- Why 5 House Republicans voted against the GOP’s Parents Bill of Rights The Hill
- House Republicans pass “parents bill of rights act” CBS Miami
- ‘Parents are furious:’ Cline, Griffith praise passage of Parents’ Bill of Rights Act WSET
- House GOP advances controversial bill to increase parental control in schools PBS NewsHour
- Extremist House Leaders Advance Discriminatory Bill Denying Millions of Parents the Right to Make Decisions For their Kids, Picking and Choosing Which Families Have Rights and Which Don’t Human Rights Campaign
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: GOPs
Silicon Valley Bank collapse: GOP’s Vivek Ramaswamy says more regulation would encourage ‘crony capitalism’ – Fox Business
- Silicon Valley Bank collapse: GOP’s Vivek Ramaswamy says more regulation would encourage ‘crony capitalism’ Fox Business
- GOP presidential candidates react to Silicon Valley Bank collapse; Trump blames ‘out-of-control Democrats’ Fox News
- This is how SVB depositors will get their money back CNN
- Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Becomes Campaign Topic as GOP Warns Against Bailout The Wall Street Journal
- Biden admin’s response to Silicon Valley Bank collapse is the ‘greatest form of corporate cronyism’: Tim Scott Fox News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
GOP’s hard-line tactics on migrants refocus midterm debate
They’ve delivered migrants on planes and buses to Washington, D.C., New York City — even Martha’s Vineyard. And the Republican governors of Florida and Texas may be just getting started.
Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas insist such dramatic steps are need to highlight a genuine crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of migrants stream into the country illegally each day. But weeks away from their own competitive reelections, friends and foes alike acknowledged that such hard-line tactics have effectively refocused November’s midterm elections — at least, temporarily — away from abortion rights and toward an issue more favorable to Republicans.
A defiant DeSantis on Tuesday blasted the Biden administration’s inaction on the Southern border and celebrated his own policies for making illegal immigration “a front-burner issue” ahead of the midterms.
“It will be a big issue in the elections, I can tell you that,” DeSantis said. “It’s already made more of an impact than anyone thought it could possibly make. But we’re going to continue to make more of an impact.”
Indeed, DeSantis and Abbott are pressing forward with — and even expanding on — controversial campaigns to ship thousands of immigrants from Texas to Democratic-led states and cities. Beyond shifting the national debate, their divisive moves could also serve to strengthen their national brands — and help legitimize their controversial policies — as they consider 2024 presidential bids.
“I personally thought it was a good idea,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.
The governors’ rhetoric is reminiscent of former President Donald Trump’s dire warnings ahead of the 2018 midterms that a migrant caravan threatened the Southern border. Trump’s GOP lost 40 seats in the House and gained two Senate seats that year.
Democrats from Connecticut to California have generated momentum in recent weeks by campaigning on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — and the GOP’s subsequent push to outlaw abortion in dozens of states. Republicans, meanwhile, want to make the midterms a referendum on President Joe Biden and concerns about the economy, crime and immigration.
This week, at least, immigration is leading the national debate.
“What they’re doing is raising the salience and relevance of the immigration issue, which is important to Republican voters and can help drive turnout,” said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “For the voters we’re appealing to, for the most part, the benefits outweigh the risks by a considerable margin.”
There are real risks, however, particularly for DeSantis, who has taken credit for two weekend charter planes that carried about 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a small, wealthy island off Massachusetts’ coast. The immigrants were told they were going to Boston.
A Texas sheriff on Monday opened an investigation into DeSantis’ flights, though the law enforcement official, an elected Democrat, did not say what laws may have been broken in putting 48 Venezuelans on private planes from San Antonio, the first stop for many migrants who cross the border.
A lawsuit was filed Tuesday against DeSantis and his transportation secretary on behalf of several of the migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, alleging the two politicians engaged in a “fraudulent and discriminatory scheme” to relocate them. DeSantis’ office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat who represents San Antonio, has called on the Justice Department to investigate the flights as well.
“These guys are immature, sadistic Trump imitators. That’s what they are,” Castro said of Abbott and DeSantis. “This is sadistic behavior. Whatever political point they were trying to make has been made a long time ago.”
DeSantis, who has stepped up travel on behalf of GOP candidates in the midterm elections, vowed to spend “every penny” of $12 million set aside by the state legislature for such “relocation programs.” On Tuesday, local officials in a Delaware community close to Biden’s vacation home were preparing to receive another one of DeSantis’ planes full of migrants from Texas, although the Florida governor refused to confirm the development.
Despite fierce criticism and potential legal liabilities, there has been little evidence of widespread political backlash in either state.
Democratic sympathizers in Florida staged news conferences in recent days condemning the governors while others compared DeSantis to late Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Spanish radio. But the number of Venezuelan voters in the state remains relatively small. Much of the community that exists has formed a coalition with Cubans, a crucial bloc in Florida that has increasingly voted Republican.
“Governors Abbott and DeSantis have had enough of it and decided to do something for people to pay attention,” said Ernesto Ackerman, a Republican who heads the Independent Venezuelan American Citizens. “This is a country of laws, not of scoundrels and tramps.”
In Texas, Abbott has spent the past two years pushing a series of provocative immigration measures that have elevated his national profile and kept critics on his right at bay. The two-term governor converted a former prison near Texas’ southern border into a jail for migrants, gave the National Guard extraordinary arrest powers and gridlocked some of America’s busiest ports for a week by mandating additional inspections for 18-wheelers crossing into the U.S.
The Abbott administration has been busing migrants to Washington, Chicago and New York City for months. The busing campaign includes two busloads of people who were dropped off outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence last weekend.
Longtime Abbott adviser Dave Carney said Texas would expand its operation this week to include new drop-off locations in other states.
“We’ve been focused on this for two years. It’s got nothing to do with politics. The communities are screaming bloody murder,” Carney said, referring to border towns flooded with immigrants apprehended at the border and subsequently released.
Republicans cast the border crisis as a failure of the Biden administration.
The federal government this week reported that authorities stopped migrants 2.15 million times from October through August, the first time that measure has ever topped 2 million and a 39% increase from the same period a year earlier.
Border crossings have been fueled partly by repeat crossers because there are no legal consequences for getting caught under a pandemic-era rule that denies a right to seek asylum. Even so, the numbers are extraordinarily high.
While Abbott and DeSantis have also highlighted their accomplishments on issues related to the economy, neither has taken steps to moderate their immigration policies as the November election nears.
Abbott is running against former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who has outraised Abbott in a contest that represents the toughest challenge of the governor’s political career.
Immigration remains a crucial issue for Democrats who have long believed Texas’ booming cities and shifting demographics would eventually turn America’s biggest red state blue. But in overwhelmingly Hispanic counties on the border, Republicans are making an aggressive play for three congressional seats this fall after Trump made major gains in the region in 2020.
It was much the same in South Florida, where Trump’s GOP performed better than expected in the last election.
DeSantis is running against former Rep. Charlie Crist, whose campaign has charged in recent days that the governor “shot himself in the foot” by shipping immigrants from Texas to Massachusetts. The move sparked a fundraising surge for Crist that exceeded $1 million over a 48-hour period, according to spokesperson Samantha Ramirez.
Republican candidates on the November ballot don’t seem worried.
“I think it is a valid maneuver to use in order to try to wake up or at least expose the hypocrisy of progressive Democrats that say the border is secure and there’s no problem down here whatsoever,” said Joseph Swiger, one of dozens of Republicans running for local office in Texas border counties where the GOP seldom bothered to recruit candidates in the past.
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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.
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In fiery midterm speech, Biden says GOP’s turned toward ‘semi-fascism’
“The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security,” Biden said, referencing former president Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “They’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace — embrace — political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.”
“This is why in this moment, those of you who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we must be stronger,” he added.
As if on cue, the rally was interrupted by a heckler yelling, “You stole the election!” The crowd booed as the man was escorted out, holding his two fingers up like President Richard M. Nixon and taking a brief bow.
Earlier in the evening, speaking at a reception that helped raise $1 million for Democratic campaigns, Biden more pointedly raised concerns about American democracy and the Republicans he views as a threat.
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”
Bringing up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his frequent interactions with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden also criticized his predecessor for weakening the United States on the global stage.
“I underestimated how much damage the previous four years had done in terms of America’s reputation in the world,” the president said.
The rhetoric was an escalation for Biden and an indication that he views the threat as greater than just Trump and an ideology that shows little sign of abating. It marked a transition as well, as the president turned more pointedly toward the midterm elections and attempted not only to tout his own record but to create a sharper contrast with the opposing party.
“I want to be crystal-clear about what’s on the ballot this year,” he said near the start of his remarks, during which he removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.”
“The very survival of our planet is on the ballot,” he added. “Your right to vote is on the ballot. Even democracy. Are you ready to fight for these things now?”
A spokesman for the Republican National Committee criticized Biden for his remarks, including his use of the term “semi-fascism.”
“Despicable,” Nathan Brand, an RNC spokesman, said in response. “Biden forced Americans out of their jobs, transferred money from working families to Harvard lawyers and sent our country into a recession while families can’t afford gas and groceries. Democrats don’t care about suffering Americans — they never did.”
Earlier in the evening, the White House used its official Twitter account to point toward comments from Republican lawmakers that they viewed as hypocritical — a level of partisan combativeness that Biden’s administration has often avoided.
After Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), speaking to conservative outlet Newsmax, said it was “completely unfair” for Biden to forgive some student debt, the White House reminded Greene on Twitter that she had $183,504 in Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven.
It continued with a number of other lawmakers — including Reps. Vern Buchanan (Fla.), Mike Kelly (Pa.) and Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) — with the White House noting the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt those Republicans, who criticized the student loan forgiveness program, had forgiven through PPP.
During the rally Thursday night, Biden’s midterm message also emerged as one centered on a story of recovery. He painted a picture of a country that’s rising from the depths of a global pandemic and economic devastation.
“We’ve come a long way,” he said, in what amounted to a campaign slogan in a high school gymnasium where some in the crowd held signs that read “A Better America.”
The question that will loom over the next few months is whether voters agree that the country is moving forward and whether Democrats remain motivated, particularly at a time when most candidates in competitive races have been avoiding Biden and not asking him to campaign with them.
Biden urged his party to turn out in large numbers, in part by trying to convince them of the unfinished business he wants to get done. In an indication of his struggles to deal with two Democratic senators who often thwart him — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — he said: “If we elect two more senators, we keep the House … we’re going to get a lot of unfinished business done.”
He said they would codify the Roe v. Wade abortion protections, ban assault weapons, pass universal prekindergarten, restore the child tax credit and pass voting rights protections.
But Biden grew most animated when criticizing Republicans and expressing astonishment over the direction the party has headed.
“There are not many real Republicans anymore,” he said, adding that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan “is a Republican you can deal with.”
“I respect conservative Republicans,” he added. “I don’t respect these MAGA Republicans.”
For a president who has often avoided discussing his predecessor — referring to him at some points as “the former guy” — Biden shed much of that reluctance Thursday.
“Donald Trump isn’t just a former president,” Biden said. “He is a defeated former president!”
“It’s not hyperbole,” he added. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again.”
Texas GOP’s Swing to Far Right Cemented With Party Platform – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
Ten years ago, the Texas Republican Party used its platform to oppose teaching critical thinking in schools. In 2014, it declared homosexuality a chosen behavior contrary to God and endorsed “reparative therapy” to reverse it. By 2020, the party was ready to remind the world that “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.”
But now the GOP platform in the country’s largest red state — long an ideological wish list that even the most conservative Texans knew was mostly filled with pipe dreams that would never become policy — has broken new ground in its push to the far right.
Approved by 5,000-plus party delegates last weekend in Houston during the party’s biennial convention, the new platform brands President Joe Biden an “acting” commander-in-chief who was never “legitimately elected.”
It may not matter who the president is, though, since the platform takes previous language about secession much farther — urging the Republican-controlled legislature to put the question of leaving the United States to voters next year.
The platform also says homosexuality is “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and rejects bipartisan legislation in Congress seeking to raise the minimum age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21, saying Texans under 21 are “most likely to be victims of violent crime and thus most likely to need to defend themselves.”
Though non-binding, the platform illustrates just how far Texas Republicans have moved to the right in the past decade — from championing tea party ideals in 2012 to endorsing former President Donald Trump’s continued lies about nonexistent widespread fraud costing him an election he actually lost by more than 7 million votes.
“The platform reflects the direction that party activists believe the party should take,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist based in the Texas capital of Austin.
He said that, rather than deciding elections or dictating legislative action, the platform is more relevant as a signal of “where primary voters are and what they care about.”
Mackowiak said items like considering succession won’t be taken seriously, but “Trump’s policy agenda is here to stay.” He said that, as the former president continues to question 2020 election results, he will continue to find a receptive audience in the Texas GOP.
“Are people really in doubt that Republicans have concerns about how the election was conducted?” Mackowiak asked.
Matt Rinaldi, a former state lawmaker who now chairs the Texas GOP, said state Republicans “rightly have no faith in the 2020 election results and we don’t care how many times the elites tell us we have to.”
“We refuse to let Democrats rig the elections in 2022 or 2024,” Rinaldi said in a statement.
Democrats haven’t rigged anything. An Associated Press r eview of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Texas’ 2020 election was a romp even by the standards of Republicans who have dominated the state for decades. The party’s candidates topped Democrats in key congressional and statehouse races as Trump easily carried its electoral votes.
But that didn’t stop the former president from praising the party’s 2022 platform, posting Tuesday: “Look at the “Great State of Texas and their powerful Republican Party Platform on the 2020 Presidential Election Fraud.”
“Such courage,” he wrote, “but that’s why Texas is Texas.”
Trump was cheering language declaring, “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected.” That was a departure from as recently as 2014, when the Texas GOP platform questioned Barack Obama’s “commitment to citizens’ constitutional rights,” but at least recognized him as president.
This year’s platform also says that “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.”
Ed Espinoza, executive director of the advocacy organization Progress Texas, said some of the adherence to open discriminatory language might have receded if not for the rise of Trump — who has demonstrated “he could double down on the crazy and not suffer a consequence yet.”
“Normally what happens is, when there’s crazy in a party, people try to soften it,” said Espinoza, former Western States Director of the Democratic National Committee. “In this case, they saw it worked for Trump so they think it’ll work for them.”
Texas was an independent republic for nearly a decade until 1845. With the coronavirus pandemic raging, the 2020 Texas Republican Party convention was held virtually and degenerated into a leadership struggle. But it also featured platform language declaring, “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States should a future president and congress change our political system from a constitutional republic to another system.”
That caveat about governmental system was dropped in the 2022 edition, which seeks a referendum for voters “to determine whether or not” their state “should reassert its status as an independent nation.”
Texas’ rightward push was clear in ways beyond the party platform. Delegates booed Republican Sen. John Cornyn — who has held his seat for 20 years and got more 2020 votes statewide than Trump did — for working on bipartisan legislation seeking to impose modest limits on guns. Those efforts began following last month’s mass shooting in the Texas town of Uvalde, which killed 19 elementary students and two teachers.
Still, such state convention outbursts also aren’t new. Republican Gov. Rick Perry was booed in 2012 for praising fellow GOPer and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was then locked in a primary battle for an open Senate seat with Ted Cruz. Some delegates also in the past walked out of a speech by then-Republican Texas House Speaker Joe Straus.
“It shows you how much QAnon may not be an outlier in the Republican Party,” Espinoza said. “Some people are very susceptible to conspiracy theory, and that appears to be a higher percentage the deeper you go into the Republican Party of Texas.”
Trump speaks to GOP’s top donors in New Orleans
“And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch,” he said of labeling U.S. military planes with Chinese flags and bombing Russia, which was met with laughter from the crowd of donors, according to a recording of the speech obtained by The Washington Post.
His 84-minute address to about 250 of the Republican Party’s top donors at the elite Four Seasons focused heavily on foreign policy and his claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” as he ticked through a smorgasbord of topics and perceived enemies, using vulgarities and jokes that often drew raucous laughter. Trump also took pictures with some of the party’s top donors and participated in a pricey roundtable for about 10 of them.
After coming under fierce criticism for praising Putin as “savvy” and “brilliant” for the Russian leader’s moves in Ukraine last month, he struck a tougher tone on Saturday — claiming Putin never would have invaded the country if Trump was president of the United States.
But he spent far more time blaming President Biden than Putin, and often spoke in vague platitudes without specifying what he would have done differently.
“I knew Putin very well. He would not have done it. He would have never done it,” Trump said, without mentioning that, as president, he held up military aid for Ukraine as he pushed the country to investigate Biden’s son Hunter.
He espoused praise for North Korea’s brutal leader, marveling at how Kim’s generals and aides “cowered” when the dictator spoke to them. “Total control,” Trump said of how Kim ran the country, describing generals snapping to attention and standing up on command.
“His people were sitting at attention,” he added.
“I looked at my people and said I want my people to act like that,” he said to laughter.
Trump also spent a large portion of his speech falsely claiming that he won Georgia, Wisconsin and other states in the 2020 election, offering unsubstantiated theories about how he won. After not touching on the election until minute 45 — a win for some of his advisers — he finished the speech with a long jeremiad about it. For example, he said, he knew he had to have won Georgia because he won Alabama and South Carolina by such large numbers, and he accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of tilting the election against him.
Trump made an ominous call for the party to be more loyal in backing up his claims about fraud.
“The vote counter is often more important than the candidate,” he told the crowd, saying he had learned that from radio show host Mark Levin. “ … We have to get a lot tougher and smarter at the polls.”
If not, he said, the Republican Party would no longer exist.
“At a certain point, they won’t show up if we allow this to happen again,” he said of Republicans.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, he added, had vowed she would “work on it.”
He also viciously mocked Republicans who didn’t back him in his crusade to hold power after he lost the 2020 election. “Stupid, corrupt Mitch McConnell,” he said of the Senate minority leader, before labeling former vice president Mike Pence a “conveyor belt — like corn” for opening and counting the electoral college votes as the Constitution requires.
“Terrible,” he said of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), who voted to impeach him.
Trump all but said he planned to run for the presidency again — and that he was going nowhere. “I wonder who that might be,” he jokingly said of the 2024 nominee, as the crowd broke out in “Trump!” chants.
“We’ve already won two presidential elections,” Trump falsely stated. “And now I feel obligated that we have to really look strongly at doing it again. … We are looking at it very, very strongly. We have to do it. We have to do it.”
“We’re doing great as a party,” he said. “The Republican Party is now a fighting party. We are now a winning party. We are never going back to what it was before. It was heading in the wrong direction.”
Trump’s speech was a culmination of two days of events at the gilded riverfront resort here, where a dazzling chandelier dominates the lobby and sturgeon caviar goes for $200 an ounce and tiki cocktails go for $18. Donors who have written checks for tens of thousands of dollars walked out Saturday night holding copies of the former president’s photo book, titled “Our Journey Together,” purchased by the RNC.
The mood has been largely ebullient at the hotel, as donors and operatives predicted Republicans would win back congressional majorities.
Donors have also heard from Pence, senators and congressmen, pollster Kellyanne Conway and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to people familiar with the events. Pence and Haley, both potential 2024 candidates, touched on some of the same themes as Trump — Ukraine and Russia, chiefly — but offered vastly shorter and different speeches.
Discussing future elections, Pence said Republicans needed to move past the 2020 election loss. Trump has continued to falsely claim that Pence had the authority to overturn the 2020 election during Congress’s counting of electoral college votes, which he did not. Such false claims helped fuel the “Hang Mike Pence!” chant that erupted among the pro-Trump mob during the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“My fellow Republicans, we can only win if we are united around an optimistic vision for the future based on our highest values,” he said. “We cannot win by fighting yesterday’s battles or by re-litigating the past.”
Pence advisers said he wanted to draw a contrast with Trump, who continues to look back on the 2020 election, as he did on Saturday evening.
Pence obliquely chastised Trump for his comments that Putin was “savvy” and “brilliant,” according to a copy of his remarks reviewed by The Post. “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin,” Pence said. Trump cited the comments Saturday night: “Nobody has ever been tougher on Russia than me,” he retorted, adding that those who have accused him of being a “Putin apologist” disqualify themselves from being “serious leaders of our country.”
Haley did not mention Trump once in her speech, according to audio reviewed by The Post. She largely attacked Biden and described a country in decline that is battling over boys playing on girls’ sports teams, gender issues in the military and curriculum fights in classrooms.
“The reason Ukraine is in this situation, the reason we have world chaos like we are, is the United States has been completely and totally distracted,” Haley said. “ … We have to stop this national self-loathing that’s happening in our country.”
She implicitly criticized the Trump administration for not doing more to take on China when it came to the coronavirus pandemic and, in contrast with Trump’s comments in recent weeks, criticized Russia for its moves in Ukraine.
“When China gave covid to the world and millions of people died, what did we do? We didn’t even call one pitiful meeting at the United Nations,” she said. “We didn’t ask China to step up. … We’ve done nothing about it.”
Several people in the room said that Trump’s speech stretched far too long and that he sounded like he was rambling more in the last 30 minutes. In the middle of the speech, attendees said people in the crowd seemed to lose interest.
Trump came to the dinner as the leading figure in the GOP, but his influence has waned in recent months, according to polls and interviews with activists and donors. Though he has raised more money than any other Republican since leaving office — his political action committee has more than $120 million — he has seen some erosion in support.
That Trump came to New Orleans at all — he rarely leaves his properties — and that the GOP did not hold the event in Palm Beach, Fla., at his club as they did last year were signs to some that his influence has faded. Last year, his speech was widely panned, and some donors left early, as he made it all about the election.
Trump spent much of the evening talking about the fighting in Ukraine and sought to project strength on his foreign policy record, regaling the crowd with a long story about how his administration took on the Islamic State militant group.
He bragged about pushing NATO — which he called a “paper tiger” — to force its countries to pay more for joint defense, but did not mention that he threatened to pull out altogether. He attacked Biden for rising inflation and gas prices, using exaggerated numbers in some cases, and said countries were “emptying their prisons” in the United States until he came along.
He mocked Biden for continually saying the United States would not militarily attack Russia but offered ambivalence on exactly what he could do. “We’re not spreading democracy at the point of a gun,” he said. Trump said Putin had talked more about nuclear power recently because he did not respect Biden, but he did not offer proof. And he said Biden should take a more belligerent tone.
“At what point do we say can we not take this massive crime against humanity? We can’t let it happen. We can’t let it continue to happen,” he said.
He said the military, under his watch, had gotten in “skirmishes” with Russian troops and won, but he did not say more.
And he ominously spoke of Putin being more willing to engage in nuclear war — even referencing World War III — because Biden is president. He said that around the world, others would become more aggressive, too, without him.
“Watch China. You watch what’s going to happen there. Everything seems to be falling to pieces,” he said. “His complete and gross incompetence, they threaten a much wider world.”
Biden has received some plaudits for his handling of the Ukraine situation among foreign policy experts.
Trump reiterated some of his frequently repeated falsehoods and petty grievances. “The global warming hoax, it just never ends,” he said. He mocked the concept of sea levels rising, disputing widely held science. “To which I say, great, we have more waterfront property,” he said.
“There was a big thing about global cooling — what will be next?” he said. Trump said he was more concerned about “nuclear warming” than global warming.
He bragged about his crowds, inflating numbers at recent rallies, and mocked Biden for observing social distancing during the 2020 campaign. “He’d have eight circles and he’d have to get the media to fill them,” he said, describing the distanced seats Biden’s team would put out at rallies, with circles around them.
Trump called George Conway, the husband of Kellyanne Conway and a fierce critic of the former president’s, a “stupid son of a b—-” and questioned why she married him, even as he extensively praised her. He mocked several of his former aides, including John Bolton, who he said only loved going to war. And he labeled Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the congressional impeachment probes against him, a “watermelon head … because his head is shaped like a watermelon.”
‘Outrageous’: Pelosi condemns McCarthy for GOP’s ‘bigoted rhetoric’ in wake of Boebert attack on Omar
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives issued a furious joint statement condemning Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP officials for failing to discipline their members for “inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric” in the wake of the latest attack against US Rep Ilhan Omar.
“Leader McCarthy and the entire House Republican Leadership’s repeated failure to condemn inflammatory and bigoted rhetoric from members of their conference is outrageous,” they said in a statement on 26 November.
“We call on the Republican Leadership to address this priority with the Congresswoman and to finally take real action to confront racism,” they said.
Republican US Rep Lauren Boebert issued an apology from her congressional office’s Twitter account after video of her suggesting Rep Omar – one of two Muslim women in Congress – was mistaken for a terrorist in an elevator on Capitol Hill.
“I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep Omar,” she said. “I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction.”
In a video showing her addressing a group of supporters, Rep Boebert criticised what she has called the “jihad squad” in Congress, claiming that she and a member of her staff were in an elevator as a US Capitol Police officer reached for the door as it closed.
“What’s happening? I look to my left, and there she is: Ilhan Omar,” she said. “And I said, well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.”
She added: “So we only had one floor to go. I said, ‘Oh look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’”
Rep Omar, the first Somali American elected to Congress, responded to the video on Thursday after it spread across social media.
“Fact, this buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up,” she said. “Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout.”
On Friday, she added that “saying I am a suicide bomber is no laughing matter” and called on House leadership to “take appropriate action”.
The statement from Speaker Pelosi and House Democratic leaders – including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark, Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries and Caucus Vice Chair Pete Aguilar – said that “racism and bigotry of any form, including Islamophobia, must always be called out, confronted and condemned in any place it is found.”
“Congresswoman Boebert’s repeated, ongoing and targeted Islamophobic comments and actions against another member of Congress, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are both deeply offensive and concerning,” they said in the statement.
Democratic leaders called on congresswoman Boebert “to fully retract these comments and refrain from making similar ones going forward.”
Rep Boebert was widely criticised for referring to Rep Omar as a member of the “jihad squad” during a speech on the floor of the House during debate over whether far-right Republican congressman Paul Gosar should be censured for posting an anime clip depicting the killing of US Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In February, House Democrats and several Republicans voted to remove far-right US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments following antisemitic and anti-Muslim remarks on social media as well as her amplification of violent conspiracy theories and endorsement of political executions.
The formal rebuke of Rep Gosar – the first censure in the House in more than a decade – followed only the latest attempt from the Arizona congressman and his team to legitimise rhetoric that has festered online for years before landing in the halls of Congress.
Seth Meyers Takes Down Paul Gosar, the GOP’s Most ‘Unhinged’ ‘Idiot’
It takes a lot these days to become the most odious Republican in Congress, but Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) got there this week after the House formally censured him for tweeting murder anime that targeted his colleague Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
While President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill into law this week, Meyers explained that “Republicans spent their Wednesday defending one of their most unhinged members.” In his own defense, Gosar said that if he has to follow in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, who was the first member of Congress to face a censure vote, “then so be it, it is done.”
“I love when these idiots try to sound smart and adopt a defiant tone by using dramatic language like ‘so be it, it is done,’” Meyers replied. “You don’t sound like a Founding Father, you sound like Cousin Greg.”
And to Republicans “complaining that this is a waste of time,” the Late Night host said, “This whole thing would have been much easier and taken up much less time if you’d just been willing to step forward and say it was a deeply stupid tweet. But to be fair, he is a deeply stupid man.”
From there, Meyers broke down some of the worst defenses from the “dumbest people in politics,” including Louie Gohmert, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz. “Our political system can’t function like this,” he said, “where one party, for all its many flaws, tries to govern responsibly and the other wants to burn everything down.”
Meyers ultimately connected the dots all the way to the anti-Democracy movement on the right, because “the same people defending Gosar are the ones who tried to overturn the election on January 6th.” Ultimately, he said that there’s “no behavior too grotesque” for the GOP to defend, whether it’s Donald Trump endorsing the idea of melting down voting machines to make prison bars or Gosar’s “deeply stupid tweet.”
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Democrats will lose full control of Virginia’s House of Delegates, CNN projects, bolstering GOP’s gains across the state
CNN projected Thursday that Republicans in the state will win at least half of the seats in the chamber, guaranteeing that Democrats will no longer hold full control there. CNN has not projected that Republicans will take control of the House.
Democrats are projected so far to win 46 seats.
The best the party could do at this point is tie the number of Republican seats, but Democrats would need to win the remaining unprojected races to do so. A tie would mean a power sharing agreement between the two parties. If Republicans win even one of those four unprojected seats, they will control the chamber.
Five of the projected Republican wins are pick-ups and the shift in power — paired with Republicans Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares capturing the state’s governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general posts, respectively — underscores a broad political reckoning after years of Democratic control.
In recent years, Virginia Republicans had little recourse as Democrats enacted a progressive agenda, passing legislation that tightened gun control, expanded reproductive rights and offered protections for LGBTQ individuals. Virginia lawmakers also ratified the Equal Rights Amendment after years of trying and rolled back a number of laws Democrats described as “archaic.”
But Republicans succeeded in casting some of those policies as Democratic overreach, while painting the party as soft on crime. The strategy secured turnout in rural, conservative areas without alienating suburban voters.
The GOP pick-ups have the potential to deliver the party a jolt of momentum heading into 2022 and stand as an ominous warning to Democrats as the state’s off-year elections — where voters take to the ballot box a year after the presidential election — are often seen as a referendum on a new White House.
Though Youngkin came into the race as largely a blank slate with unlimited money, his success validates his strategy of largely focusing on local issues and lauding former President Donald Trump at times while also keeping him at arm’s length.
“It’s incumbent on Democrats to be loud and clear about what we’re for and not just running against Donald Trump,” an adviser to President Joe Biden told CNN Wednesday. “It’s also clear that voters are unhappy about inaction and this drives home the point that Democrats in Congress should move quickly on our agenda.”
Democratic control of Virginia’s state Senate, where members don’t face election until 2023, may still remain a roadblock to the GOP, but Democrats’ razor thin margin in the chamber means it could struggle to block some conservative overhauls.
And the new base of power in Richmond will likely lead to new policy discussions on a host of issues.
House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert said in a statement Wednesday that the party plans to work with Younkin to “restore fiscal order, give parents the voice they deserve in education, and keep our Commonwealth safe. Our work begins now.”
“Virginia voters made an historic statement, delivering a clear rebuke of the failed policies of the last two years and electing Republicans up and down the ballot,” Gilbert said.
Murphy ekes out win in NJ, GOP’s Youngkin upsets in Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey narrowly won reelection in his reliably blue state while a Republican political newcomer delivered a stunning upset in the Virginia governor’s race, sending a warning Wednesday to Democrats that their grip on power in Washington may be in peril.
In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide office in a dozen years, tapping into culture war fights over schools and race to unite former President Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters with enough suburban voters to notch a victory.
Meanwhile, Murphy barely eked out a victory against GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli, who mounted a surprisingly strong campaign on issues including taxes and opposition to pandemic mask and vaccination mandates.
The two states’ results were particularly alarming to Democrats because of where they happened. President Joe Biden carried Virginia by 10 points last year. He took New Jersey by more than 15. Given the scale of those victories, neither state was seen as especially competitive when this year’s campaigns began.
But the first major elections of Biden’s presidency suggested growing discontent among voters. They also underscored that, with Trump out of office, Democrats can’t center their messages on opposition to him. The results ultimately pointed to a potentially painful year ahead for Democrats as they try to maintain thin majorities in Congress.
And they put a new focus on congressional Democrats’ inability so far to pass Biden’s massive domestic policy legislation, though it’s unclear whether the defeat will be enough to jolt his party into action.
Speaking from the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Biden said Democrats need to “produce for the American people.”
Murphy, in a brief victory speech Wednesday night, alluded to his narrow margin of victory by saying he would “listen to all of New Jersey,” but still emphasized Democratic goals like expanding voting rights, raising taxes on the wealthy and defending abortion rights.
Republicans celebrated their strong showing, with Youngkin telling a cheering crowd of supporters that “this is the spirit of Virginia coming together like never before.” The GOP’s strength extended to down-ballot contests, including the lieutenant governor’s race, which Winsome Sears won, becoming the first woman of color to win Virginia statewide office.
McAuliffe formally conceded in a statement Wednesday morning that congratulated Youngkin.
“Losing is never easy,” he said. “We put ourselves out there and left it all on the field.”
A political neophyte, Youngkin was able to take advantage of apparent apathy among core Democratic voters fatigued by years of elections that were seen as must-wins, as well as growing frustrations with Biden and the economy. He successfully portrayed McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor, Democratic National Committee chairman and close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as part of an elite class of politicians. He also seized on a late-stage stumble by McAuliffe, who during a debate suggested parents should have a minimal role in shaping school curriculums.
Perhaps most significantly, Youngkin prevailed in a task that has stumped scores of Republicans before him: attracting Trump’s base while also appealing to suburban voters who were repelled by the former president’s divisive behavior.
During the campaign, Youngkin stated his support for “election integrity,” a nod at Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, while also focusing on education and business-friendly policies. He never campaigned in person with Trump, successfully challenging McAuliffe’s effort to cast him as a clone of the former president.
That approach could provide a model for Republicans competing in future races that feature significant numbers of Democratic or independent voters.
Elsewhere Tuesday, some of the nation’s largest cities held mayoral contests. Democratic former police captain Eric Adams won in New York, and Boston voters elected City Councilor Michelle Wu as its first female and Asian American mayor. Cincinnati is getting its first Asian American mayor, Aftab Pureval.
Minneapolis voters rejected a ballot initiative that sought to overhaul policing in their city, where George Floyd was killed by a white police officer on Memorial Day 2020, sparking the largest wave of protests against racial injustice in generations. The initiative would have replaced the police force with a Department of Public Safety charged with undertaking “a comprehensive public health” approach to policing.
But no other contest in this off-year election season received the level of national attention — and money — as the governor’s race in Virginia, a state with broad swaths of college-educated suburban voters who are increasingly influential in swaying control of Congress and the White House.
A former co-CEO at the Carlyle Group with a lanky, 6′6″ build that once made him a reserve forward on Rice University’s basketball team, Youngkin poured vast amounts of his personal fortune into a campaign that spent more than $59 million. Favoring fleece vests, Youngkin sought to cut the image of a genial suburban dad.
Youngkin ran confidently on a conservative platform. He opposed a major clean energy mandate the state passed two years ago and objected to abortion in most circumstances.
He also opposed mask and vaccine mandates, and he promised to expand Virginia’s limited charter schools and ban critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history.
McAuliffe tried to energize the Democratic base by highlighting abortion, denouncing a new Texas law that largely banned the procedure and warning that Youngkin would seek to implement similar restrictions.
Youngkin didn’t discuss abortion much publicly, and a liberal activist caught him on tape saying the issue couldn’t help him during the campaign. He said an election win would allow the party to “start going on offense” on the issue.
While McAuliffe pulled on the star power of a host of national Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and ex-Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams, Youngkin largely campaigned on his own, focusing on issues he said were important to Virginians.
Polls showed the race tightening after McAuliffe said during a late September debate that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That prompted Youngkin to run hundreds of TV ads on the statement and to focus on his own pledges to make school curricula less “un-American” and to overhaul policies on transgender students and school bathrooms.
The race took an especially bitter turn last week, when Youngkin ran an ad featuring a mother and GOP activist who eight years ago led an effort to ban “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, from classrooms.
McAuliffe accused Youngkin of uncorking a “racist dog whistle,” but Youngkin said Virginia parents knew what was really at stake — and so did families across the country. That was a nod to how tapping into parental activism could work for the GOP next year and in future election cycles.
“America is watching Virginia,” Youngkin said as part of his closing argument.
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Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, Hank Kurz in Richmond, Alexandra Jaffe in McLean and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.