2020 election

When progressive Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was briefly entertaining a run for the White House in early 2019, he promised that if he took the plunge, his campaign would reject corporate PAC money. But Brown—who since declining to seek the presidency has accepted more than $1 million in corporate PAC donations—will not make that same promise as he gears up for what’s sure to be a contentious re-election fight in 2024. “Anyone who knows Sherrod knows he’s one of the nation’s strongest leaders in taking on big corporations on behalf of Ohio workers—that’s one of the reasons Ohioans continue to elect him to the U.S. Senate and why he will win this race in 2024,” Brown campaign manager Rachel Petri said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We are proud of the grassroots coalition he’s built and have no doubt it will show up to support him again as we gear up for next year.” Petri did not reply when asked why Brown, who accepted more than $7 million in corporate PAC money … [Read more...] about The Democratic Party’s Tortured Relationship With Corporate PAC Money

BALI, Indonesia — President Biden returns home from a week of diplomacy and crisis management in the Middle East and Asia strengthened in his faith that this period of war and economic turmoil calls for his brand of coalition-building politics — reinforcing the leadership differences with his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, just as he announced another White House run on Tuesday. Mr. Biden’s swing through Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia was buoyed by a cascade of better-than-expected news for Democrats in the midterm elections and punctuated by a nearly three-hour meeting with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, that appeared to ease the rancorous rhetoric between the two increasingly rivalrous economies, the world’s largest. As reports emerged of Russian-made rockets killing two people in Poland, Mr. Biden convened an emergency meeting with NATO and Group of 7 leaders over the latest missile strikes in Russia’s war in Ukraine, declining to speculate on the source until more facts were … [Read more...] about Amid Crises, Biden Offers the World a Choice: My Way, or Trump’s

WASHINGTON — The Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that spent nearly $150 million in the past two election cycles, has invited a half-dozen potential Republican presidential candidates to its annual donor retreat next month — but not Donald J. Trump. In a meeting with reporters on Monday, David McIntosh, president of the group, said that Republican chances of winning back the White House next year would be diminished if Mr. Trump were once again at the top of the ticket and that he hoped to introduce Republican donors to other possibilities. “The party should be open to another candidate,” Mr. McIntosh said, suggesting that Republicans had already lost too many elections with Mr. Trump as the face of the party. Mr. Trump and the Club for Growth, which is based in Washington, were frequent foils during the 2022 midterms, backing opposing candidates in some high-profile primary contests, including Senate races in Ohio and Pennsylvania. When the group started … [Read more...] about Club for Growth Distances Itself Further From Trump

A legal effort to disqualify from re-election lawmakers who participated in events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol expanded on Thursday, when a cluster of voters and a progressive group filed suit against three elected officials in Arizona to bar them under the 14th Amendment from running again. In three separate candidacy challenges filed in Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ariz., voters and the progressive group, Free Speech for People, targeted Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs and State Representative Mark Finchem , who is running for Arizona secretary of state with former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement. It was unclear whether the challenges would go anywhere; an initial skirmish, also led by Free Speech for People, failed to block Representative Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy in North Carolina. But they were the latest bids to find a way to punish members of Congress who have encouraged or made common cause with those who stormed … [Read more...] about Legal Effort Expands to Disqualify Republicans as ‘Insurrectionists’

This is my first newsletter after a four-month book leave, and I want to try something a little different. As I prepared to come back, I spent time talking with Times colleagues and outside experts about how the world has changed while I was gone. Which news developments will have lasting import? What has been surprising? What do we know now that we didn’t before? As I was making the list, I realized that it would be worth sharing it with readers. It helps give some perspective to a dizzying news environment in which all of us struggle to distinguish between stories that are ephemeral and those with lasting significance. During a cynical time in American life, the list also offers a reminder that there has been good news along with the bad. In descending order of significance — and, yes, this ranking is subjective and weighted toward the U.S. — here are the seven biggest stories of the past few months. The list 7. A.I. arrives. Artificial intelligence felt theoretical … [Read more...] about Seven Surprises

Over the last few decades, Congress has diversified in important ways. It has gotten less white, less male, less straight — all positive developments. But as I was staring at one of the many recent Senate hearings, filled with the usual magisterial blustering and self-important yada yada, it dawned on me that there’s a way that Congress has moved in a wrong direction, and become quite brazenly unrepresentative. No, it’s not that the place seethes with millionaires, though there’s that problem too. It’s that members of Congress are credentialed out the wazoo. An astonishing number have a small kite of extra initials fluttering after their names. According to the Congressional Research Service , more than one third of the House and more than half the Senate have law degrees. Roughly a fifth of senators and representatives have their master’s. Four senators and 21 House members have M.D.s, and an identical number in each body (four, 21) have some kind of doctoral degree, whether … [Read more...] about 95 Percent of Representatives Have a Degree. Look Where That’s Got Us.

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris was frustrated. The text of a speech she had been given to deliver in Chicago to the nation’s biggest teachers’ union was just another dreary, scripted talk that said little of any consequence. As Air Force Two made its way to the Midwest over the summer, the vice president told her staff she wanted to say something more significant, more direct. She brandished a Rolling Stone magazine article about the backlash against Florida school officials after new legislation barring the discussion of gender identity in the classroom. The teachers she was about to address were on the front lines of the nation’s culture wars, Ms. Harris told her staff. They were the same ones on the front lines of school shootings. Just blandly ticking through federal funding for education would not be enough. The plane was just an hour out from Chicago, but she said they needed to start over. By the time she landed, she had a more spirited version of the speech in hand, accusing … [Read more...] about Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting.

Prominent MAGA Republicans have called out President Joe Biden over fencing that was recently erected around the U.S. Capitol building in advance of his upcoming State of the Union address . The president is set to deliver his second State of the Union speech before Congress on Tuesday evening. This will also be his first address since the Republican Party gained a slim majority over the House of Representatives during last year's midterm elections, emboldening far-right members of the conference and presenting new challenges for the passage of legislation. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, two of the most outspoken far-right members of the House, called out Biden on Monday for the protective fencing that was put up around the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The barricades were set in place on Sunday evening, as they have been several times in the last few years during times of elevated security risks. "The fence is … [Read more...] about Republicans rip Biden for fencing off Capitol before State of the Union

UNITED NATIONS — The Obama administration’s effort to step up asylum for Syrian refugees is going so slowly, it may not meet the president’s deadline for accepting at least 10,000 by the end of the fiscal year. More than seven months since the president pledged to resettle the most vulnerable Syrians, the United States has let in less than a fifth of that number — 1,736 through the end of April, according to government figures . That slow pace could undermine the administration’s diplomatic push to advance the cause of refugees at a time when other countries are putting up taller barriers to their entry. President Obama and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, have said they will raise the issue of refugee resettlement at this year’s General Assembly session, and Mr. Ban issued a report on Monday calling on world leaders to rally around a new “compact on responsibility-sharing for refugees.” Advocates for asylum seekers have urged the United States to do more, … [Read more...] about U.S. Has Taken In Less Than a Fifth of Pledged Syrian Refugees

WASHINGTON — President Obama , under increasing pressure to demonstrate that the United States is joining European nations in the effort to resettle Syrian refugees, has told his administration to take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the next year. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a briefing Thursday that while the administration was continuing to examine responses to a refugee crisis that has overwhelmed Europe in recent days, the president has decided to raise the number of Syrian refugees admitted to at least 10,000 in the fiscal year beginning in October from fewer than 2,000 this year. The announcement brought a variety of reactions that underscored how the refugee crisis has become another polarized political question. Aid groups called the administration’s action a token one given the size of the American economy and population, while a number of Republicans warned that Mr. Obama was allowing in potential terrorists. “Our enemy now is … [Read more...] about Obama Increases Number of Syrian Refugees for U.S. Resettlement to 10,000