of posts about U.S. elections and regain trust from lawmakers and the public after their outrage over learning the company had exploited people’s data and allowed falsehoods to overrun its site during the 2016 campaign.
The pivot is raising alarm about Meta’s priorities and about how some might exploit the world’s most popular social media platforms to spread misleading claims, launch fake accounts and rile up partisan extremists.
The Conversation, Joshua Ferrer – August 1, 2022
Partisan or not? Local election officials don’t tilt elections in favor of their party’s candidates
In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the spread of rumors that the election was stolen, Americans’ confidence in the integrity of the country’s electoral system is at an all-time low. A recent ABC News/Ipsos Poll found that 41% of Americans are not so confident, or not at all confident, in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system.
The once-obscure topic of election administration has made its way into news headlines across the country. Local election officials – those charged with running the country’s election contests – have faced harassment and even death threats.
Have these officials, as some charge now, used their authority to interfere with America’s democratic process? Do local election officials abuse their power?
The short answer, according to research I conducted with my UCLA colleagues, political scientists Igor Geyn and Daniel Thompson, is that they haven’t so far. Both Democratic and Republican election officials oversee elections with similar partisan outcomes, turnout rates and administrative policies.
No undue influence
In much of the U.S., elections are administered by partisan elected officials rather than nonpartisan bureaucrats.
These officials are selected by voters at the county or municipal level. Their responsibilities are wide-ranging and include registering voters, maintaining a registration list, hiring and training poll workers, selecting poll locations, printing ballots, acquiring election equipment, running early and absentee voting, educating voters, overseeing Election Day, tabulating votes, handling provisional ballots and certifying election results.
The potential for these officials to sway elections in their party’s favor seems obvious.
Legislators have waged hotly contested battles over voting laws, with the understood but rarely stated belief that making it easier or harder to vote will benefit their party at the ballot box.
The same reasoning – that making voting more or less difficult can affect election outcomes – holds true for those administering these laws. Local election officials have discretion over decisions such as the number of polling places to establish, early voting hours, registration list purges and accepting absentee and provisional ballots.
The past behavior of election officials provides clues to how Democratic and Republican clerks will act in the future. We studied more than 3,000 partisan local election officials from 1998 to 2018 in 1,313 counties across 21 states. We then examined the presidential elections they were responsible for administering.
We found that Democrats and Republicans serving similar counties oversee elections with similar results. When a Democratic election official is responsible for administering elections, the Democratic presidential candidate does not typically perform any better than if a Republican official administered that election. This is true across every year we studied from 2004 to 2020.
Democratic and Republican officials serving equivalent counties also oversee elections with similar levels of voter turnout. They even appear to make similar administrative decisions across many parts of the job, including the number of polling places opened, the share of votes they determine must be cast provisionally, the share of provisional ballots rejected, the percentage of eligible voters registered, the registration removal rate, the partisan balance of registrants and voter wait times.
Livestreams
Bloomberg Markets and Finance, August 12, 2022 – 12:00 pm (ET)
CNN, August 4, 2022 – 9:30 am (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/03/politics/kansas-abortion-amendment-analysis/index.html
WATCH LIVE: FBI Director Wray testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee
CNN, August 3, 2022 – 11:30 am (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/31/politics/republicans-midterm-elections-generic-ballot/index.html
Election officials testify in Senate hearing on protecting election workers
CNN, August 5, 2022 – 2:00 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/31/politics/republicans-midterm-elections-generic-ballot/index.html
WATCH LIVE: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds briefing amid inflation bill talks
Vox, August 1, 2022 – 4:00 pm (ET)
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/7/30/23284041/arizona-kari-lake-mark-finchem-trump-election-fraud
WATCH LIVE: Kamala Harris to announce $1 billion in funds for action on climate disasters
Videos
Bloomberg Markets and Finance, Steve Rattner – August 5, 2022 (07:03)
Steve Rattner, Willett Advisors Chairman & CEO, breaks down the Inflation Reduction Act and what it means for investors and why there is a cost to addressing climate.
PBS NewsHour – August 7, 2022 (05:47)
How the Inflation Reduction Act aims to reduce prescription drug costs
48 million Americans get prescription drugs through Medicare Part D, but Medicare has had no ability to negotiate prices. A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act would change that in some cases. The bill would also cap out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients. Stacy Dusetzina from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.
PBS NewsHour – August 5, 2022 (12:14)
New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including how Democrats are moving closer to passing a new climate and spending bill and a look at Tuesday’s primary election results and how they could shake up the midterm election landscape.
PBS NewsHour – August 6, 2022 (03:24)
News Wrap: Indiana passes new law banning nearly all abortions
In our news wrap Saturday, Indiana has passed new legislation banning nearly all abortions, the U.S. Senate is working to pass a major health, climate and tax reform bill, President Biden tests negative for COVID again after a rebound case, China cuts communications with the U.S. after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and violence escalates in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s airstrikes Friday.
PBS NewsHour – August 4, 2022 (05:42)
News Wrap: Biden administration declares monkeypox a public health emergency
In our news wrap Thursday, the Biden administration declared a public health emergency over monkeypox as the number of U.S. cases passed 6,600, President Biden tests positive for COVID for a sixth consecutive day, China retaliates in a dispute over Taiwan, Puerto Rico’s former governor was arrested in a federal corruption case, and Taliban officials deny knowing al-Qaida’s leader was in Kabul.
CNN, Chris Cillizza – August 5, 2022 (04:48)
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/01/27/senator-kyrsten-sinema-democrats-backlash-cillizza-the-point-orig.cnn
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Democrat, has received backlash from her own party time and time again. In the latest episode of The Point, CNN’s Chris Cillizza explains why that may not be a problem for her.
CBS Mornings – August 1, 2022 (02:51)
CBS News elections and surveys director Anthony Salvanto joins “CBS Mornings” to discuss the Battleground Tracker’s estimates on House control for the 2022 midterm elections. #news #2022midterms #2022election
Information
Vox, Stewart, Zhou, & Leber – August 7, 2022
The climate bill is also a health care bill (and it does a few things on taxes, too).
The biggest effort to tackle climate change — ever
The Inflation Reduction Act would be the biggest thing the US has ever done to tackle climate change, and climate makes up the largest share of the bill’s spending: nearly $370 billion.
Helping people afford health insurance for longer
The climate parts of the bill have gotten the most attention. But the bill also includes some significant steps on health care, including shoring up an expansion to the Affordable Care Act.
Negotiating prescription drug prices
For years, Democrats have told voters that they will take on policies that reduce the costs of prescription drugs, only to be blocked by Republicans and fall short. This bill allows them to finally fulfill that campaign promise by enabling Medicare to negotiate on prescription drugs — a major change that could lead to significant cost reductions for a small subset of drugs.
Closing a loophole to make corporations pay more taxes
The agreement also includes a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion. Senate Democrats note that while the current corporate tax rate is 21 percent, dozens of major companies, including AT&T, Amazon, and ExxonMobil, pay much less than that. The proposal says that the provision would raise $313 billion, though as Politico notes, there’s debate among tax experts about how and whether this would work.
CNN – July 26, 2022
There’s a lot at stake with midterms this year. Find out when your state is voting
Major races: SENATE. HOUSE. GOVERNOR. ATTY. GENERAL. SEC. OF STATE
Who can vote: Kansas primaries are only open to registered party members, but unaffiliated voters can affiliate with a party at the polls.
Arizona primary election
Major races: SENATE. HOUSE. GOVERNOR. ATTY. GENERAL. SEC. OF STATE
Who can vote: Arizona primaries are open to voters registered with that party and to unaffiliated voters.
Michigan primary election
Major races: HOUSE. GOVERNOR. ATTY. GENERAL. SEC. OF STATE
Who can vote: Michigan doesn’t have party registration, so registered voters can vote in either primary.
Missouri primary election
Major races: SENATE. HOUSE
Who can vote: Missouri doesn’t have party registration, so registered voters can vote in either primary.
Washington primary election
Major races: SENATE. HOUSE. SEC. OF STATE
Who can vote: Washington uses “top two” primaries, where all candidates run a single ballot and the top two vote-getters advance.
Articles
Politico, David Siders : Analysis et al.
Roe jolts the midterms — 5 takeaways from a key primary night
The Roe earthquake is real
Republicans make it easier on themselves
The Meijer name wasn’t enough to overcome political gravity in West Michigan
Election denialism is still flourishing
And yet … Trump takes a hit
Associated Press, C. Cassidy & T. Richmond – August 7, 2022
GOP seeking power over elections in Wisconsin, Minnesota
Wisconsin’s secretary of state has no role in elections, but that could change if Republicans are able to flip the seat this year and pass a law that would empower the office with far more responsibilities.
All three GOP candidates competing for the nomination in Tuesday’s primary support the shift and echo former President Donald Trump’s false claims that fraud cost him the 2020 election.
If successful, the move would be a bold attempt to shift power to an office Republicans hope to control going into the 2024 presidential election and would represent a reversal from just six years ago when Republicans established the Wisconsin Elections Commission with bipartisan support. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes in the presidential race.
Associated Press, Amanda Seitz – August 5, 2022
Meta trims election misinformation efforts as midterms loom
Facebook owner Meta is quietly curtailing some of the safeguards designed to thwart voting misinformation or foreign interference in U.S. elections as the November midterm vote approaches.
It’s a sharp departure from the social media giant’s multibillion-dollar efforts to enhance the accuracy of posts about U.S. elections and regain trust from lawmakers and the public after their outrage over learning the company had exploited people’s data and allowed falsehoods to overrun its site during the 2016 campaign.
The pivot is raising alarm about Meta’s priorities and about how some might exploit the world’s most popular social media platforms to spread misleading claims, launch fake accounts and rile up partisan extremists.
The Conversation, Joshua Ferrer – August 1, 2022
Partisan or not? Local election officials don’t tilt elections in favor of their party’s candidates
In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the spread of rumors that the election was stolen, Americans’ confidence in the integrity of the country’s electoral system is at an all-time low. A recent ABC News/Ipsos Poll found that 41% of Americans are not so confident, or not at all confident, in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system.
The once-obscure topic of election administration has made its way into news headlines across the country. Local election officials – those charged with running the country’s election contests – have faced harassment and even death threats.
Have these officials, as some charge now, used their authority to interfere with America’s democratic process? Do local election officials abuse their power?
The short answer, according to research I conducted with my UCLA colleagues, political scientists Igor Geyn and Daniel Thompson, is that they haven’t so far. Both Democratic and Republican election officials oversee elections with similar partisan outcomes, turnout rates and administrative policies.
No undue influence
In much of the U.S., elections are administered by partisan elected officials rather than nonpartisan bureaucrats.
These officials are selected by voters at the county or municipal level. Their responsibilities are wide-ranging and include registering voters, maintaining a registration list, hiring and training poll workers, selecting poll locations, printing ballots, acquiring election equipment, running early and absentee voting, educating voters, overseeing Election Day, tabulating votes, handling provisional ballots and certifying election results.
The potential for these officials to sway elections in their party’s favor seems obvious.
Legislators have waged hotly contested battles over voting laws, with the understood but rarely stated belief that making it easier or harder to vote will benefit their party at the ballot box.
The same reasoning – that making voting more or less difficult can affect election outcomes – holds true for those administering these laws. Local election officials have discretion over decisions such as the number of polling places to establish, early voting hours, registration list purges and accepting absentee and provisional ballots.
The past behavior of election officials provides clues to how Democratic and Republican clerks will act in the future. We studied more than 3,000 partisan local election officials from 1998 to 2018 in 1,313 counties across 21 states. We then examined the presidential elections they were responsible for administering.
We found that Democrats and Republicans serving similar counties oversee elections with similar results. When a Democratic election official is responsible for administering elections, the Democratic presidential candidate does not typically perform any better than if a Republican official administered that election. This is true across every year we studied from 2004 to 2020.
Democratic and Republican officials serving equivalent counties also oversee elections with similar levels of voter turnout. They even appear to make similar administrative decisions across many parts of the job, including the number of polling places opened, the share of votes they determine must be cast provisionally, the share of provisional ballots rejected, the percentage of eligible voters registered, the registration removal rate, the partisan balance of registrants and voter wait times.
CNN, Clare Foran& Ali Zaslav, – August 7, 2022
Senators working through marathon series of amendment votes, a key step ahead of passing Democrats’ sweeping health and climate bill
The Senate has worked through the night and into Sunday morning, taking a series of back-to-back amendment votes that are among the last steps toward final passage of Democrats’ sweeping health care and climate bill — putting the package on track to be approved by the chamber as soon as this weekend.
The process is known on Capitol Hill as a “vote-a-rama,” and started Saturday night shortly after 11:30 p.m. ET, and which is expected to stretch well into Sunday. A vote on final passage of the bill will take place when amendment votes end, the timing of which it is not yet clear.
The bill — named the Inflation Reduction Act — would represent the largest climate investment in US history and make major changes to health policy by giving Medicare the power for the first time to negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs and extending expiring health care subsidies for three years. The legislation would impose new taxes to pay for it.
CNN, Gregory Krieg… Analysis – August 3, 2022
The wording of the question was convoluted, but the answer was crystal clear: No. Voters in Kansas on Tuesday, in dramatic numbers and by an overwhelming margin, rejected a ballot measure that would have allowed lawmakers to ban abortion in the state.
As Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country race to outlaw the procedure in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, traditionally conservative Kansas, given the chance to directly respond at the ballot box, denied their own elected leaders’ the chance to revoke a right that has broad support across swaths of independent polling.
The rejection of the measure highlighted the increasingly stark divide between the activities of Republican state lawmakers, often in legislatures gerrymandered to effectively guarantee GOP control, and the political and policy desires of American voters. In more immediate terms, the ballot measure’s defeat — on a day of extraordinary turnout — also provides a clear indication that the desire to defend abortion rights could be a potent issue for Democrats in the coming midterm elections.
CNN, Fredreka Schouten, – August 1, 2022
State officials scramble to respond as election skepticism goes hyper-local
For several hours on a recent Thursday afternoon, a former college professor and his wife unspooled a string of alleged election “vulnerabilities” for officials in a rural New Mexico county to consider: “Digital manipulation” of the voter rolls. Voting machines that were not properly certified. “Ink anomalies” on ballots
“Conspiracy to violate the election code imputes liability to you,” David Clements told the three members of the Otero County Commission, before adding, “Unless you do something about it.”
Four days later, they did — refusing to certify the June 7 primary results and setting off a high-profile confrontation between the all-Republican commission and New Mexico’s Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver before two commissioners relented in the face of a state Supreme Court order.
Associated Press, Matthew Lee et al. – August 2, 2022
Biden: Killing of al-Qaida leader is long-sought ‘justice’
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, an operation he said delivered justice and hopefully “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The president said in an evening address from the White House that U.S. intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. The president approved the operation last week and it was carried out Sunday.
Al-Zawahri and the better-known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs after a nearly decade-long hunt.
CNN, Gregory Krieg et al.
Summer break is over. With fewer than 100 days until the general election, the final rounds of 2022 midterms primaries will come fast and furious over the next six weeks, beginning with a busy Tuesday featuring key contests around the country.
Former President Donald Trump’s influence is again looming over Republican Senate primaries, this time in Arizona and Missouri, while GOP House members in Washington state and Michigan face a conservative backlash over their votes to impeach Trump after the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection.
Michigan GOP Rep. Peter Meijer’s challenge from an election-denying Trump ally has attracted an extra dose of national interest thanks to Democratic campaign leadership, which has invested in propping up his right-wing opponent — a controversial tactic meant to engineer a better matchup for Democrats this fall.
Politico, Andrew Desiderio & Alexander Ward – August 1, 2022
Pelosi heads to Taiwan this week despite warnings from Xi and Biden
The speaker is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit in decades.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is scheduled to travel to Taiwan this week, according to a congressional official and a Taiwanese official familiar with the itinerary.
The trip would make her the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the self-governing island in decades.
Pelosi’s travel plans, which remain officially unconfirmed, have been the subject of bellicose rhetoric from China over the past few weeks — including suggestions that her plane could be shot down.
FivethirtyEight, Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich – August 1, 2022
How Far Right Will Republican Primary Voters Go In Arizona And Missouri?
We’re watching a dozen primaries in the two states.
After taking a month off (mostly), primary season is back in full force this Tuesday, Aug. 2. Voters in six states will choose candidates for the November elections, and there are so many compelling primaries that we’re previewing them in two installments again.
Today, we’ll take you through the 12 races we’re watching in Missouri and Arizona, highlighted by two open and very uncertain GOP primaries for Senate and two election deniers who could win high office in a key 2024 swing state.
The Hill, Hannah Trudo – August 1, 2022
How Fetterman is taking on Oz with an ‘irreverent,’ extremely online campaign
John Fetterman doesn’t want to be just another white guy from the Midwest promoting populism.
He wants to be the reason Pennsylvania has two Democrats in the Senate, and he’s willing to do the most to get there.
Accusing the competition of carpetbagging? Fine. Enlisting a reality TV star for laughs? Great.
Fetterman’s quest to beat Republican nominee Mehmet Oz is helping shape an election narrative in which both parties are trying to deflate their competition by any means necessary. And the state’s very-much-online race for the upper chamber is emerging as one of the most eccentric — and consequential — contests of the cycle.
Vox, Natalie Jennings – July 30, 2022
Arizona’s 2022 GOP primary is all about 2020
Election deniers Kari Lake and Mark Finchem could soon be one election away from running Arizona
here seem to be an endless number of Republican primary races in Arizona that all hinge on two things: The legitimacy of the 2020 election, which was challenged more dramatically in Arizona than any other state, and fealty to Donald Trump.
State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified to the January 6 committee about pressure he faced from Trump associates to unwind the 2020 election, has a serious primary challenge. The race to challenge Sen. Mark Kelly (D) features five Republicans — including state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whom Trump supporters are still hounding to challenge election matters, and the Trump-backed election denier Blake Masters.
And Kari Lake and Mark Finchem have made Trump’s election lies a centerpiece of their campaigns for governor and secretary of state, respectively, the two offices that have the most direct influence on elections. They’ve formed something like an unofficial ticket, which has gotten a hearty boost from Trump himself.
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NBC News, Sahil Kapur – August 1, 2022
In a key swing district, Katie Porter clashes with GOP opponent over inflation and ‘Orange County values’
Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and her 2022 rival, Scott Baugh, voiced sharply different views on tackling rising costs, abortion and same-sex marriage in interviews with NBC News.
In a rough year for Democrats, Republican Scott Baugh is trying to bring this Orange County swing district back to its GOP roots after it abandoned his party.
But he’s navigating a culturally changing region, now wary of a Republican Party transformed by Donald Trump, and a rising Democratic star in two-term Rep. Katie Porter, who, as one Republican operative lamented, “has more money than God.”
“I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t think it was winnable,” Baugh said in an interview
Commentary
FivethirtyEight, Nate Silver – August 5, 2022
It’s Hard To Win A Senate Race When You’ve Never Won An Election Before
Politics doesn’t have a farm system in the way that professional baseball does. But it has a hierarchy of its own for cultivating political prospects. The path usually goes something like this: First, a candidate wins some relatively minor, local office like city council or state representative. Then, they either win a seat in the U.S. House or a statewide office like attorney general. Only then do they run for U.S. Senate or governor.
Most of the Democrats running in competitive Senate and gubernatorial races have followed a version of this course. For instance, John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, for 13 years before being elected as the state’s lieutenant governor in 2018.
But most of the Republicans haven’t. As a group, they have little experience running for office, and even less experience at actually winning general elections. Historically, such candidates have a poor track record — and in 2022 they could cost Republicans key gubernatorial races as well as control of the Senate.
CNN, Richard Galant – August 7, 2022
Opinion: What started in Kansas upends American politics
In “The Wizard of Oz,” a tornado sends Dorothy and her Kansas home spinning into the “Merry Old Land of Oz.” Last week it was what Politico called a “political earthquake” in Kansas that sent the national debate over abortion into a new phase with many unknowns.
China fired off missiles, flew jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and called off talks with the US on issues such as climate change and military relations. The reason: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which China sees as part of its territory.
A Texas jury ordered incendiary radio host Alex Jones to pay a combined $49.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting 10 years ago. Jones’ legal troubles aren’t over by any means: he faces two more such trials.
Politico, Michael Kruse – August 7, 2022
‘There’s Never Been Anybody Like Him in the United States Senate’
Raphael Warnock won his seat running as an activist preacher. To keep it he’ll have to persuade voters he’s the rare senator who actually gets stuff done.
More broadly, though, the way Warnock has operated in the last year and a half in the Senate as well as the way he’s vying now for a full six-year term are natural extensions of the tensions that have animated his life and his work — the “double-consciousness” of the Black church, as he describes it in the 2014 book drawn from his doctoral dissertation, the “complementary yet competing sensibilities” of “revivalistic piety and radical protest,” the saving of souls and the salvation of society, what King called “long white robes over yonder” and “a suit and some shoes to wear down here.”
In strictly political terms, this tension and connection might be expressed as purity versus pragmatism. And for Warnock, ever the reverend, the balancing act between the high and the low, the eternal and the utterly quotidian, sometimes means taking a run-of-the-mill legislative compromise — one that doesn’t even allocate any actual money for the asphalt — and attempting to frame it as the apotheosis of our ongoing experiment of representative self-government.
CNN, Zachary B. Wolf – August 6, 2022
Why the most competitive congressional districts are disappearing
Republicans probably did not end up redrawing their way into the five congressional seats they need to take control of the House of Representatives, at least not on paper.
Instead, matching GOP gains in places like Texas and Florida with Democratic gains in blue states, Republicans nationwide ended up with nine new seats leaning toward them compared to eight now-Democratic seats based on their 2020 presidential performance, according to a 50-state analysis of the new congressional map by CNN’s political and data teams. It has the latest new congressional map for each state.
The larger story may not be that one party or the other gained seats, but rather that the number of competitive seats dropped by 17, part of a decades-long trend of polarization among voters and consolidation of power by political parties.
CNN, Harry Enten, – August 1, 2022
How Republicans could still blow the 2022 midterm elections
Sometimes polling trends meet your expectations. For example, you might expect a president’s approval rating to be low when we’re dealing with high inflation and negative growth in real disposable income per capita.
Sometimes, however, trends in public opinion are surprising. Even as President Joe Biden’s approval rating languishes south of 40%, Democrats aren’t just holding their own on the generic congressional ballot. They’re actually improving their position as Biden’s standing, if anything, gets worse.
Biden’s unpopular, but so are Republicans
Republicans now hold an average advantage of less than a point on the generic congressional ballot, which usually asks respondents some form of the following question: “If the elections for Congress were held today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican party?”
