Trump shows his 2024 campaign would take the country down a ...

CNN —

The last time Donald Trump delivered a major speech in Washington, DC, from outside the White House it unleashed a vicious mob attack. There was no violence this time, but his searing bombast may have heralded the dawn of a new era of American extremism.

Trump returned Tuesday for the first time since leaving the capital in disgrace in January 2021 and made clear he plans to take the country down a dark, demagogic, dystopian road in the coming months. His assurance that it is when and not if he launches a 2024 White House campaign never looked more locked in.

Trump vowed at the America First Policy Institute summit to “save our country,” chillingly employing many of the rhetorical devices of authoritarian leaders as he brimmed with bitterness, a persecution complex and stoked resentment against vulnerable members of society like the homeless and transgender athletes. The ex-President conjured an updated and intensified picture of the “American carnage” that he first laid out in his 2017 inaugural address. He bemoaned a “failing nation” swamped by historic inflation, begging the Saudis for oil, a media that sees itself as “the police of honesty,” deep state bureaucrats, “hacks and thugs” in Congress and cities overrun by undocumented migrants preying on innocent citizens that exemplify contempt for the law and the police.

Amid new signs of an expansive Justice Department probe into the election-stealing scheme launched by his cronies and shocking evidence about his 2020 coup attempt from the House select committee, Trump complained Democrats had “weaponized law enforcement … against the opposition party.” His railing against the investigations that could hold him to account for his dereliction of duty while in office highlighted the absurdity of the only president ever to launch an insurrection lecturing on law and order.

That was a point picked up by President Joe Biden, who tweeted: “Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think inciting a mob that attacks a police officer is ‘respect for the law.’ You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop – or pro-democracy, or pro-American.”

As so often, Trump’s complaints about the supposed actions of others mirrored his own transgressions. It was he who tried to weaponize the Justice Department, to pursue political enemies, offer pardons to allies and to seek to overturn the 2020 election.

And when Trump complained that his Democratic foes were guilty of misinformation against him – “They say stuff and they think you are going to believe it” – he could have been describing his own lies and alternative realities that are amplified by the conservative media machine that convinced millions of Americans that the election was stolen.

Trump’s comments also seemed a hedge against any attempt by the Justice Department to hold him criminally liable for his conduct after the 2020 election. Still, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that outside political forces would not deter the department if charges were merited.

“We pursue justice without fear or favor. We intend to hold everyone – anyone – who is criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6 or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another accountable,” Garland told NBC News’ Lester Holt in a taped interview that ran in part Tuesday on MSNBC. “That is what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”

The key to Trump’s genuine appeal

In many ways, Trump’s pitch was a supercharged version of when he first launched his 2016 presidential campaign. He again railed against undocumented migrants and crime, and promised to build his border wall. He seized on the Biden administration’s economic struggles and portrayed his own tenure as a golden age by comparison when Americans were safe, prosperous and respected.

Democrats may not like to hear it, but Trump’s message remains a seductive one to many Americans who believe the country is beset by open borders, political correctness, weak policing and mistreated by leeching foreign allies. A democratic system channels the frustrations and beliefs of large sectors of society into political campaigns and administrations. (Not that Trump has shown he has much respect for the will of the voters.) So while Trump’s methods are often authoritarian and outrageous, he is not operating in a political vacuum. His strength as a candidate is that he sensed deep disillusionment with the political system in 2016 and rode it to power. He’s trying a similar formula now.

Some liberal critics of the media still complain that an ex-President gets so much coverage – years before the 2024 election – and that the attention only boosts Trump. But while he is banned from Twitter and has been mostly confined to conservative media for the last 18 months, the pulse of Trumpism beats strongly in the heartland. Forests of Trump 2020 and Trump 2024 banners outside major cities may be an anecdotal sign of strength, but they are ubiquitous and a sign that he touches some voters like no other politician.

And before much longer, Democrats, and the small but courageous band of anti-Trump Republicans, will have to confront the former President directly. Biden appears to have recognized this already given his own strident attacks on Trump over the last two days.

A second Trump administration would be more extreme

Trump’s speech Tuesday was an unmistakable sign he is on the comeback trail, is deadly serious about trying to regain power and would use any means at his disposal to make it reality.

This time around, Trump’s campaign would take place in the full knowledge of his authoritarian impulses and his willingness to use violence – on January 6, 2021. A second Trump presidency would make the first one look conventional and calm. The ex-President, for example, called on Tuesday for homeless Americans to be loaded up from city centers and taken to tented camps. He mocked trans athletes and said presidents should be able to send National Guard troops into Democratic states where governors didn’t fight violent crime. He called for quick trials for drug dealers to speed swift executions and demanded the return of “stop-and-frisk” policies in cities that critics decried as institutionalized racism.

“Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” the former President said, painting of a vision of country hostage to “drugged out lunatics” and “sadists.” He promised to purge the education system and to sack “rogue” bureaucrats who constrained his wildest impulses the first time around.

In short, Trump was advocating an all-powerful presidency that would trample over the guardrails of the law and the Constitution and the elected power of governors. In other words, an administration that would be even more aberrant and authoritarian than his first.

Unlike many of his campaign speeches, Trump did not dedicate his entire appearance to fomenting lies about his 2020 election loss. But he did fire up the crowd with claims that he won two elections, not one. This argument appears to be effective with his most fervent voters, according to a new CNN/SSRS poll released on Tuesday. Sixty-six percent of Republicans said Biden’s 2020 election win was not legitimate. Still, Trump’s continual harping on 2020 may not be a winning argument with a broader electorate. Some 69%, of those asked, a new high in CNN polling, reject the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump’s delivery on Tuesday was not the exuberant tour de force of his rallies. It also lacked the outrageous comedy of his events in his first campaign that did not always come across on television, but was vital in convincing supporters they were at the best party of their lives with a host who dared to say everything polite society disdained. On Tuesday, Trump’s monotone dirge summed up his own bitterness and his sinister arguments. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Trump’s appearance – given what we know about the steps he took to cling onto power in 2020 – was his use of authoritarian tropes. For instance, he portrayed himself as persecuted by the forces of the law – but insisted he endured the suffering to save the country.

“Who has been through anything like this?” Trump said, slamming the Russia probe, his two impeachments and the January 6 committee.

“I’m doing it for America. And it’s my honor to do it. It’s my great, great honor to do it. Because if I don’t do our nation is doomed to become another Venezuela or become another Soviet Union,” Trump said, tapping into a classic demagogue’s toolbox to pose as a Superman leader shouldering the peoples’ burden.

A 2024 campaign in all but name

Tuesday’s speech by Trump may come to be seen as the unofficial launch of his presidential campaign. He told Republicans convinced they will win the midterm elections in November they need help in the White House, and it will be coming soon.

But his march to the Republican nomination is far from assured. In the CNN poll, 55% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters said they did not want Trump as their party’s nominee in 2024. The GOP nominating system, however, means that Trump does not need majority support to secure a place atop the GOP ticket in 2024. A huge field like in 2016 could balkanize opposition to him within his party.

A consensus anti-Trump candidate whom his opponents unite behind could doom a campaign by the former President. But that would require a major contender to show the kind of courage in standing up to Trump that has been at a premium since the former business tycoon’s hostile takeover of the GOP in 2015.

Trump’s speech on Tuesday at times came across as an attempt to strangle any such attempts before they really get started. And it also underscored that not only has the ex-President not changed, but that the next stage of his political evolution will be darker and potentially more dangerous than what came before.

The many promises of Donald Trump | The Week UK

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Analysis: Ron DeSantis just gave his first 2024 speech | CNN Politics

CNN —

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is widely being discussed as a potential 2024 candidate for Republicans – and he’s doing little to knock down that chatter. And, his state of the state speech on Tuesday gave us all a preview of how DeSantis would run if he runs.

“Florida has become the escape hatch for those chafing under authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions,” DeSantis said, adding that Florida was now “the freest state in these United States.”

DeSantis repeatedly touted his willingness to buck so-called conventional wisdom during his first term – particularly when it came to dealing with the spread of Covid-19 in his state. DeSantis made mention of his decision to re-open Florida schools fully in the fall of 2020.

“We were right and they were wrong,” DeSantis said, in what could easily double for a presidential campaign if/when he runs.

And, make no mistake: What DeSantis was doing in his speech was positioning himself for just such a run. Which feels like a natural next step from the first three years of DeSantis’ time as governor; he has used his position to not only differentiate himself on Covid-19 mandates (and masking) but play directly into the arms of the Donald Trump base of the party – on everything from “woke” culture in education to restrictive voting rights in the state.

Voters have taken notice. At CPAC’s annual 2021 gathering, two straw polls were conducted. The former President won the first straw poll. DeSantis won the second, Trump-less one. (DeSantis took 21% in the straw poll with Trump, the only candidate other than the former president to gain double-digit support.)

In a Reuters national poll released in late December, DeSantis was the only potential candidate not named Trump to make it into double digits – although his 11% was well behind the former President’s 54%. That same poll showed that eight in 10 Republican voters knew who DeSantis was and 66% had a favorable impression of him.

Trump is taking notice of DeSantis’ jockeying.

In an interview with OANN that ran Tuesday, the former President appeared to take issue with DeSantis’ ongoing unwillingness to say whether he has received a booster shot for Covid-19.

“I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, ‘Did you get the booster?’” Trump said. “Because they had the vaccine, and they’re answering like – in other words, the answer is ‘yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless. You gotta say it, whether you had it or not, say it.”

Which isn’t the first time that Trump has thrown a bit of a blowback pitch at the Florida governor.

“If I faced him, I’d beat him like I would beat everyone else,” Trump said of DeSantis late last year. “I think most people would drop out, I think he would drop out.”

(Worth noting: DeSantis, unlike others – such as former Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina – being mentioned as potential 2024 candidates, has not said he would stay out of the race if Trump won.)

What DeSantis’ speech on Tuesday makes clear is exactly how he would position himself in a 2024 race: Trumpism without all of the antics, lies and distractions that the former President creates. The promise is that he will fight the Washington swamp, the “fake news” and those who would make America less free, he will just do it without all of the tweets and the chaos that Trump creates.

Which isn’t a bad argument given where the current iteration of the Republican party now finds itself. DeSantis, of course, would face a major uphill climb if Trump decides to run in two years’ time. But, if Trump – for whatever reason – decides to take a pass, DeSantis could well be in the pole position in the race.

And, as his state of the state speech makes clear, he is gearing up for that possibility.

State of the Union 2023 address recap: Biden lays out ambitious ...

WASHINGTON, D.C — President Joe Biden took credit Tuesday for what he said was the country's economic revival while pushing an agenda of reducing prescription drug costs, protecting abortion rights and banning assault weapons.

The economy was reeling two years ago, Biden said in his second State of the Union address delivered in a packed House chamber. In a preview of an expected reelection campaign announcement, he noted that the unemployment rate was at 50-year low while inflation has been easing.

“We’ve been sent here to finish the job,” Biden said, invoking a phrase he used several times in his speech.

But the rancorous atmosphere in the House chamber telegraphed fights ahead, including over budget priorities and avoiding a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt. At several points in Biden’s speech, was interrupted by Republicans, who criticized his handling of border policy and pushed back when he accused them of trying to cut popular entitlements.

SOTU analysis:Pivot point: Joe Biden faced a different chapter of his presidency in his State of the Union

Heckles, spats and deflection:The biggest moments you missed from Biden's State of the Union

State of the Union takeaways:Blue-collar Joe, GOP boos and a 2024 preview

The latest on Biden's speech:

Blue-collar pitch: Promoting his economic plan, Biden assured Americans that he wants to invest in “places and people that have been forgotten,” arguing that “too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.”

Promoting his economic plan, Biden assured Americans that he wants to invest in “places and people that have been forgotten,” arguing that “too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.” Biden calls Pelosi 'greatest speaker’ ever: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t sitting behind Biden for his address but she got a special call-out from the president anyway.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t sitting behind Biden for his address but she got a special call-out from the president anyway. Biden touts progress on insulin prices while pushing for more: Biden renewed his call to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American.

Biden renewed his call to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American. Biden spars with GOP over Social Security and Medicare: The president prompted protests in the chamber from Republican lawmakers when he repeated his accusation that the GOP was trying to cut entitlements. When the protests continued, Biden said he wasn’t arguing that all Republicans back reviewing entitlement programs every five years. “But it’s being proposed,” he said.

Sanders: Biden has 'failed' American people; calls for 'new generation'

Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, at age 40 the youngest governor in the country, didn't hesitate to point out that 80-year-old Joe Biden is the oldest president in history – and added that it is time for a "new generation" of Republican leadership.

"Biden and the Democrats have failed you," Sanders said in the formal GOP response to Biden's State of the Union address. "It's time for a change."

Speaking from the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Ark., Sanders cited domestic issues like inflation, immigration, and crime. Also criticizing the president's foreign policy, Sanders said Biden is "unfit" to be Commander-in-Chief.

Citing the Republican majority in the House, Sanders said: "We will hold the Biden administration accountable."

– David Jackson

The GOP:In Republican response to Biden's State of the Union, a vow to block the president's agenda

Biden calls Paul Pelosi 'tough'

Biden called out the political violence that was unleashed in the wake of Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

“With democracy, everything is possible. Without it, nothing is,” he said.

Biden introduced Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was violently attacked in their home by an intruder, saying the assailant was “unhinged by the Big Lie” that the election was stolen.

“Here tonight in this chamber is the man who bears the scars of that brutal attack, but is as tough and strong and as resilient as they get. My friend, Paul Pelosi," he said. “But such a heinous act never should have happened.”

– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

Paul Pelosi attack:Video footage of violent home attack on Paul Pelosi released

Biden gets personal and celebrates Cancer Moonshot initiative

Biden celebrated the Cancer Moonshot initiative, aimed at advancing cancer prevention and treatment,

“Our goal is to cut the cancer death rates at least by 50% in the next 25 years. Turn more cancers from death sentences to treatable diseases. Provide more support for patients and their families.” The issue is also deeply personal to Biden, as one of his sons, Beau Biden, passed away due to brain cancer. “It’s personal to so many of us.”

Biden also singled out Maurice and Kandice Barron, a pair of guests invited by First Lady Jill Biden. Their daughter, Ava Barron, was diagnosed with a form of kidney cancer when she was one year old. “She turns four next month,” Biden said to wide cheers from the audience. “They just found out Ava’s beating the odds and is on her way to being cured from cancer.”

– Ken Tran

Cancer treatment:New cancer therapy takes personalized medicine to a new level

Biden says US stood up to China

Facing Republicans who’ve accused him of being too soft on China, Biden said he responded clearly last week when a Chinese surveillance balloon floated over the United States.

China knows that if U.S. sovereignty is threatened, Americans will act to protect the country.

“And we did,” Biden said, an apparent reference to his decision to shoot down the balloon.

– Maureen Groppe

Chinese spy balloon:Chinese spy balloon went over other US missile and nuclear weapons sites, lawmaker says

Biden: Stop production, trafficking of fentanyl

Citing Americans’ growing dependence on prescription drugs, Biden called for a major campaign to stop the production, sale and trafficking of fentanyl.

Biden noted that fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 Americans a year. But his remarks were met with contempt from some members of Congress.

“It’s your fault!” several Republicans shouted.

– Michael Collins

What is fentanyl poisoning?:These State of the Union guests lost their son to it

Biden says VA working to end 'the silent scourge of suicide'

Biden said when he first appointed Denis McDonough to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, the country was losing up to 25 veterans a day to “the silent scourge of suicide,” and continues to lose 17 per day.

“The VA is doing everything it can, including expanding mental health screenings and a proven program that recruits veterans to help other veterans understand what they’re going through and get the help they need,”

– Erin Mansfield

Military suicide:Amid suicide crisis, the Army says it will rush mental health providers to Alaska

Biden calls for higher teacher pay

Biden hasn't touched much on education issues during the address but did take a moment to outline several priorities on that front. Among them: expanding access to preschool and raising teacher pay.

In 2021, teachers made less than 77 cents on the dollar compared with other college graduates. Yet surveys show teachers work more than 50 hours a week on average. Close to 1 in 5 work elsewhere at another job. It's no surprise that nearly half of U.S. schools are short teachers. Some states and districts have proposed or enacted pay bumps but they've been modest at best.

Federal legislation again before Congress this session would set a teacher salary floor of $60,000. While raising teacher pay has garnered the support of some Republicans, the American Teacher Act is unlikely to get far. In some states teachers make less than $50,000 on average.

– Alia Wong

Teacher shortage:Amid crippling teacher shortages, some schools are turning to unorthodox solutions

Biden urges lawmakers to protect abortion rights

Biden called on lawmakers to “restore” abortion rights after the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

“The vice president and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive health care and safeguard patient safety,” Biden said, noting that states across the country have implemented abortion bans and restrictions.

“Make no mistake about it. If Congress passes a national ban, I will veto it,” the president vowed.

– Marina Pitofsky

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Abortion pills:20 Republican attorneys general warn CVS, Walgreens against selling abortion pills by mail

Biden renews call to stand with Ukraine 'as long as it takes'

Calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “test for the ages,” Biden said the U.S. passed that test by standing for sovereignty.

That matters, Biden said, because it “prevents open season for would-be aggressors.”

His argument – and promise to stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes” – comes as some Republicans are calling for greater scrutiny, or even a curtailment, of U.S. involvement.

– Maureen Groppe

Ukraine latest:Ukraine pushes to exclude Russia from 2024 Paris Olympics

Bono at the SOTU:Here's why musician, advocate Bono is at Biden's State of the Union address

America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts, said Biden.

Since launching a new border plan last month, unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97%, Biden said.

“We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border, arresting 8,000 human smugglers and seizing over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in just the last several months,” he said.

He urged Congress to pass his plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border. He also asked Congress to pave a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, those on temporary status, farm workers, and essential workers.

– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

Border politics:Republicans said Biden wasn't doing enough on the border. New GOP-led House is demanding answers

Biden highlights ‘courage’ of Brandon Tsay and calls for assault weapon bans

Biden singled out Brandon Tsay’s heroism two weeks ago when he disarmed the Monterey Park shooter who killed 11 people who attended a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration. Tsay, who is in attendance, received a standing ovation from lawmakers as Biden acknowledged him.

“He saved lives. It’s time we do the same as well,” Biden said. “Ban assault weapons once and for all.”

Mass shootings typically lead lawmakers to call for such actions but it’s unlikely that a ban will pass in a divided Congress with many Republican lawmakers who have vowed that they will not waver on gun control.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

'Still too high':Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin orders independent panel to study military suicide

Marjorie Taylor Greene yells at Biden multiple times

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a fervent opponent of Biden who has called for his impeachment, yelled at him twice during the State of the Union address.

The first time came as Biden said Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare – an accusation that Greene refuted when she stood up yelled “Liar!”

Greene later yelled, “China spied on us!” near the end of Biden’s speech.

She also yelled to “close the border” and “it’s your fault” when the president talked about the fentanyl crisis.

– Candy Woodall

Heckling lawmakers:Marjorie Taylor Greene, other Republicans spar with Biden over Social Security, Medicare

State of the Union guests:Lawmakers highlight policing, abortion, wrongful imprisonment

Biden on Tyre Nichols’ death: ‘Something good must come from this’

Biden used his speech to pay tribute to Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers.

Biden called for more police training and more resources to reduce violent crime, along with more investments in housing, education and training.

Noting that Nichols’ mother and stepfather were seated in the first lady’s box, Biden urged lawmakers to commit themselves to making the words of Nichols’ mother come true: “Something good must come from this.”

– Michael Collins

Tyre Nichols killing:7 more Memphis police employees under investigation in Tyre Nichols' death, city attorney says

Biden invokes Uvalde massacre in call for gun reform

In a call to action on gun violence, Biden invoked his trip to Uvalde, Texas, after the Robb Elementary School shooting where 19 students and two teachers were killed.

“Do something, do something. That was the plea of parents who lost their children in Uvalde, I met with everyone.” Biden said, then pointing to the bipartisan gun reform law he signed. “Thank god we did. Passing the most sweeping gun safety law in three decades.”

– Ken Tran

Uvalde shooting:Her daughter was killed in Uvalde. She's suing police, the school district and a gunmaker.

COVID is under control but vigilance necessary, says Biden

While COVID-19 deaths are down nearly 90%, and the end of the public health emergency is close, Biden said the country will remember the pain of losing loved ones will never go away for many.

“Families grieving. Children orphaned. Empty chairs at the dining room table. We remember them, and we remain vigilant,” he said.

Biden said it was important to remain vigilant and monitor dozens of variants and support new vaccines and treatments. He urged Congress to fund these efforts and keep America safe.

– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

The COVID emergency declaration is ending:What it means for tests, vaccines, treatment

Biden: Police departments 'must be held accountable'

Saying Tyre Nichols’ mother wants something good to come from his death at the hands of police officers in Memphis, Biden called for police reform.

“When police officers or departments violate the public trust, they must be held accountable,” he said.

Biden also pointed to an executive order he signed affecting federal officers that banned chokeholds, restricted no-knock warrants, and implemented “other key elements of the George Floyd Act.”

– Erin Mansfield

Tyre Nichols:Ex-Memphis police officer took a photo of Tyre Nichols after beating, document says

Biden urges Congress to act on labor reform

Biden called for Congress to take up labor reform and worker protections as he touted his support for unions and his pledge to be “the most pro-union president.”

“I’m so sick and tired of companies breaking the law by preventing workers from organizing,” said Biden. “Workers have a right to form a union.”

Biden also urged action on additional worker protections and benefits, including paid family and medical leave and affordable child care, specifically calling for the return of the expanded Child Tax Credit.

– Ken Tran

Labor secretary makes move:Former Boston mayor Marty Walsh stepping down as Biden Labor Secretary for job with NHL union

Biden calls for rebooting the expanded Child Tax Credit

Parents who qualify for the Child Tax Credit (CTC) won’t be getting as hefty checks as last year. That’s because the enhanced CTC, which parents could also opt to receive in installments rather than waiting to receive it in a lump sum payment when they file their taxes, expired.

The enhanced CTC increased payments from $2,000 per qualifying child to $3,600 for children ages 5 and under and $3,000 for children ages 6 through 17. This year it will go back to $2,000 for qualifying children of all ages.

In his remarks, Biden vowed to “restore the full Child Tax Credit which gave tens of millions of parents some breathing room and cut child poverty in half, to the lowest level in history.”

– Elisabeth Buchwald

Child tax credit this year:How much is the Child Tax Credit for 2023? Here's what you need to know about qualifying.

Biden: Ban ‘junk fees’ on hotel bills, other services

Biden urged Congress to pass legislation to ban excess fees that companies often tack onto hotel bills, airline tickets and other services.

“Americans are tired of being played for suckers,” he said.

The Junk Fee Prevention Act, if approved, would bar so-called “resort fees” that can add up to $90 a night on hotel bills, stop cable internet and cell phone companies from charging up to $200 more when a customer switches providers, and prohibit airlines from charging up to $50 roundtrip for families to sit together, Biden said.

– Michael Collins

Junk fees:Biden moves to limit credit fees to $8 for missed payments in latest "junk fee" crack down

Social Security and Medicare benefits draw tension during speech

Biden’s State of the Union address comes as he and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have started talks on the debt ceiling and government spending.

Tension has been building between the two parties over Social Security and Medicare benefits. McCarthy said Republicans aren’t going to cut those programs, but Democrats say the math will force those cuts if the GOP demands lowered government spending.

Biden in his speech said Republicans want to cut the programs, to which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., stood up and yelled “Liar!” as other members booed the president.

“OK, so we agree,” Biden said. “Social Security and Medicare is off the books.”

Bipartisan cheers returned to the chamber.

– Candy Woodall

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Biden takes credit for deficit cuts

Biden celebrated the government’s deficit cuts seen under his administration in his State of the Union address.

“For the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion, the largest deficit reduction in American history,” Biden said. The deficit’s cut was partly a result of higher tax revenues that Biden touted but also the end of spending related to the pandemic.

Biden also took a jab at former President Donald Trump for increases in the federal deficit under Trump’s administration. “Under the previous administration, the American deficit went up four years in a row,” Biden said, to boos and jeers from Republican lawmakers.

– Ken Tran

What happens if the US hits the debt ceiling?:Here's what to expect if we reach debt limit.

Biden says Republicans want to ‘take the economy hostage’ in debt ceiling talks

Biden accused Republicans of wanting to “take the economy hostage” unless he agrees to their demands for spending cuts during debt ceiling talks.

Biden demanded Republicans show “what their plans are.” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has not specified what Republicans want axed.

“Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” Biden said, prompting loud boos from Republicans in Congress.

– Joey Garrison

Medicare and debt ceiling fight:How Medicare and Social Security benefits factor into the Kevin McCarthy debt ceiling fight

Biden defends Inflation Reduction Act

President Biden touted the Inflation Reduction Act which he signed into law, saying he was taking on powerful interest to bring health care costs down.

“You know, we pay more for prescription drugs than any major country on earth,” he said. “Big Pharma has been unfairly charging people hundreds of dollars – and making record profits.”

Having capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors on Medicare, Biden said it was time to help Americans not on Medicare, including 200,000 young people with Type I diabetes who need insulin to save their lives. “Let’s cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it,” he said. The law also caps out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors on Medicare at a maximum $2,000 per year.

He also promised to veto any attempts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.

– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

Credit fees:Biden moves to limit credit fees to $8 for missed payments in latest "junk fee" crack down

Biden tangles with GOP lawmakers over Social Security and Medicare

Biden got into an unusual back and forth with Republicans over whether GOP lawmakers want to end the automatic continuation of Social Security and Medicare.

When some vocally protested, Biden responded: “Anyone who doubts it, contact my office. I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.”

When the protests continued, Biden said he wasn’t arguing that all Republicans back reviewing entitlement programs every five years.

“But it’s being proposed,” he said.

– Maureen Groppe

Medicare debate:How Medicare and Social Security benefits factor into the Kevin McCarthy debt ceiling fight

Cheers and boos for Biden

Progressive members of the House, known as “the Squad,” cheered as President Joe Biden pushed for fair taxes and called out low tax rates for billionaires.

“You tell ‘em, Joe,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

He also had plenty of jeers from the Republican side of the chamber when he slammed former President Donald Trump’s fiscal record and accused the House GOP of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare. The latter attracted loud boos.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., stood up and yelled, “Liar!” from the back of the chamber.

– Candy Woodall

Talkative Biden:On average, Biden is most talkative president in six decades of State of Union addresses

Biden repeats call for ‘billionaire’s tax’

Biden used his speech to call again for Congress to pass a so-called “billionaire’s tax,” saying some of the biggest corporations in the country are raking in billions of dollars in profits but paying no federal income taxes.

“That’s simply not fair,” he said.

Biden did not spell out the specifics of his proposal. But in the past, he has called for a 20% levy on households with a net worth of more than $100 million.

– Michael Collins

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Biden calls climate crisis ‘an existential threat’

Biden said “the climate crisis doesn't care if you're in a red or blue state” as he touted his administration’s work to take on what he called “an existential threat.”

He pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act, which included the largest climate package ever, and investments from his infrastructure law.

He later went off-script, saying, “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while.”

– Joey Garrison

UN Secretary-General::'No more baby steps' on climate change

Biden to Congress: Continue insurance subsidies that lowered uninsured rates

Biden celebrated the fact that a record number of Americans have health insurance while calling on Congress to continue expanded insurance subsidies that helped boost that rate.

Those enhanced subsidies for people who purchase insurance on their own, instead of getting coverage from the government or an employer, expire after 2025.

“Let’s finish the job and make the savings permanent,” Biden said as he also called for extending expanded Medicaid coverage to all states.

– Maureen Groppe

Biden takes made in America a step further

Biden touted American manufacturing gains and a campaign promise to move more production to the U.S. from foreign countries. Biden then announced, “new standards to require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America.”

“American-made lumber, glass, drywall, fiber optic cables,” he said. “And on my watch, American roads, American bridges, and American highways will be made with American products.”

Biden’s message echoes former President Donald Trump’s prior State of the Union addresses where he boasted about initiatives to bring back manufacturing jobs that have been lost over the years.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

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Biden touts legislative victories in infrastructure and manufacturing

Biden championed his series of legislative victories that ranged from tackling the country’s supply chain shortage and sweeping investments in domestic manufacturing and infrastructure.

“We’re gonna make sure the supply chain for America begins in America,” Biden said, touting a bipartisan bill he signed that made investments to boost domestic manufacturing of semiconductors.

“To maintain the strongest economy in the world, we need the best infrastructure in the world,” said Biden, pointing to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. “Folks, we’re just getting started.”

– Ken Tran

Why Bono is at SOTU:Here's why musician, advocate Bono is at Biden's State of the Union address

Biden appeals to middle and working class people on manufacturing

In an appeal to middle class and working class people, Biden said he ran for president “to make sure the economy works for everyone” so that everyone can have pride in what they do for a living.

“For decades, the middle class was hollowed out,” he said. “Too many good-paying manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Factories at home closed down. Once-thriving cities and towns that many of you represent became shadows of what they used to be.”

Biden then spoke about his administration’s accomplishments in the manufacturing sector.

– Erin Mansfield

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More:As Biden prepares 2024 reelection run, Dems worry blue-collar voters are slipping away

Biden: ‘COVID no longer controls our lives’

Biden said the nation’s economy is roaring back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much,” he said. “Today, COVID no longer controls our lives.”

Biden said his administration has created 12 million jobs, “more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four.”

– Michael Collins

A full House – literally – for State of the Union

President Joe Biden entered a full House chamber Tuesday.

The capacity crowd included House and Senate members, current and former Supreme Court justices, family and honored guests.

Biden’s first words were met with a standing ovation, as he honored Republican and Democratic leaders – but also as he described the state of the union.

The applause came from Democrats and Republicans, and the standing ovations were sometimes led by a row of powerful Senate moderates, including Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Kyrsten Sinema, who recently changed her party affiliation to independent.

– Candy Woodall

Biden: Pelosi is 'greatest speaker’ ever

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t sitting behind Biden for his address but she got a special call-out from the president anyway.

“I want to give special recognition to someone who I think will be considered the greatest speaker in the history of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi,” Biden said.

Pelosi stepped down from Democratic leadership after the midterm elections. Biden also congratulated her successor, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the first Black American to be House minority leader.

– Maureen Groppe

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Biden begins speech telling McCarthy he looks forward to ‘working together’

Biden began his remarks congratulating Kevin McCarthy, the new Republican House speaker, and saying he looks forward to “working together.”

Biden also congratulated Democratic Leader Hakeem Jefferies, the first African American man to lead a party, and gave shout outs to Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The story of America is a story of progress and resilience. Of always moving forward. Of never giving up,” Biden said.

– Joey Garrison

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is designated survivor for 2023 State of the Union

Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh is the designated survivor for this year's State of the Union address.

Every year, a top government official is chosen as the “designated survivor” as a way to maintain the presidential line of succession in case of a catastrophic event where multiple officials in the line are unable to assume office.

– Ken Tran

Marty Walsh:Former Boston mayor Marty Walsh stepping down as Biden Labor Secretary for job with NHL union

Bono is at the State of the Union

Bono, the Irish lead singer of U2, is attending the State of the Union as a guest of first lady Jill Biden.

Bono is a longtime social justice advocate who co-founded the nonprofit ONE Campaign to address poverty and preventable diseases and Prouct RED to address HIV and AIDS in Africa.

He’s sitting next to Paul Pelosi, husband of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

– Erin Mansfield

What is fentanyl poisoning?:These State of the Union guests lost their son to it

2 Californians will sit behind Biden

Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may not share a political party. But they do have something in common. Both are from California.

That gave them at least one thing to talk about as they stood on the rostrum, waiting for Biden’s speech to begin.

– Maureen Groppe

Biden gets a Supreme Court majority for speech, if not policies

At least for tonight, President Joe Biden landed a majority of the Supreme Court.

Five sitting Supreme Court justices stepped into the House chamber before the president’s remarks: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

That’s a decent turnout for an event some current and former justices have derided as a “political pep rally” and a “childish spectacle.”

Whether the president can cobble together a majority for any of his policies pending at the court – on immigration, student loan debt relief or environmental rules – remains to be seen.

– John Fritze

Biden to get bipartisan escort into House chamber

Biden will be escorted into the House chamber by a bipartisan group of House and Senate officials, including Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

–Michael Collins

Face masks uncommon as pre-pandemic normality returns

Few lawmakers were wearing face masks as they filed onto the House floor for Biden’s State of the Union speech.

And unlike last year, members of Congress were allowed to bring guests, a return to pre-pandemic normality.

“Today, COVID no longer controls our lives,” Biden will declare, according to speech excerpts the White House released in advance.

– Maureen Groppe

State of the economy:A look at economy's strengths, weaknesses as Biden sets to boast of record job growth in State of Union

Biden arrives at Capitol

Biden’s motorcade arrived at the Capitol at 8:40 p.m. ahead of his 9 p.m. State of the Union speech.

“Great shape, getting better,” Biden said when a reporter asked him, “What’s the state of the union?” before he departed the White House.

– Joey Garrison

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Poll: Republicans want GOP leaders to 'stand up’ to Biden

If Biden doesn’t find a receptive audience to his call for the two parties to work together, Republican voters could be the reason.

Most Republicans (64%) want GOP congressional leaders to “stand up” to Biden on matters important to GOP, even if that makes it harder to address critical problems facing the country, according to recent polling from the Pew Research Center.

And more are concerned that GOP lawmakers won’t focus enough on investigating the administration than the share worried that they will focus too much on investigations.

– Maureen Groppe

State of the Union guests:Lawmakers highlight policing, abortion, wrongful imprisonment

Biden approval rating hovering in low 40s ahead of speech

Biden’s second State of the Union address Tuesday comes as he remains under water politically, with more than half of voters disapproving of his job performance, according to most polls.

A Washington Post-ABC poll released this week found 42% of voters approve of Biden’s job performance, while 53% disapprove. That closely matches the FiveThirtyEight average of polls.

Biden’s job performance has stayed below since August 2021 in most polls. Even more troubling for Biden, most Americans can’t identify his achievements. Sixty-two percent of Americans said Biden has accomplished "not very much" or “little or nothing," in the same Washington Post-ABC News poll, while only 36% said he has accomplished "a great deal" or "a good amount."

– Joey Garrison

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Vice President Kamala Harris chats with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ahead of speech

Vice President Kamala Harris shook hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and the two chatted, as they stood behind the rostrum waiting for Biden to enter the House chamber.

This will be the first State of the Union with McCarthy as speaker since Republicans took control of the House during the midterm elections.

– Joey Garrison

Biden heads to the Capitol

Biden left the White House at 8:30 p.m. en route to the Capitol. Vice President Kamala Harris arrived ahead of him along with the majority of his Cabinet.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

Paul Pelosi arrives at State of the Union

Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, arrived at the State of the Union about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

This marks his first visit to a joint session of Congress since a video release of a brutal October attack that left him with head and hand injuries requiring surgery.

– Candy Woodall

Lawmakers arrive for State of the Union

If handshakes across the aisle are any reliable indication, there was a hint of bipartisanship in the air as lawmakers arrived for President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union before a divided Congress.

There was also the smell of cigars in the House gallery hallways on the third floor, a sign of the changing guard and new House rules.

Several guests and congresswomen were wearing white, as a nod to the suffragettes. That included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who despite earlier posts did not bring a white balloon into the chamber to troll Biden about what she describes as a delayed response in taking down the Chinese spy balloon.

- Candy Woodall

Biden traveling to Wisconsin and Florida after speech

Biden administration officials will hit the road this week, holding events in at least 20 states to highlight parts of the president’s message.

Biden himself will talk about his economic agenda in Wisconsin Wednesday and will discuss Social Security and Medicare in Florida Thursday.

Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Georgia and Minnesota. Multiple other cabinet members are also fanning out across the country.

- Maureen Groppe

How would Biden’s billionaire tax work?

Tonight Biden will resurface his plan to levy more taxes on the ultra-wealthy. But how would that work?

Under the current tax system, you don’t have to pay taxes on assets like stocks, homes and artwork that can appreciate over time until you sell it. But if you hold onto them until you die, you won’t have to pay any taxes. And on top of that, heirs that inherit your assets won’t have to pay taxes if they sell them.

The Biden Administration refers to this as a tax loophole, as billionaires benefit the most since they’re more likely than working-class Americans to get compensated via stocks or other assets that appreciate over time or inherit them.

To end the practice, Biden is proposing “minimum income tax” on American households worth more than $100 million. His plan calls for the wealthiest Americans to pay a tax rate of at least 20% on their full income, including unrealized gains from assets that have increased in value since their purchase.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

Taxing billionaires:Should the wealthy pay taxes on expensive art and wine? Joe Biden thinks so. Here's how it would work

Ocasio-Cortez lays out expectations for Biden’s speech, working with Republicans

Ahead of Biden’s address, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.-N.Y., said she’s hoping to “hear a really strong vision” from Biden and explained how Democrats and Republicans could find common ground after the GOP gained control of the House during the midterm elections.

The New York lawmaker told CNN she hopes to hear “about not just what we've done so far, but also our plans on executing on the enormous bills and successes that we've had in the last one to two years," saying “There still is implementation and execution on these plans to address our priorities around climate, taxing the rich and so much more.”

– Marina Pitofsky

Biden's 'finish the job' call in State of the Union echoes FDR

Historian Michael Beschloss hears echoes of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Biden’s State of the Union address.

Biden will call on Republicans to work with him to “finish the job” of rebuilding the economy and uniting the country, according to excerpts of the speech released by the White House.

“Finish the job” was used as a rationale for FDR's reelection, Beschloss tweeted about the phrase’s historical lineage. It was also a slogan for the World War I effort. And in a famous radio address during World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed to “finish the job.”

At the start of Biden’s administration, many comparisons – not all of them favorable – were made between the size and scope of Biden’s ambitions, Roosevelt’s programs and the World War II spending that lifted the nation out of the Great Depression.

– Maureen Groppe

Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Biden is more interested in 'woke fantasies' than concerns of everyday Americans

In delivering the Republican response to the State of the Union, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sander plans to attack Biden and the Democrats over a panoply of issues that include inflation, taxes, education and so-called "culture wars."

"And while you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day," Sanders plans to say, according to speech excerpts released by her office.

Another excerpt: "Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight."

– David Jackson

State of the Union guests:Lawmakers highlight policing, abortion, wrongful imprisonment

How long does the State of the Union last? What it will take for Biden to set a SOTU record

Biden’s first State of the Union address in 2022 was somewhere between the longest and shortest speeches ever given, according to The American Presidency Project. Will he keep his second address tonight short and sweet, or will he be long-winded?

If he intendeds to break the record for the shortest speech ever, he’d have it keep it under 28 minutes and 55 seconds. That was the time Richard Nixon took to deliver his address in 1972. To beat the longest address ever, he’d have to outdo his fellow Democrat former President Bill Clinton, who went on for 1 hour, 28 minutes and 40 seconds for his final State of the Union speech in 2000. Clinton also claims the spot for the second longest address, clocking in at 1 hour, 24 minutes and 58 seconds in 1995.

– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

Biden to promise investment in ‘places and people that have been forgotten’

Biden will spend part of his address promoting his economic plan and assuring Americans that he wants to invest in “places and people that have been forgotten.”

Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible, he will say, according to excerpts of the speech released by the White House.

“Maybe that’s you watching at home,” Biden will say. “You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it. That’s why we’re building an economy where no one is left behind. Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last two years. This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.”

– Michael Collins

Biden to praise recovery from Jan. 6 riot, COVID

President Joe Biden will say “the story of America is a story of progress and resilience” in his State of the Union address as he touts a rebounding economy, COVID-19 recovery and democracy that survived the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, according to excerpts of the speech provided by the White House.

Biden will tout 12 million new jobs created under his presidency – many that came back following the pandemic – to claim economic progress. And he will reflect on a period two years ago when businesses and schools closed at the height of the pandemic.

“Today, COVID no longer controls our lives,” Biden plans to say. “And two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War. Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.”

– Joey Garrison

Biden to ask Republicans to work with him in SOTU speech

President Joe Biden will make a plea to Republicans in Congress to work with him. He said after the November elections that Americans sent a divided Congress to Washington because they want them to work together.

“The people sent us a clear message,” Biden will say, according to excerpts released from the White House. “Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere.”

– Erin Mansfield

Why Sen. Patty Murray and other lawmakers will be wearing crayons at State of the Union

Washington Sen. Patty Murray and some of her Democratic colleagues will be wearing crayon pins to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address Tuesday to signal their support for greater investments in child care. Such care now costs more than $10,000 a year on average, and roughly half of Americans live in a child care desert. Insufficient child care takes a toll on America's economy, recent research shows, costing taxpayers $122 billion annually.

Partisan gridlock has prevented progress on major child care reforms, such as Murray's Child Care for Working Families Act, which would generally cap child care expenses at 7% of a family's household income. Biden, who alluded to that cap in his last State of the Union, has also struggled to gain traction on his child care proposals.

– Alia Wong

Lawmakers to highlight key social issues through guests

Tuesday night’s State of the Union address will be the first year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic where lawmakers are allowed to bring their own guests. As part of tradition, lawmakers tend to invite guests that draw attention to issues important to them.

Several Democratic lawmakers have invited guests to champion abortion access such as Roslyn Roger Collins, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Metropolitan New Jersey, who will attend the address alongside Rep. Bob Mendendez, D-N.J., according to Planned Parenthood.

In the wake of the brutal beating and subsequent death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are bringing guests who have been impacted by police violence. House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has invited Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died at the hands of a New York police officer in 2014.

– Christine Fernando and Ken Tran

Republican response: Sarah Huckabee Sanders follows in historic footsteps with her State of the Union response

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the first former White House press secretary to deliver a formal State of the Union response – she is not, however, the first governor of Arkansas to do the honors.

Back in 1985, the Democrats picked a young governor of Arkansas to deliver their response to President Ronald Reagan.

His name? Bill Clinton ... then-future President Bill Clinton.

Sanders will give the Republican rebuttal after Biden's speech.

– David Jackson

5 big questions for the SOTU:Is he running? 5 big questions Joe Biden will answer in the State of the Union

Biden and China: Spy balloon likely to be addressed

The speech is a chance for Biden to respond to those who have criticized how he handled the suspected Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the United States last week – and to send a public message to China. Republicans have accused Biden of showing weakness by not shooting down the balloon sooner.

Tensions have been rising with China, which the U.S. considers its biggest strategic and economic competitor. The nations have clashed over Taiwan, technology, human rights, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other disputes.

The Biden administration has been trying to stabilize the relationship, building what it’s called “guardrails” as it normalizes interaction. But one effort to do that – sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China – was postponed because of the balloon incident.

– Maureen Groppe and Michael Collins

Intel chair: China balloon flew over nuke sites

Biden to lay out 'forceful approach’ to combatting fentanyl

The Biden administration will launch a national campaign to educate young people on the dangers of fentanyl, part of the “forceful approach” for going after fentanyl trafficking and reducing overdose deaths.

Other steps include:

Using new large-scale scanners to improve efforts to stop fentanyl from being brought into the U.S. through the southern border.

Working with package delivery companies to catch more packages containing fentanyl from being shipped around the country.

Working with Congress to make permanent a temporary tool that that’s helped federal agents crack down on drugs chemically similar to fentanyl.

– Maureen Groppe

5 big questions on Biden's speech:Is he running? 5 big questions Joe Biden will answer in the State of the Union

Biden to plug job market as recession looms

President Joe Biden is expected to take credit for a booming job market and easing inflation when he speaks to the nation Tuesday night.

But he’ll likely leave out a litany of trouble spots, including a slumping housing market, a monthslong manufacturing downturn and elevated recession risk this year. Meanwhile, inflation is still high and economists pin at least some of the blame on Biden for showering Americans with cash in early 2021 while the economy was already healing.

– Paul Davidson

State of the economy:A look at economy's strengths, weaknesses as Biden sets to boast of record job growth in State of Union

Who is Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Arkansas governor to giver Republican response to Biden's State of the Union address

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one-time White House press secretary for former President Trump and current governor of Arkansas, will deliver the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address tonight.

Sanders, the youngest governor in the U.S., hails from a prominent political family. Her father Mike Huckabee was the 44th governor of Arkansas, serving from 1996 to 2007 before launching an unsuccessful presidential bid during the 2008 election. The younger Sanders has since cut out her own place in GOP politics, emerging as one of the more high-profile members of the Trump administration.

– Anna Kaufman

Bono, Tyre Nichols’ family members among guests sitting with first lady Jill Biden Tuesday night

The lead singer for the rock group U2, Bono, and Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, are among the White House guests attending President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday.

Guests are chosen to highlight themes of the president’s speech or because they represent his policy initiatives.

Bono is the cofounder of the ONE campaign to fight poverty and preventable diseases, and (RED), which fights HIV/AIDS in Africa. Other guests who will be sitting with first lady Jill Biden during the speech include:

The mother and stepfather of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black man who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers.

Brandon Tsay, the man who disarmed the Monterey Park gunman who killed 11 people and injured 10 others during a Lunar New Year celebration.

A Texas woman who almost died because doctors were concerned that intervening when her pregnancy ran into difficulties would violate the state’s abortion ban.

One of the Massachusetts same-sex couples who sued the state for the right to marry in 2001.

– Maureen Groppe

What to expect from tonight's speech:Here's what you can expect from Joe Biden's speech

Biden's speech comes amid job gains

One accomplishment Biden is sure to bring up tonight is the level of job gains under his presidency. Since he took office the unemployment rate went from 6.3% to 3.4%, per the latest jobs data.

Despite recession fears and massive tech layoffs, U.S. employers added 517,000 new jobs last month, well exceeding economists' expectations of around 180,000 new jobs.

The blowout jobs report paved the way for the Federal Reserve to pass more rate hikes aimed at lowering inflation, Fed Chairman Powell said in remarks he delivered earlier today. But the rate hikes could push the economy closer to a recession, which the central bank has avoided so far.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan remains stalled

Biden has yet to fulfill his campaign promise of canceling at least $10,000 in student loan debt. Last year he unveiled a plan to make good on his promise.

However the plan is being stalled by legal challenges. Six states – Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina – formed a coalition to fight the proposal. They argue that canceling student loan debt extends beyond the administration’s legal authority.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments for the case later this month. The Biden administration claims it is well within their legal realm to proceed with its plan. It cannot do so unless the Court rules in its favor, however.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

Stock market under Biden

Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 10%. Last year the index fell into a bear market, meaning it dropped 20% below a market peak set last January.

During former President Donald Trump's time in office, the Dow gained 56%. That represents an annualized gain of close to 12%, one of the best stock market performances under a Republican president according to data from LPL Financial.

– Elisabeth Buchwald

What time is the State of the Union speech tonight?

Biden’s State of the Union speech is Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST.

How to stream the SOTU

The speech will be livestreamed by USA TODAY.

Who is the designated survivor tonight?

The State of the Union address, delivered to a joint session of Congress and a crowd that includes all nine Supreme Court justices, poses a unique scenario in which every key member of the nation’s leadership is in one room.

That makes it both a momentous affair, and a significant national security risk. For this reason, each year one member of the president’s Cabinet dubbed the "designated survivor" hangs back.

The practice dates back to the Cold War, during which fears of a Soviet Nuclear attack abounded and a fresh urgency surrounded protocols for the order of presidential succession. The designated survivor for 2023 has not yet been announced, but heads of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Energy have most frequently been chosen.

– Anna Kaufman

What channel is the State of the Union on?

The major TV networks and other news outlets, such as Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and PBS, are providing live coverage of the address.

What is the State of the Union address?

The State of the Union address isn’t just a tradition in the nation’s capital. It's rooted in the Constitution.

Article II of the Constitution says the president shall “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union."

That doesn’t mean the president has to give a speech – as they often do today.

"From that very general mandate in the Constitution has evolved into what we recognize today as a yearly event, with lots of pomp and circumstance," Claire Jerry, a curator of political history at the National Museum of American History, told USA TODAY.

– Marina Pitofsky

When did the annual message become known as State of the Union address?

From 1790 to 1946, the speech delivered by the president to Congress was known simply as the "Annual Message."

In 1947 is became the ‘State of the Union’ and has since been referred to by that name.

– Anna Kaufman

What is the origin of the state of the union address?

Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution states that the president will “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

This language birthed the practice, allowing the executive to deliver to a joint session of Congress and the American people.

In the modern era, the speech has become a vehicle for administrations to roll out their policy priorities for the coming year and spotlight key agenda issues.

– Anna Kaufman

Kevin McCarthy outlines Republicans' agenda days before midterms ...

McAllen, Texas CNN —

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is vowing to secure the border, cut back on government spending and launch rigorous investigations into the Biden administration if Republicans win the House on Tuesday, reflecting a mix of priorities as McCarthy will be forced to contend with an increasingly hardline and pro-Trump conference that is itching to impeach President Joe Biden.

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with CNN, two days before the midterm elections, McCarthy outlined his plans for power, which includes tackling inflation, rising crime and border security – three issues that have become central to Republicans’ closing pitch to voters. To hammer home that message, McCarthy – who has been barnstorming the country in the run-up to the midterms – rallied here on Sunday for a trio of Hispanic GOP women who are vying to represent key districts along the southern border, a key part of the party’s strategy for winning the majority.

“The first thing you’ll see is a bill to control the border first,” McCarthy told CNN, when asked for specifics about his party’s immigration plans. “You’ve got to get control over the border. You’ve had almost 2 million people just this year alone coming across.”

The Biden administration continues to rely on a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that allows border authorities to turn migrants away at the US-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2022, amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere, US border encounters topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million were turned away under Title 42.

But McCarthy also highlighted oversight and investigations as a key priority for a GOP-led House, listing potential probes into the chaotic Afghanistan pullout, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and how the administration has dealt with parents and school board meetings. And he left the door open to launching eventual impeachment proceedings, which some of his members have already begun to call for.

Kevin McCarthy asked about impeaching Biden if GOP wins House. Hear his answer 02:29 - Source: CNN

“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”

And with the MAGA-wing calling to cut off funding to Ukraine while the GOP’s defense hawks vow not to abandon the country amid its war with Russia, McCarthy attempted to reaffirm his support for Ukraine while saying they would not automatically rubber stamp any additional requests for aid.

“I’m very supportive of Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “I think there has to be accountability going forward. … You always need, not a blank check, but make sure the resources are going to where it is needed. And make sure Congress, and the Senate, have the ability to debate it openly.”

McCarthy declined to name how many seats he thinks Republicans will pick up on Tuesday, but said he was confident it will “be at least enough to win the majority.” McCarthy did say that, in his eyes, “anywhere over 20 is a red wave.”

And McCarthy, who had to drop out of the speaker’s race in 2015 amid opposition from the far right House Freedom Caucus, told CNN he believes he’ll have the support this time around to secure the coveted speaker’s gavel – both from his conference and from former President Donald Trump.

“I’ll believe we’ll have the votes for speaker, yes,” McCarthy said. “I think Trump will be very supportive.”

McCarthy signs a "Make America Great Again" hat after an event featuring south Texas Republican congressional candidates in McAllen on Sunday. Tamir Kalifa for CNN

McCarthy outlines vision for the GOP House majority

On the influx of migrants at the border, McCarthy said “there’s a number of different ways” his majority will tackle the problem, but said Republicans would not put a bill on the floor to fix the broken immigration system until the border is secure.

“I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” he said, referring to the controversial policy where migrants were forced to remain in Mexico while they wait for their immigration proceedings in the United States.

To help stem the flow of fentanyl coming across the border, McCarthy said “you first do a very frontal attack on China to stop the poison from coming,” and then “provide the resources that the border agents need” and “make sure that fentanyl anytime anybody who wants to move it, you can prosecute him for the death penalty.”

When pressed for specific on his plans to fight crime, McCarthy said Republicans would fund the police, provide grants for recruiting and training, and look at how crimes are being prosecuted. And to bring down inflation and gas prices, he said they would reduce government spending and make America more energy independent, though he did not name specific bills.

Most bills will be primarily messaging endeavors, unlikely to overcome the president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, though they would have to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the national borrowing limit at some point next year. McCarthy, however, signaled Republicans will demand spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling, teeing up a risky fiscal showdown that could lead to a disastrous debt default.

McCarthy cheers as Texas congressional candidate Monica De La Cruz is introduced during an event in McAllen on Sunday. Tamir Kalifa for CNN

“If you’re going to give a person a higher limit, wouldn’t you first say you should change your behavior, so you just don’t keep raising and all the time?” he said. “You shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna let you keep spending money.’ No household should do that.”

McCarthy acknowledged Republicans were willing to raise the debt ceiling under Trump, but said the calculus is different now because Democrats spent trillions of dollars under Biden.

When pressed on whether he’s willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, McCarthy insisted that wouldn’t happen: “People talk about risking it. You don’t risk a default.”

With eyes on the speakership, McCarthy vows to restore Greene’s committee assignments

Aside from working to recapture the majority, McCarthy has also been campaigning to win the speaker’s gavel. And a key part of that strategy has been elevating potential critics and controversial Trump allies.

To that end, McCarthy has vowed to reinstate freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to her committee assignments, despite being stripped of her assignments by Democrats last year for her inflammatory remarks.

Kevin McCarthy reveals whether he will run for speaker if GOP wins majority 01:19 - Source: CNN

Meanwhile, McCarthy reiterated his plans to boot Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, from his seat on the House Intelligence Committee.

When asked if he has any restrictions about which committees Greene can serve, McCarthy – who will have a direct say in doling out those assignments – said “no.” Greene has previously told CNN she wants a seat on the House Oversight Committee, which will play a key role in GOP-led investigations in a majority.

“She’s going to have committees to serve on, just like every other member … Members request different committees and as we go through the steering committee, we’ll look at it,” he said. “She can put through the committees she wants, just like any other member in our conference that gets elected.”

Greene is not the only member who has spouted conspiracy theories or incendiary rhetoric. Most recently, some Republicans have mocked the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, or peddled fringe conspiracy theories about the incident.

Asked his message to those Republicans, McCarthy said: “What happened to Paul Pelosi is wrong, and I think we should not get into this rhetoric.”

But when pressed how he would tamp down that type of rhetoric, McCarthy pointed a finger at Democrats.

“The first thing I’ll ask the president to do is not to call half the nation idiots or say things about them because they have a difference of opinion,” he said. “I think leadership matters, and I think it probably starts with the president. And it will start with the speaker as well.”

Again asked how he’ll handle members of his own party who spread dangerous conspiracy theories, McCarthy responded: “I’ve watched people on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “If I’m speaker, I’ll be the speaker for the whole House. So it won’t be looking at just Republicans. We’ll be looking at Democrats as well.”

Melanie Zanona Kristin Wilson
Melanie Zanona
Kristin Wilson

House Republicans brace for doomsday scenario if McCarthy falls ...

CNN —

As a right-wing faction threatens to tank his speakership ambitions, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy delivered a promise: “I’ll never leave,” making clear he has no plans to drop out of the race even if the fight goes to many ballots on the floor.

“I’ll get 218,” McCarthy told CNN, referring to the votes he’d need to become House speaker.

But Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a conservative hardliner who is challenging McCarthy to be the most powerful member of Congress, doubled down on his commitment to stop the California Republican’s ascension.

“I’m not bluffing,” Biggs told CNN on Thursday when asked if he would drop out.

With the increasing likelihood that the speaker’s race could go to multiple ballots – something that hasn’t happened since 1923 – McCarthy’s allies and foes alike are starting to quietly game out the next steps if he can’t get the necessary 218 votes on the first round and they move into uncharted territory.

Bash asks Pelosi if McCarthy has what it takes to be House Speaker. See her response 02:37 - Source: CNN

McCarthy’s supporters are vowing to keep voting for him on multiple ballots, and GOP sources said there are early discussions about a floor strategy for that potential scenario, including whether to recess the House or let the votes keep rolling – no matter how long it takes.

To prevent that from happening, McCarthy and his team have been engaged in serious talks with a group of conservatives, including over potentially giving them influential committee assignments and more power to drive the legislative process. GOP sources said those negotiations are still early in the process and could ultimately end up giving the group some aspect of what the hardliners desperately want: additional power to seek a sitting speaker’s ouster with a vote on the floor.

Asked if he would drop out of the race if he doesn’t get 218 votes on the first ballot, Biggs refused to say.

“I’m not going to talk about hypotheticals,” said Biggs, who lost his conference’s nomination to become speaker last month after securing 31 votes.

But in the case of a doomsday scenario – where neither McCarthy nor Biggs can get 218 votes on January 3 and neither drops out – some pro-McCarthy Republicans are signaling support for a different approach. Some said they would be willing to work with Democrats to find a moderate Republican who can get the 218 votes to clinch the gavel – a long-shot idea that underscores the uncertainty looming over the speaker’s race.

“Our initial plan is vote for Kevin and let him fight this out repeatedly. … But if they think they’re going to use this to infinity to drive him out, well, we’re not going to bend to their will,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican.

Bacon added if GOP hardliners don’t bend, then he would be willing to work with Democrats to find another more moderate Republican to secure the 218 votes to become speaker.

“If a small group refuses to play ball and be part of the team, then we’ll work across the aisle to find an agreeable Republican,” Bacon said. “But I hope we don’t get there.”

McCarthy’s detractors don’t buy it.

“There are very significant rules, changes being discussed that would open the House up, that would be transformative, that would give us the ability to actually legislate and represent our constituents,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida who said he’s a “hard no” on McCarthy. “And whoever is speaker is going to have to agree to those rules, I think. And I don’t think that person will be Kevin McCarthy because Kevin McCarthy won’t have 218 votes.”

Gaetz added: “I think the person who is ultimately going to be the speaker isn’t even the candidate yet.”

Indeed, the small group of Republicans known as the “Never Kevin” movement – confident that Biggs could not win a majority of the House – has been trying to recruit a viable alternative, and claim “several” Republicans have privately told them they would be interested in running if McCarthy drops out. Their goal with voting for Biggs is to show that McCarthy is weak on the first ballot, which they hope would inspire other candidates to jump in.

“How many members vote for someone else will show the strength (of the anti-McCarthy group),” Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who is a “hard no” on McCarthy, told CNN. “I think the second ballot is going to have more candidates. … There are already Republicans letting us know they’d like to be considered.”

Even House Republicans who are supporting McCarthy predicted that a number of lawmakers would run if McCarthy withdrew his name, with some saying that House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s top deputy, would emerge as the front runner in that case.

“If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). Scalise would probably be the guy,” one GOP lawmaker said.

Scalise has repeatedly vowed to support McCarthy and refused to speculate on whether he would jump into the race if the GOP leader can’t get the votes.

“No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. “Obviously, our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3. And there’s a lot of conversations that everybody has been having, Kevin, surely, with the members who have expressed concerns.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, the conservative set to become the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, went even further, ruling out jumping into the race even though Gaetz and other hardliners have urged him to seek the speakership.

“No,” Jordan said when asked if he’d run if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes. “I want to chair the Judiciary Committee.”

McCarthy’s weighs more concessions

With 222 GOP seats next year, McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes and still win the speakership. But he and his team are still hopeful he can win on the first round as he has been working both publicly and privately to win over holdouts. So far, at least five Republicans have promised to oppose him on the floor – but in a positive sign for McCarthy, one of them has shown he’s gettable.

“I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

In addition to those five, a new group of seven Republican hardliners on Thursday laid out a list of conditions to earn their vote, although they did not specifically threaten to vote against McCarthy if their demands aren’t met.

GOP lawmaker explains why he won't vote for McCarthy to become House Speaker 03:08 - Source: CNN

Their list of demands – which shows the work McCarthy needs to do to get to 218 – includes a promise that leaders won’t play in primaries, restoring the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, placing more conservatives on key committees, giving members at least 72 hours to read bill text before a vote, and committing to using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to demand more spending cuts, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN.

McCarthy has already begun brokering some rules changes to empower rank-and-file members, created a new select committee on China, vowed to boot some Democratic lawmakers from their committees, and sketched out in greater detail his investigative plans – including a potential impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

But McCarthy still has additional levers he could pull. Conservative hardliners are pushing for more representation on the powerful House Rules Committee, a leadership-aligned panel that decides how and when bills come to the floor. In one private meeting with a member of the House Freedom Caucus, McCarthy was urged to take a harder public stance on the coming policy issues for next year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

And the anti-McCarthy group is also still pressing for a process that would allow any single member to hold a floor vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which was wielded over former Speaker John Boehner before he was forced out of the job by the far right in 2015.

McCarthy has been adamantly opposed to restoring the “motion to vacate the chair,” and a majority of the House GOP voted against the idea during a during a closed-door meeting last month. When asked by CNN on Thursday if he would visit the issue, McCarthy laughed and refused to answer.

But McCarthy’s detractors said it’s an issue very much still on the table and think he may end up needing to embrace it if he still doesn’t have the speaker votes by January 3. GOP sources told CNN there’s potential room to negotiate to give members more power to call for a vote to oust the speaker – perhaps by allowing the vote to occur if a certain number of members call for one, rather than allowing a single lawmaker to call for a vote as the hardliners want.

“A competent secure leader is not threatened by (the motion to vacate),” Good said. “And so, yeah, that I think that’s central to many members.”

Yet others said what Good and his allies are seeking is a recipe for chaos — and are calling on their colleagues to fall in line.

“I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said of the impact of a January 3 floor fight. “And I know I get that wherever I go in my district is, ‘why can’t you guys just get things done?’”

As McCarthy scrambles to lock down speaker’s votes, he also delayed the GOP’s internal elections for committee chairmanships. There was some speculation that one of the members competing for a gavel, Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida, may retire early if he doesn’t win, which would make McCarthy’s math problem even tougher. But Buchanan vehemently disputed the notion.

“It’s ridiculous, laughable,” he told reporters. “I’m doing everything I can to help get Kevin to 218.”

McCarthy could also try to convince Democrats or his GOP detractors to vote present or not show up to the floor proceedings, which would lower the threshold he needs to become speaker. But McCarthy promised his GOP colleagues he would not court Democratic votes.

Could Democrats join Republicans and select a speaker?

In recent weeks, part of McCarthy’s pitch to his critics has been warning that if they don’t unify, then Democrats could theoretically band together and peel off a few Republicans to elect the next speaker.

Some Democrats have said they would entertain the idea, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him “informally” about it.

Joyce also said some members have reached out to him about potentially running, but he dismissed it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the next House Democratic leader, said, “there are no behind-the-scenes conversations” that he has had with Republicans to put up an alternative candidate. But he refused to rule out a scenario where his caucus would help elect the next speaker if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes.

Hear if Hakeem Jeffries would be willing to help Kevin McCarthy 02:25 - Source: CNN

“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let’s see what happens on January 3.”

Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.

But that would require agreement from every single Democrat and the help of five Republicans – no easy feat. Upton said he has no plans to be in Washington that day, telling CNN: “I’ll be skiing.”

And progressives like Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York said they would never vote for a GOP speaker candidate, no matter how moderate.

“No,” Bowman said, indicating he’d be voting for Jeffries on every ballot on January 3. “It’s going to be Hakeem.”

But Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman said this has happened before – nearly a decade ago in his state where minority Democrats in the Arkansas legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to elect a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman privately made this case to his colleagues at a closed-door meeting this week.

“I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.

Westerman added that the discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. But he added: “I’m not really excited about any type of destructive movement.”

Manu Raju Melanie Zanona
Manu Raju
Melanie Zanona

Democrats won't get as much Obama as they want in the midterms ...

CNN —

Requests for Barack Obama are pouring in from Democrats around the country – candidates are desperate for his help in what they feel is an existential midterms battle, one in which each race could help determine control of Congress and governments in the states.

To these candidates, American democracy itself is on the line. And while Obama agrees with them on the stakes, many of those invitations are about to get turned down.

More than a dozen advisers and others who have spoken with Obama say the former president’s approach in the fall campaign will remain limited and careful. That cautious approach comes as Obama tells people his presence fires up GOP opposition just as much as it lights up supporters, that he has more of an impact if he does less and that he can’t cloud out the up-and-coming generation of Democrats.

Obama’s small staff has instead been coordinating which appearances he’ll make and which ads he’ll record with President Joe Biden’s White House political operation and the Democratic National Committee. A similar effort already happened with fundraising emails his name has been put on – political coordination between a sitting and former president, which – like so much else in current politics – is unprecedented.

Democratic operatives say they’re eager to see Obama play an active role – even now, they say, his best role is driving up crucial Black voter turnout in places like Philadelphia and Detroit – even as they note his appeal is shifting. Among the disinterested voter blocs are a rising generation too young to remember his 2008 win, those who argue that his failure to deliver on soaring promises helped set up the crisis of faith and political despair that has followed and those who have gotten tired of seeing how little he’s engaged.

He’ll make a handful of appearances on the campaign trail, bundling appearances for candidates for Senate and governor and secretaries of state, arguing that Democrats winning those races is essential to preserving democracy.

But beyond the midterm season, Obama sees a larger purpose to this latest phase of his post-presidency life. No matter how the midterms go, the former President will host what he’s calling a Democracy Forum two weeks after Election Day – the first event that he’s hoping to turn into an annual gathering, reflecting a recalibration of the Obama Foundation to focus on democracy in America and around the world.

“We’ll explore a range of issues – from strengthening institutions and fighting disinformation, to promoting inclusive capitalism and expanded pluralism – that will shape democracies for generations to come,” Obama writes in an announcement of the event going out to donors and others involved with the foundation, first obtained by CNN. “We’ll showcase democracy in action around the world, and approaches that are working. And we’ll discuss and debate ideas for how we can adapt our democracies and our institutions for a new age.”

Ben Rhodes, a longtime adviser who has been helping plan the Democracy Forum, said that the foundation’s work is removed from politics but will reflect Obama’s priorities.

“All the things he might care about as an ex-president – climate change, health care, avoiding war – all connect back to whether or not democracy survives, and frankly whether or not the worst-case outcomes happen in terms of who’s in charge of countries,” Rhodes said. “He sees it as the thread that connects everything he’s doing.”

Stepping back from an unwanted post-presidency role

A common feature of Obama’s post-presidency period will be noticeably missing in this first midterm election under Biden.

Gone will be the rounds of mass campaign endorsement lists for statewide, House and state legislator candidates that Obama had been putting out since leaving the White House. The decision to stop those lists is a function, people who’ve been working with him say, of stepping back from the extended leadership role he played in the Democratic Party during the Trump years – a role they say he never wanted.

Now Obama will only endorse candidates who have already been endorsed by Biden, to prevent any sense of potential daylight between them – and no further endorsements are coming this year.

Obama continues to occupy a unique place in politics: A former President who really wants to leave politics behind but whose popularity is growing; a man already six years out of office who is still more than a decade younger than Biden and other top Democratic leaders – not to mention Donald Trump, the man who succeeded him and appears set to run again in 2024.

“I’m not sure I can think of him as an elder,” said Rep. Mike Levin, who was one of six first-time House candidates in California with whom Obama did a joint event for in 2018. All six went on to win. Levin in an interview last week was still talking about the 2008 race almost as if it just happened.

Much of Obama’s focus has been the multi-million-dollar deals continuing his transformation from president to brand. With the Emmy last month for the national parks documentary he narrated for Netflix, he’s a Tony short of becoming an EGOT, if his production company is included.

Some Democrats mock his various ventures as “Obama, Inc.” Among them: Switching his podcast deal from Spotify to Audible, expanding productions under his Netflix deal and a second volume of memoirs – adding to the already 768-page book published in 2020 that stopped chronologically at the killing of Osama bin Laden during his first term.

And with the early construction of his library Obama has moved from flashy PowerPoint demonstrations for donors to actual beams and columns on the South Side of Chicago, he is still courting multimillion dollar donors to fund it.

“He’s happy Biden is president,” a friend of Obama’s told CNN. “And he’s being post-president as he sees fit.”

And there are Democrats who are happy to see him take a step back.

“One person is still in the ring as the one we look to to advance our values. The other guy is a celebrity,” said one high level Democratic operative. “If your passion is politics, you want to be with the person in the arena.”

Still, Obama has quietly strategized with political leaders at home and abroad – from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to new, young, leftist Chilean President Gabriel Boric or British opposition leader Keir Starmer – while avoiding getting into the daily fray.

“This idea that he should be the guy to sway people’s minds is just silly. That’s not his role. Does he speak inspirationally? Yes,” said the Obama friend. “But he’s a pragmatist.”

Even the limited amount of appearances Obama has continued to do – as he’s tried to get back to the kind of post-presidency he was hoping for before Trump’s election – demonstrate how worried he is about anti-democratic trends on the rise and progressives giving up hope.

“I’m not sure he would have been at COP26 and Copenhagen and holding a summit on democracy here at home if he wasn’t recognizing what’s happening broadly,” said Eric Schultz, a senior adviser who’s been working with Obama since the White House days, referencing last year’s climate summit in Scotland and a major speech on democracy in Denmark earlier this year.

Staying involved behind the scenes

As much as Obama likes to insist that he’s ready to start playing a more background part, he consulted with both Biden and Schumer about the failed attempt to push through a bill on voting rights. He was also on the phone after Biden’s Build Back Better legislation collapsed, backing the idea of slimming down the bill to just be climate change provisions and whatever else was needed to get West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s support.

He spent months on phone calls with tech leaders and advocates, building up to a speech he delivered at Stanford in the spring aimed at rallying the elites and intellectuals into getting involved with what he described as essentially unregulated social media companies.

A few weeks later, he gathered several Black journalists – The New York Times Magazine’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, Los Angeles Times executive editor Kevin Merida, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wes Lowery, Columbia University School of Journalism dean and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb and Washington Post global opinion editor Karen Attiah – in his Washington office to talk about the ways in which disinformation works its way into Black communities, and what could possibly be done to combat that.

“He was in a space of how he could be helpful, how he could help to move things along from the seat he is in currently,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the advocacy group Color of Change, who also attended the meeting.

Obama’s staff, meanwhile, has remained in regular touch with Biden’s political staff at the White House, strategizing about opportunities to speak up on the President’s behalf. He was a sounding board for Biden on the Afghanistan withdrawal and followed up with a strong statement of support.

Obama is still important stamp of approval during moments of celebration as well, like when he called in August to congratulate the President after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Obama’s disdain for the current turn in the Republican Party is clear and his pitch is a more dispirited take on the hopeful pitch he used to make – that Democratic ideas are more popular and that the more people who vote, the better Democratic candidates will do.

Attendees at a rare Obama fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in San Francisco saw a man in his new element: Tieless, in a large chair in the home of a co-founder of Qualcomm, delivering long answers to a room full of tech billionaires on a handheld microphone as he fielded set-up questions lobbed at him by Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson.

They were struck by the intensity of his attacks on Republicans. But they also noted how he seemed to be reflecting fresh on harbinger moments from his own presidency, like when he pleaded with Republican senators not to blow up the norms of government by blockading Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court and marveling again how he said they didn’t care.

The former first lady still hates politics

One person Democrats almost certainly won’t be getting is the Obama they always say they want to see even more: the former first lady.

Michelle Obama will be hitting the road herself, but her limited six-city tour won’t start until after Election Day. Instead of campaigning, she’ll be appearing with celebrities like David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey to promote the new self-help-minded sequel to her blockbuster 2018 memoir.

Her last campaign appearance was a recorded speech played at the virtual 2020 Democratic convention. She told friends at the time that she felt too dejected about the state of the country – between Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic and the racial divisions that were freshly exposed that summer – to bring herself to campaign more than that.

At their portrait unveilings at the White House last month, she delivered what she said she knew was a “spicy speech” about the peaceful transfer of power. But she won’t be hitting the trail again, despite the many campaigns who believe her power is unmatched in connecting with the Black women who have proven the most important constituency in winning elections for Democrats.

Instead, the Obamas are sticking to a rhythm that developed in the 2018 cycle: He’ll do the direct campaigning and she’ll take a less direct role as the leader of her officially non-partisan, multi-celebrity, co-chaired registration and turnout effort non-profit, When We All Vote.

Focusing on the foundation more than midterms

Always returning to the Martin Luther King quote about the “long arc of history,” Obama’s interest has remained less on the midterms or 2024 than on the network of nearly 1,000 young leaders at the center of his foundation.

Gift Siziva, a young Obama leader from Zimbabwe who is now planning to run for his nation’s parliament in next year’s elections, said that seeing democracy threatened in America has made him more connected to Obama and to the repositioned work of the foundation.

“To find the American democracy being tested itself by different phases and episodes over the last five years,” Siziva told CNN, “makes me understand that – for democratic crusaders globally – the fight for democracy is our reality.”

It’s also a reflection of the type of young people who’ve been brought in – when Sheila Babauta was introducing Obama at last year’s international climate conference, for example, she had already been part of a march outside demanding more. While protesters were literally taping themselves to the streets in Glasgow, other activists were already waiting to speak to Obama in a small two-hour session he held after his speech.

“These moments are like an electric car when it goes to a charging station. It fills my battery and gets me going,” said Juan Monterrey, one of the inaugural Obama scholars and Panama’s delegate to last year’s climate convention.

Babauta, a local legislator in her native Northern Mariana Islands, said her own association with the former president as a foundation young leader has filtered down to the children at a youth center on the island of Saipan where she works. The children “asked if me and President Obama and I are BFFs” after they found a picture of them together.

Obama is often the moderator but sometimes pipes in with advice, like when he met with European leaders in a closed-door session at his democracy speech in Copenhagen during which he pushed back on a question about how to handle opposition.

“Sometimes it just turns out they’re mean, they’re racist, they’re sexist, they’re angry. And your job is then to just beat them because they’re not persuadable,” Obama said, according to a transcript obtained by CNN.

But he warned them also: “Sometimes we get filled up in our own self-righteousness. We’re so convinced that we’re right that we forget what we are right about.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the status of Gift Siziva’s campaign. He is planning to run for parliament in Zimbabwe next year.

A frustrated Joe Biden will go on the attack against Republicans in ...

CNN —

President Joe Biden has been letting loose in private conversations in recent weeks, railing about the factors bogging down his approval ratings and the people he thinks aren’t helping – including Democrats eyeing his job despite his clear promise to run for reelection.

He’s gearing up for intense midterm campaigning built around hammering Republicans, as he tries to save Democrats in the House and Senate, but also to tee up a reelection campaign that for now is expected to be announced by next spring.

Biden is frustrated that journalists aren’t calling out Republicans for, as he sees it, giving up their principles in pursuit of power, according to a dozen people familiar with the President and his inner circle. He’s eager to unleash on the GOP ahead of the midterm elections but worries that doing so could endanger his last remaining hopes for bipartisan legislative wins. He knows he’ll be blamed for the economic pain that people are feeling – but deliberately, the statement he put out on Thursday about the latest contraction in the US economy spent as much time attributing the situation to “technical factors” as hammering congressional Republicans for their proposal to raise taxes on the middle class.

With his approval rating as bad as the low 30s in some polls and nearly every Democratic strategist warning that the political environment is dire – and many in the party still complaining that the White House’s political operation lacks enough planning or urgency – the President is short on other options. But advisers and others who’ve spoken directly with the President tell CNN the polarized country gives him a chance to make a more effective contrast than in any prior midterm cycle, boosted by the material they’re counting on from expected primary wins by Trump loyalists and other far-right candidates in May and June – as well as the anticipated Republican opposition to Biden’s last attempt at a domestic policy push in the congressional reconciliation process underway.

In private conversations, the President has lamented how much people have stopped focusing on how bad a state he believes the country was in under former President Donald Trump. And so his old line, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative,” has become a midterm mantra around the West Wing.

“Voters can easily believe that the country isn’t where they hoped,” one Biden adviser argued, “but also believe that they don’t want to turn it over to Marjorie Taylor Greene in ’22 and Trump in ‘24.”

“Part of the value of contrast in any midterms is to try to force voters to think about this as a choice, as opposed to making it a referendum,” said another Biden adviser. “That’s most effectively done from the top – it’s hard to send candidates around the country even if they’re all singing from the same hymnbook if you don’t have the President driving it.”

The current political climate has Biden’s inner circle looking abroad for hope, with French President Emmanuel Macron’s wide reelection win against a far-right repeat opponent last weekend validating the thinking around Biden that he can mitigate the damage this year by going hard on Republicans. Experts more familiar with French politics weren’t as swayed by a tweet from White House chief of staff Ron Klain after the Macron results came that noted the French President had an approval rating similar to Biden’s and won a big victory. It’s true that the binary choice was to Macron’s benefit, they say, but his approval rating is actually high by French standards, whereas Biden’s is low by American standards.

The work isn’t just on Biden and his team, as the White House sees it. People close to the President say he’s amused, and a little annoyed, by the impatient ambitions of those in his own party whom he senses ushering him toward the exit. They want Democrats to focus on the party’s stakes in the midterms and not on their own future ambitions.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts inspired the latest eye-rolls in the West Wing. White House aides were annoyed last week to click on her New York Times op-ed lamenting “a stalled Biden agenda” and “our failure to get big things done.” Several of them thought she could have used her platform to tout Biden’s successes. Instead, they watched as she got booked onto Sunday news shows to talk about her own wish-list agenda – and to be asked if she’d be running for president again in 2024.

She answered by repeating that Biden is running and she’s supporting him, but the White House would rather the conversation focus on Trumpism consuming the Republican Party. Some of that sentiment is likely to come out disguised as jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. Biden has already sprinkled a little new into his weathered “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative” and “This is not your father’s Republican Party” lines.

“This is the MAGA party,” he said at a pair of West Coast fundraisers last week.

On Thursday, responding to the bad gross domestic product numbers that reflect more trouble for the economy on his watch, Biden said the blame was obviously on obstructionist Republicans, and again cited the hard-right agenda of Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, leader of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm.

“We’re in a situation where we have a very different view than Sen. Scott and Republicans who want to raise taxes on middle-class families and want to include half of small business owners,” Biden said. “If our Republican friends are really interested in doing something about economic growth, they should help us continue to lower the deficit; they should be willing to work with us to have a tax code that is actually one that works and everybody pays their fair share; and they should be in a position where we shouldn’t be raising taxes on middle-class folks, we should be raising taxes on people who everyone acknowledges aren’t paying their fair share.”

Bracing for a Biden-Trump game of chicken

Like everyone else in politics, Biden and his inner circle of advisers are gauging the rumblings out of Mar-a-Lago, looking for signs of the former President’s plans to run in 2024.

But the timeline is under Trump’s control – the former President could wait a year or more to declare, looming over Republican machinations that are expected to accelerate the morning after the midterms.

Meanwhile, officials are being very careful about not violating the Hatch Act by mixing politics with government business. Biden’s advisers outside the White House are wary of triggering any campaign finance requirements and restrictions that could come even from too much talk about running.

“You can point to history that there’s a pretty clear time horizon that many presidents have looked to in their reelection campaigns,” another adviser to the President said, asked whether Biden is similarly headed to a reelection announcement of the sort that former President Barack Obama did. If so, that would be around this time next year.

Biden advisers say they think his poll numbers are statistically better than they should be, given the sourness of the country’s mood. Trump’s are worse, and top Democrats present that as a sign of how much goodwill there is toward Biden.

“Joe Biden beat him once,” said John Anzalone, Biden’s pollster for the campaign, “and Joe Biden will beat him again.”

But the Democratic worries about 2024 are compounding. Many party leaders who agree Biden is their strongest bet against Trump are skeptical that he’d do well against a younger and less reviled Republican. Prominent party leaders say privately that they’re on edge that a 2024 race without Biden would prompt another crowded primary.

At the same time, if Biden held off on a decision to avoid governing as a lame duck, that could hobble other candidates who need time to raise money and their profiles.

“Even if Republicans win this year, I still believe Biden is our best candidate against Trump and would beat him,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, an avid supporter going back to even before he attended Biden’s first campaign fundraiser on the night he launched in 2019.

In other words, American politics over the next few years might come down to two White men in their late 70s playing an extended game of chicken.

Just as Trump is using his midterm endorsements and rallies to cut what could be a path of his own for 2024, Biden sees the next six months as his own opportunity to capitalize on his brand.

“He’s like Scranton in his mind,” said one person who has spoken to the President, referring to the Pennsylvania town where Biden was born and that he often references. “There was a boom, then a bust, but the value hasn’t changed. Only the fleeting market interest has.”

The adviser to the President put it in clearer political terms: “It’s not just that there’s intra-party back-and-forth on the Republican side. It’s that Trump is drawing them to the past, and the American people need their leaders to draw them forward.”

In the meantime, Biden is still trying to govern. The Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t give the White House the polling bump aides had hoped for, which they attribute to the lack of a fight on the scale of the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. But even as the President looks to step up the attacks on congressional Republicans, he doesn’t want to harm the possibility of future deals with them.

They could end up in power, after all.

“Making ad hominem attacks is not who he is,” said a Biden aide, “and it’s not, frankly, what he believes the American people are looking for in their leaders and their president.”

An old friend drops by the White House for lunch

Biden keeps telling his team that if he can just get out of the White House more he’ll be able to convince more people – Americans and lawmakers – to support his agenda. Covid-19 and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have both been used as explanations for why he hasn’t followed through.

Among some aides, the persistent vows to get around have become something of a punchline.

The toe-touch trips Biden has taken have frequently left his agenda upstaged: When he was promoting ethanol inside a corn-processing facility in Iowa, his comment that Putin was committing genocide was what generated the most attention.

On Monday, Biden had his old buddy Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan over to the White House. While he was there, Duggan joined Biden in the Oval Office as the President called Macron to congratulate him on reelection. He sat in on a session with Harvard students talking about how to draw in disaffected young voters. They had lunch in the presidential dining room, and Duggan showed Biden photographs of how some of the American Rescue Plan money is being used in Detroit.

“Because he’s not out there, he’s really not getting the credit he deserves for all the good things that are happening,” Duggan said he had told Biden. “Standing there with a teleprompter and reading is not what he loves.”

Assessing Democrats’ chances in Michigan, a prime presidential battleground, Duggan said he thinks local Republicans are hurting themselves by continuing to chase conspiracy theories over the 2020 election results. The anxiety over inflation is real among everyone from factory workers to middle-class suburbanites to people in his city, Duggan said, but he’s holding out hope that inflation pressures will fade in the months ahead.

Duggan was the very first person to pitch Biden on running in 2020 – in a conversation on election night 2016 when the then-vice president called for a gut check about Trump winning Michigan.

The mayor said he’s just as on board now.

“Anybody who hung around him today would be encouraging him to run again – he was strong, focused and ready for the fight,” Duggan said. “I agree with him that the Democrats would be lucky to have Trump again. But if they do, it’s all the more reason to have Joe Biden.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere Kevin Liptak
Edward-Isaac Dovere
Kevin Liptak

Liz Cheney is already looking beyond 2022 | CNN Politics

CNN —

Liz Cheney didn’t come right out and say she expects to lose her primary next month. But in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday, it was pretty easy to read between the lines of the Wyoming Republican’s answers.

“I am working hard here in Wyoming to earn every vote,” Cheney said at one point. “But I will also say this. I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to say things that aren’t true about the election. My opponents are doing that, certainly simply for the purpose of getting elected.

“If I have to choose between maintaining a seat in the House of Representatives or protecting the constitutional republic and ensuring the American people know the truth about Donald Trump, I’m going to choose the Constitution and the truth every single day,” she said at another.

Asked by Tapper whether her service as vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6 will have been worth it even if she loses next month, Cheney responded that it was “the single most important thing I have ever done professionally.”

If it sounds to you like Cheney is framing her August 16 primary for Wyoming’s at-large House seat as a sort of fait accompli, and as not the end of the story but as a part of a broader narrative, well, then, you are right.

The simple fact is that Cheney is very unlikely to beat Harriet Hageman in next month’s primary. Hageman has the support of former President Donald Trump, as well as a number of top Republicans including, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

While Cheney has tried to recruit Democrats to cross party lines and support her – and some undoubtedly will – it’s hard to see that making a real difference in the outcome of the race in such an overwhelmingly Republican state.

Simply put: Cheney looks likely to lose – and she knows it.

What she also knows is that, at least in her mind, this isn’t the end of her political career.

Here’s how Cheney answered a question from Tapper on whether she is interested in running for president in 2024:

“I haven’t really – at this point, I have not made a decision about 2024. …

“… But I do think, as we look towards the next presidential election, as I said, I believe that our nation stands on the edge of an abyss. And I do believe that we all have to really think very seriously about the dangers we face and the threats we face. And we have to elect serious candidates.”

Which tells you everything you need to know about Cheney and 2024. She isn’t an announced candidate. But when you hear a politician talking about the country “standing on the edge of an abyss” and the need to elect “serious candidates,” well, it doesn’t take an astrophysicist to figure out what’s going on there.

The real question seems to be then not whether Cheney runs – she sounded to all the world like that decision is mostly made – but rather whether she would have any sort of impact on the 2024 race.

If Cheney runs as a Republican, it will, undoubtedly, be a very tough road for her.

Trump is the clear frontrunner in all polling conducted on the Republican presidential primary and seems very likely to run. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is widely seen as the only serious alternative to Trump at the moment – and he has positioned himself as a representative of Trumpism without Trump.

There is no potential candidate garnering any serious support in hypothetical 2024 primary polls who is running expressly against Trump and his four years in office. The Republicans, aside from Cheney, who are signaling an interest in running that sort of campaign – Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan being perhaps the most prominent – barely register in polls.

Could Cheney somehow coalesce the anti-Trump vote within the Republican Party? Sure. But even if she was to do so, there’s scant evidence that bloc of voters comprise anything close to a majority of likely Republican primary voters.

The other – and perhaps more plausible – path for Cheney is to run as an independent in 2024. Assuming Trump is the Republican nominee, such a candidacy could skim off enough votes to potentially hamstring the former President’s chances of winning. (Presumably Cheney, who is conservative on most issues, would appeal more to Republicans than Democrats.)

Even under that scenario, however, Cheney would function as a spoiler – trying to keep Trump from the White House – rather than as a viable candidate to be president. Which, given what she told Tapper Sunday, might be enough for her.

“I’m fighting hard, no matter what happens on August 16, I’m going to wake up on August 17 and continue to fight hard to ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again,” said Cheney.

Kevin McCarthy moves to secure potential speakership | CNN Politics

CNN —

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy is moving swiftly to lock down the votes to claim the speaker’s gavel as a hard-right faction of his conference discusses whether to mount a long-shot challenge to complicate his bid and force concessions in the process, according to multiple GOP sources.

McCarthy privately spoke to his closest advisers and confidantes in a Wednesday morning phone call just hours after his party appeared on track to take the House but fell short of their bullish expectations of a massive GOP landslide. The California Republican tapped a group of members to be on his whip team that will help him secure the 218 votes in order to win the speakership in January, with GOP lawmakers on the call promising to “work hard to get him elected,” according to a source familiar with the matter. And several allies were seen popping in and out of McCarthy’s office on Wednesday as they started to hash out and execute their game plan.

“Yes,” McCarthy said confidently Wednesday night as he left the Capitol and was asked if he had the votes to assume the speakership.

But McCarthy’s easy ascension to the speakership will be determined in large part by the size of a potential GOP majority. If McCarthy maintains a narrow majority, then the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus could stand in the way of his leadership ambitions. CNN has not yet projected a Republican takeover of the chamber.

A source familiar with the House Freedom Caucus’ deliberations told CNN on Wednesday morning that there are around two dozen current and incoming members who are willing to vote against McCarthy if he doesn’t offer them concessions. They are actively discussing putting up a nominal challenger to face McCarthy in next week’s leadership elections in an effort to force the GOP leader to give them more influence in how the House operates, the source said.

McCarthy, who sent a letter to the conference Wednesday afternoon officially declaring his bid for the speakership and asking members for their support, spoke with some potential GOP holdouts behind closed doors throughout the day, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial conservative who was booted from her committee assignments by Democrats – and a number of Republicans – over her past incendiary rhetoric. Greene has pushed for a spot on the powerful House Oversight Committee in a GOP majority.

Leaving McCarthy’s office, Greene would not say if she’d get what she’s been seeking.

“No comment,” Greene said when asked if she’d support McCarthy for speaker.

Next week’s leadership election is just the first step in the process. McCarthy would need to win a majority of his conference’s support next week to be nominated for speaker before a January vote when he would need 218 votes of the full House to win the gavel. The hope, the source said, is that if they back a challenger to McCarthy in next week’s elections, it would force the California Republican to cut a deal in order to secure their support in the January speaker’s race when he wouldn’t be able to afford to lose more than a handful of GOP votes in a narrow Republican majority.

The Freedom Caucus’ strategy will come into sharper focus by week’s end as members weigh their options and as incoming lawmakers come to Washington for initial meetings. Rep. Matt Gaetz, an unabashed McCarthy critic who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus but is closely aligned with the group, also started calling members to talk strategy about the speaker’s race, according to a source familiar.

Among their demands: Making it easier for individual members to call for a vote ousting a sitting speaker, an idea that McCarthy has long rejected and one that was wielded over former Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio. The same source said that the Freedom Caucus wants more representation on the panel that makes selections on members’ committee assignments. They are also calling on GOP leaders to commit to slowing down the legislative process and give them more time to review even non-controversial bills.

Hardliners may also push for promises related to launching investigations and impeachment proceedings into President Joe Biden or members of his Cabinet.

Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican and former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told a right-wing streaming network that a McCarthy speakership should not be a “foregone conclusion,” complaining that a red wave never materialized and accusing McCarthy of “backpedaling” on impeachment.

“McCarthy has a lot of chips to cash in,” said a senior GOP source. “But he’s gonna have to cash in every single one of them.”

McCarthy could also win over detectors with plum committee assignments, lush office space and other perks. Prior to Tuesday, there was also talk of adding an extra leadership position to his team, which could also be used to woo critics.

McCarthy allies are touting his Tuesday endorsement from former President Donald Trump for the speaker’s gavel, something that could help with staunch Trump backers in the House GOP conference. Moreover, McCarthy has long moved to develop a good standing with even the most rebellious forces within the Freedom Caucus and has been in talks with some members of the group about their role in a GOP majority for weeks, according to Republican sources.

Plus, McCarthy allies believe Republicans will credit him for the hundreds of millions of dollars that his outside group raised and spent in key races. McCarthy has been calling victorious GOP candidates and members since Tuesday night.

McCarthy’s pitch to members, according to a source familiar, has been relatively straight forward: the GOP picked up seats two cycles in a row under his watch, and he is on the verge of delivering Republicans the majority – which will arm them subpoena power and allow them to serve as a check on the Biden administration.

While McCarthy’s allies say the GOP leader is willing to hear members out, they believe negotiating with members could become a slippery slope – though McCarthy may have no choice, depending on the margins.

McCarthy had hoped to pick up at least 20 seats to give him a cushion in both the speaker’s race and to help push through his agenda. It’s unclear if they can get there as many races remain too early for CNN to call.

Other leadership races in flux

Aside from the speaker’s race, Tuesday’s underwhelming performance for the GOP has scrambled other leadership races.

The race for House GOP whip – a position that will only open up if Republicans win the majority – was already competitive, though Rep. Tom Emmer, who chairs the House GOP’s campaign arm, was seen as having the edge since he was likely to be rewarded if they had a strong night.

Now, Republicans say it could be tougher for Emmer to pull out a win.

Emmer told reporters Tuesday he still plans to run and that he doesn’t know if a smaller majority impacts his bid. But his pitch to members is similar to McCarthy’s, saying: “we delivered.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Trump ally and the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, also officially declared his candidacy for the whip’s position. And Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia, the current deputy whip, is also vying for the post, arguing that his experience on the whip’s team will be even more valuable in a slimmer majority, where the chief vote counting job will be crucial for governing.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Melanie Zanona Manu Raju
Melanie Zanona
Manu Raju