Politics

For decades, Republicans have had a far more robust network of conservative policy groups to push their legislative agenda. Now the States Project is aiming to fill that void on the left.

DENVER (AP) — Attorneys for former President Donald Trump argue that an attempt to bar him from the 2024 ballot under a rarely used “insurrection” clause of the Constitution should be dismissed as a violation of his freedom of speech.

The lawyers made the argument in a filing posted Monday by a Colorado court in the most significant of a series of challenges to Trump’s candidacy under the Civil War-era clause in the 14th Amendment. The challenges rest on Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his role leading up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“At no time do Petitioners argue that President Trump did anything other than engage in either speaking or refusing to speak for their argument that he engaged in the purported insurrection,” wrote attorney Geoffrey Blue.

Trump also will argue that the clause doesn’t apply to him because “the Fourteenth Amendment applies to one who ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion,’ not one who only ‘instigated’ any action,” Blue wrote.

DENVER (AP) — The Colorado judge overseeing the first significant lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 presidential ballot on Friday issued a protective order prohibiting threats and intimidation in the case, saying the safety of those involved — including herself and her staff — was necessary as the groundbreaking litigation moves forward.

“I 100% understand everybody’s concerns for the parties, the lawyers, and frankly myself and my staff based on what we’ve seen in other cases,” District Judge Sarah B. Wallace said as she agreed to the protective order.

The order prohibits parties in the case from making threatening or intimidating statements. Scott Gessler, a former Colorado secretary of state representing Trump in the case, opposed it. He said a protective order was unnecessary because threats and intimidation already are prohibited by law.

It was sought by lawyers for the liberal group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot under a rarely used Civil War-era clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Gessler said heated rhetoric in this case has come partly from the left.

“We do have robust political debate going on here,” he said. “For better or worse, this case has become a focal point.”

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed around the country seeking to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendment clause barring anyone who swore an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from running for office. Their arguments revolve around Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election.

The case in Colorado is the first filed by a group with significant legal resources. The issue is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the insurrection provision in section three of the 14th Amendment.

Wallace has set an Oct. 30 hearing to discuss whether Trump needs to be removed under Colorado law prohibiting candidates who don’t meet qualifications for higher office from appearing on ballots. She has said she wants to give the Colorado Supreme Court — and possibly U.S. Supreme Court — as much time as possible to review the decision before the state’s Jan. 5 deadline to set its 2024 presidential primary ballot.

A parallel case in Minnesota filed by another well-financed liberal group is scheduled to be heard by that state’s supreme court on Nov. 2.

Trump’s attorneys are scheduled to file two motions to dismiss the lawsuit later Friday. One will contend the litigation is an attempt to retaliate against Trump’s free speech rights. Wallace has set an Oct. 13 hearing to debate that claim.

Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, proposed the protective order in court Friday. He cited federal prosecutor Jack Smith last week seeking a gag order against Trump for threats made in his prosecution of the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“At least one of the parties has a tendency to tweet — or Truth Social,” Grimsley said, referring to Trump’s own social network where he broadcasts most of his statements, “about witnesses and the courts.”

political radicals are neither political, nor radical, rather they are always corrupt narcissists.. discuss..

#politics

Sept. 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to confirm two of President Joe Biden's appointees for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The confirmations follow months of delay caused by Sen. Tommy Tuberville's, R-Ala., boycott of nominees over his opposition to abortion.

Tuberville initiated the boycott due to military rules that allow people in the service to leave their bases in states that don't allow abortion to travel to states that do provide abortion.

The holdup on nominees for the Joint Chiefs of Staff was broken by a procedural move from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who filed a cloture motion, which ended deliberation on the nominees, Wednesday.

Sept 21 (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump has urged fellow Republicans in Congress to shut down the government to thwart the federal prosecutions against him, although any funding lapse was unlikely to stop the cases from being pursued.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are at odds over how to proceed with spending legislation, which must be passed to avert an Oct. 1 shutdown. A small group of hardliners, including Trump's most fervent supporters, have complicated the agenda for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he pushes a short-term funding plan.

"Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government," Trump wrote on his Truth Social media site late on Wednesday, calling it "the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots."

The U.S. Justice Department has previously said activities funded by "permanent indefinite appropriations" would continue during any funding lapse.

if you voted for Trump, you go out of your way to prove what an ignorant asshole you are, all day long, every day

#politics

Would he be sent to a “club fed” style prison — or a “bad” one? Would he have Secret Service protection? And what would they make him wear? Those are some of the questions Donald Trump is asking hi…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but congressional Republicans are once again careening toward internal crisis and a damaging government shutdown.

You may remember this song-and-dance from the last four or five times the party’s hard-line Freedom Caucus members held America’s economy hostage. That doesn’t make our latest spin on the roller coaster any less nauseating.

In the past, Republican leaders managed by the slimmest of margins to avert financial catastrophe by working with Democrats to pass temporary funding bills. This time it isn’t even clear they can achieve that minimum level of competence — in part because House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has blown his internal credibility to bits.

Meanwhile, the American people are watching the slow, loud and very public disintegration of Republican unity.

Once again, McCarthy’s own caucus has taken the sledgehammer to his knees. Over the weekend, a dozen Republican lawmakers publicly declared they would oppose the Speaker’s latest effort to keep the government open. Now McCarthy’s legacy risks being defined by the GOP’s transformation into a nonfunctional party of nonstop national crisis.

It isn’t even clear that a sizable minority of Republican lawmakers want to keep the government open. Freedom Caucus stalwarts including Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) dismissed McCarthy’s proposal out of hand without even attempting to offer an alternative. Luna, who recently gave birth and is still in the hospital, went so far as to say she’d leave her recovery bed in order to guarantee McCarthy’s continuing resolution fails.

Luna offers the perfect visual of the current GOP: A lawmaker willing to drag herself out of a hospital bed in order to ensure the federal government does not function.

That’s all the more perverse when you realize a federal shutdown would deny a paycheck to nearly 15,000 Floridian federal workers, as it did in 2019. A shutdown would also grind Federal Housing Authority and Veterans Administration mortgage processing to a halt, slamming the brakes on thousands of Florida homebuyers. If only Luna and her colleagues were so willing to risk their health in ways that actually helped their constituents.

The spat over funding the government also drew Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) into a Twitter scuffle with Gaetz, who called the stopgap plan “a terrible bill” and “one BAD VOTE,” while once again raising the specter of calling a vote to oust McCarthy from his position. Gaetz will find ready allies in House Democrats, who dismissed McCarthy’s 8 percent across-the-board cuts to domestic programs as unserious. Once again, the Speaker of the House finds himself without any allies to advance his agenda.

Even non-Freedom Caucus Republicans are abandoning McCarthy. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) torched the plan in a statement released on Monday, accusing McCarthy of lacking the spine to lead.

“It is a shame that our weak Speaker cannot even commit to having a commission to discuss our looming financial catastrophe,” Spartz wrote. “Our founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves.” Hardly the language of someone likely to support McCarthy if the Freedom Caucus puts forward a vote of no confidence.

There is some truth to Republicans’ many criticisms. A party that rants endlessly about increasing border security can’t, in the same breath, support a resolution that slashes funding for those same border security efforts. That lack of foresight is trademark McCarthy: a plan rushed out under duress, full of internal contradictions and not especially convincing to anyone who matters.

But if McCarthy’s bill is dead-on-arrival, it’s not clear the Freedom Caucus has the support to do any better. A Democratic Senate won’t even glance at the HFC’s even more extreme proposed cuts, and members of their own party are losing patience with their antics. Said Rep. Mike Lawler of New York: “This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity … these people can’t define a win. They don’t know how to take yes for an answer. It’s a clown show.”

In the nine months since taking power in the House, Republicans have only proven capable of careening the nation from one preventable crisis to the next. Eventually their brinksmanship will break down and plunge our nation into a costly, painful government shutdown. Not only is there no one leading the GOP, every effort at unifying them behind a clear policy platform only deepens their bitter fractures. It is worth asking why these types of financial disasters only happen when Republicans control our national purse-strings.

In the end, American voters still appreciate a competent government that looks out for their financial futures. They won’t find that in whatever passes for today’s Republican Party. Instead, they will find lawmakers who have given up on governing in favor of the easy work of grievance politics.

That may offer many soon-to-be-ousted Republicans a lucrative second act in the right-wing media, but it does nothing to solve the problems facing our nation. Whatever Speaker McCarthy may wish to be true, his Republican Party is now undeniably the party of nonstop national crisis. That constant chaos will weigh heavily on voters’ minds next year.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.

“Wilhoit’s Law” was coined by a different Frank Wilhoit.

Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” This seems increasingly true.

Who’s Frank Wilhoit? Many people who cite the quote assume it comes from Francis “Frank” Wilhoit, an American political scientist whose 1973 book The Politics of Massive Resistance chronicled Southern segregationists’ efforts to resist Civil Rights–era court rulings.

That would make a whole lot of sense. But in fact it’s the work of another Frank Wilhoit, this one not a professional scholar of American politics but a 63-year-old classical music composer in Ohio, who wrote the adage as part of a longer point in the comments section of the political science blog Crooked Timber. Since then, it has taken on a life of its own, recirculating on Twitter or Reddit every few months, most recently in reference to certain Free Speech Defenders’ aggressive posture on libel and defamation laws. A handful of sleuths have cracked the case before—Francis Wilhoit died in 2010; Frank Wilhoit posted his remark in 2018—but the confusion lingers, for obvious reasons.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy was running out of options Monday as he pushed ahead with a plan to keep the federal government from shutting down, but even including hardline border security provisions wasn’t enough to appease the far-right flank in his Republican House majority.

The speaker is trying to convince his Republican conference that there will heavy political fallout from a shutdown as he plows toward a vote to pass a stopgap measure, called a continuing resolution, that would keep government offices open past the Sept. 30 deadline. GOP leadership is preparing for a vote by Thursday, but McCarthy is warning he’ll keep House lawmakers in Washington into the weekend. Regardless, many are already bracing for a weeks-long shutdown.

“I’ve told all of Congress you’re not going to go home. We’re going to continue to work through this,” McCarthy said Monday at the Capitol. “Things that are tough sometimes are worth it.”

He also suggested that time is still on his side and panned the idea of compromising with Democrats as he tries to pass the annual spending measures on his own, saying there were “a lot of good ideas” still coming from Republicans.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — In 2020, North Carolina seemed the model of an evenly-divided swing state. Then-President Donald Trump barely won, beating Democrat Joe Biden by just over a percentage point. Meanwhile, the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, won reelection by a relatively comfortable 5 points.

Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina’s congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP.

But it’s the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes over Democrats’ objections and this week could vote to wrest power from the governor over how the state’s elections are run.

In both cases, Republicans are expected to override the governor’s veto thanks to their legislative supermajorities.

How is this not a violation of Trump's release?!?

From the article:

Former President Donald J. Trump said he hoped Mark Meadows — his final White House chief of staff and a co-defendant in a sweeping racketeering indictment in Georgia stemming from efforts to thwart the 2020 election — was still “loyal” to him.

Mr. Trump made his comment during a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the new moderator of NBC’s “Meet The Press,” broadcast on Sunday morning. Mr. Trump has been warned by the federal judge in a case also stemming from his efforts to stay in office, brought against him by the special counsel Jack Smith, to avoid saying anything that might affect the testimony of witnesses. His comment about Mr. Meadows could attract new interest.

A lawyer for Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both Mr. Meadows and Mr. Trump are among 19 co-defendants in the Fulton County, Ga., indictment brought by the district attorney, Fani T. Willis. It accuses those charged with a criminal conspiracy to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the state in his re-election effort.

“By the way, do you think your former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is still loyal to you? He just pleaded not guilty in the Georgia case,” Ms. Welker asked.

“Well, I hope he’s loyal to me,” Mr. Trump said.

“Do you worry about him flipping?” Ms. Welker asked.

“I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Trump replied.

Legal experts have suggested that prosecutors may push to have some of the defendants in the case plead guilty and become witnesses against others involved.

Mr. Trump recorded the interview with Ms. Welker late last week. On Friday, a day after the interview, prosecutors asked the judge in the federal election interference case, Tanya S. Chutkan, for a limited gag order against Mr. Trump after weeks of attacks on the special counsel, among others.

“Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election,” they wrote, “the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution — the judicial system — and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals — the court, the jury pool, witnesses and prosecutors,” Mr. Smith’s office wrote in the request, which they said they wanted to be narrowly tailored.

Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Smith again shortly after the request was made, writing on his social media site, “I’m campaigning for President against an incompetent person who has WEAPONIZED the DOJ & FBI to go after his Political Opponent, & I am not allowed to COMMENT? How else would I explain that Jack Smith is DERANGED, or Crooked Joe is INCOMPETENT?”

Judge Chutkan has yet to rule on the request.

In his “Meet the Press” interview, Mr. Trump extensively reiterated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, despite facing indictment in both Georgia and Washington on the matter.

When Ms. Welker pointed out to him that the most senior lawyers in his administration had told him following dozens of legal challenges that he had lost, and that he listened to outside groups of lawyers, Mr. Trump said it was because “I didn’t respect them.”

“But I did respect others. I respected many others that said the election was rigged,” Mr. Trump said.

And when Ms. Welker noted that he himself had reportedly said some of his outside lawyers had “crazy theories” about election interference, he replied, “You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened. I watched that election, and I thought the election was over at 10 o’clock in the evening.”

As she asked fresh questions, he went on: “My instincts are a big part of it. That’s been the thing that’s gotten me to where I am, my instincts. But I also listen to people. There are many lawyers. I could give you many books.” But ultimately, he told her, “It was my decision. But I listened to some people.”

Mr. Trump’s statements were in keeping with — and yet could ultimately complicate — his efforts to raise what is known as an advice of counsel defense in the election interference case. Under the strategy, defendants seek to avoid liability for criminal charges by arguing that they were merely following the professional advice of their lawyers.

NEW YORK (AP) — As Americans fend off a late summer COVID-19 spike and prepare for a fresh vaccine rollout, Republicans are raising familiar fears that government-issued lockdowns and mask mandates are next.

It’s been a favorite topic among some of the GOP’s top presidential contenders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that people are “lurching toward” COVID-19 restrictions and “there needs to be pushback.” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott posted online that the “radical Left” seeks to bring back school closures and mandates. And former President Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to stop the Biden administration from bringing back COVID-19 “mandates, lockdowns or restrictions of any kind.”

“The radical Democrats are trying hard to restart COVID hysteria,” Trump told supporters in Rapid City, South Dakota, during a recent campaign stop. “I wonder why. Is there an election coming up by any chance?”

While some individual schools and colleges have implemented temporary mask requirements, there is no sign that anyone in federal or state leadership is considering widespread COVID-19 restrictions, requirements or mask mandates. The administrations of several Democratic governors denied that any such moves are even under discussion. The overriding sentiment is to leave the decisions to individuals.

Ellis, one of 18 Trump associates charged in Georgia election subversion case, says she ‘simply can’t support him’ again

Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Lawyers working with Special Counsel Jack Smith have asked the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's election interference trial to issue a limited gag order, citing statements they say Trump has made "to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals -- the court, the jury pool, witness and prosecutors."

The request was revealed in a court filing unsealed Friday.

The appeal cited Trump's false statements about the 2020 election.

"The defendant is now attempting to do the same thing in this criminal case -- to undermine confidence in the criminal case -- to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks," the prosecution wrote in their court filing to Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The end of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 has had a profound effect on maternal healthcare and abortion access across the country. Fourteen states have now completely banned abortion and two dozen more have bans at 22 weeks or less. As a result, an already grim maternal health care landscape has worsened.

New data reveals an unexpected consequence of these developments: Young women, even those in states where abortion remains legal, say they are foregoing having children because they are afraid to get pregnant because of changes that followed the Dobbs decision that ended Roe.

Polling conducted in August by my organization, All In Together, in partnership with polling firm Echelon Insights found that 34 percent of women aged 18-39 said they or someone they know personally has “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.” Put another way, poor or unavailable maternal health care post-Dobbs is leading people to alter some of their most important life choices.

For young people, the maternal healthcare crisis is deeply personal. More than a third of young people and 22 percent of young women told us they have personally dealt with or know someone who has “faced constraints when trying to manage a pregnancy-related emergency.” And 23 percent of 18- to 39-year-old women say they have themselves or know someone else who has been unable to obtain an abortion in their state — a number almost three times higher than respondents in other age groups.

Perhaps most surprisingly however, these results are similar regardless of whether the respondents are living in states with abortion bans or states without restrictions on abortion access. The consistency between red and blue states suggests that the statistics on maternal mortality and the stories and struggles of women navigating the new normal on abortion access have penetrated the psyche of young people everywhere. The Dobbs decision, it seems, has fundamentally altered how people feel about having families and the calculus for getting pregnant.

Alexis McGill Johnson, CEO of Planned Parenthood, told me that the stories of women dying or facing near-death experiences because of abortion restrictions has struck fear in the hearts of young people, many of whom were already ambivalent about having children because of the costs and pressures that generation faces.

“Abortion bans make pregnancy less safe,” she said, “and women are acutely aware of the consequence of restricting access to reproductive health care in their own lives.”

In the wake of Dobbs, stories of women enduring horrific medical trauma in states where abortion is illegal have been widely reported. For instance, Carmen Broesder, an Idaho mom, documented her 19-day long harrowing miscarriage on TikTok – including her three trips to the emergency room. While only six weeks pregnant, she was denied access to a D&C (dilation and curettage) surgery because of Idaho’s abortion ban.

It goes almost without saying that this is not good news for the already declining birthrates in the U.S. According to research from Pew, birthrates in the U.S. had been falling since the early 2000s and plummeted during the Covid pandemic. Fertility rates briefly rebounded after the pandemic but now, post-Dobbs, they have dropped again.

Should this trend continue, the reluctance of young women to have children now will have vast and long-term consequences for the American economy and fabric of the nation. Falling birth rates can affect everything from tax revenue to labor force participation, schools, housing, elder care and more.

But beyond the macro-economic ramifications, there is also a human and emotional toll for people who may want children but are too afraid to have them. The hallmark of a flourishing society is one where people can fulfill their hopes and dreams, and for many, those dreams include raising a family. But for a generation of Americans, that dream now appears frustrated. Gen Y and Z Americans report higher rates of mental health challenges and stress than other generations. The Dobbs decision has clearly contributed to that anxiety.

All of this signals troubling, unexpected and ominous continuing consequences of the Supreme Court’s deeply unpopular Dobbs ruling and the ripple effects that abortion bans, which polls show a majority of Americans oppose, have created. It’s a trend worth watching and weighing – for lawmakers, for women, for families and for all Americans.

Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Prosecutors countered a request by former President Donald Trump to get the judge presiding over his upcoming federal election interference trial to recuse herself, saying there were no grounds for her to step aside.

Special counsel Jack Smith's office filed a 20-page motion with the court, saying Trump had failed to prove any bias by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan following two previous rulings on Jan. 6 riot cases in which she referred to the former president.

Chutkan, who was appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama, made the commentary in 2021 and 2022 as she sentenced two defendants who took part in the violent mob that stormed Congress to disrupt certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election win.

Trump's lawyers filed the motion on Monday to get Chutkan removed, citing her open repudiation of the mob as alleged evidence of bias and unfitness to preside over the criminal case.

Mitt Romney’s retirement shines a glaring spotlight on the potentially bleak future of the Senate’s ideological center in both parties. If Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema follow him out the door, it will get worse.

Manchin, a centrist Democrat, and the Independent Sinema are both still mulling whether to run again. Like Romney, they could be replaced by senators on either end of the ideological spectrum — almost surely a Republican in Manchin’s West Virginia.

And as maligned as Romney, Manchin and Sinema are by one party or the other’s faithful, the possible 2024 departures of two or three of them would change the Senate, which passed several notable bipartisan deals in the last Congress.

“You lose the center, you lose the moderates, you’re screwed. You really are screwed,” Manchin said in an interview. “I’m hoping the voters will wake up.”

It had become cliche to bemoan the Senate’s increasing partisanship over the past two decades, a period of fewer big bipartisan deals, endless procedural delays and episodes like the GOP’s 2016 Supreme Court blockade. Then, for two years under a 50-50 Senate, President Joe Biden found some legislative success by letting the chamber work its will.

A roving bipartisan group started on Covid aid in late 2020 and came together on big issues that had bedeviled previous Congresses: gun safety, same-sex marriage protection, microchip manufacturing and infrastructure investment. Democrats made their fair share of partisan moves, jamming through hundreds of billions in party-line dollars and a massive pandemic aid plan, but the Senate’s playing field was also open for centrist maneuvering.

These days, the House is run by Republicans in no mood to deal, and it’s hard for some to see the conditions of 2021 and 2022 returning anytime soon. That alone was enough for Romney to call it quits.

“That group was so productive. And it was so fun,” Romney said of his fellow Senate centrists in an interview on Wednesday. “That little group, I think, is not going to be around. And so, time for new groups to form.”

Every few years, the Senate undergoes sweeping changes due to retirements and lost reelection bids. Taken together, over time, they reshape the act of legislating in surprising ways. Some new senators step up to fill the voids, while other efforts disappear. As Romney sees it — and he’s not alone — the Senate’s current referendum on bipartisanship has three others at its “heart": Sinema, Manchin and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a more progressive red-state dealmaker who faces a tough reelection campaign.

Should some or all of them leave Congress next year, it would mark a repeat of the 2014 and 2018 cycles when a drove of red-state Democrats were ousted or retired. The losses of former moderate Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly still sting among the party’s red-state survivors.

But it’s not just Democrats. A quintet of deal-making GOP senators retired last year, and some were replaced by more conservative or pugnacious senators.

That’s certainly a possibility when it comes to Romney’s seat. Utah could elect an establishment Republican like Gov. Spencer Cox or a combative conservative like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). Romney said he’ll be neutral in the race to replace him but that he doesn’t “think we’re going to get someone off the wall.”

Sinema, if she runs, would face a three-way race against Congressional Progressive Caucus member Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and a hard-right Republican like Kari Lake or Blake Masters. If Manchin retires, Democrats would almost certainly cede the seat to the GOP, which faces a primary between Gov. Jim Justice and the more conservative Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.).

“With the sort of populist phase we’re going through right now, you may have fewer [centrists] coming out of primaries,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another bipartisan collaborator.

Manchin and Tester’s reelection wins in 2018 were impressive given the deep-red hues of their states. There are some other success stories for the centrist crew: Two moderate GOP senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have withstood challenges from a Democrat and Trump-backed Republican, respectively, in the last two cycles.

Now, it’s the Democratic caucus’ turn. There, some worry that Sinema and Manchin joining Romney in retirement could shrink a centrist group that swelled during the last Congress down to the size of a Senate phone booth, with negative consequences.

“This place functions the best when you have individuals on both sides of the aisle that are willing to work across the aisle together. And I think that’s true for the three of them,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Sinema’s home-state colleague.

Still, the legislative filibuster and its 60-vote threshold remain intact — and that could mean new members step into the bipartisan breach. The question is whether that means collaboration only on essential government functions like keeping the lights on and raising the debt ceiling or whether there’s a bipartisan desire to do more.

“If that gets hollowed out, working across the aisle, nothing will get done. It’s not like over in the House, where if you had the majority, you can still push it through,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of GOP leadership who often supports bipartisan compromises. “I don’t know how we function without that, whoever the personalities are.”

Capito said she did not believe Manchin, Sinema and Romney would all necessarily follow the same path or were coordinating at all: “It’s not a groupthink there. I think they’re all [operating with] three separate different ideas and issues as to where they want to go.”

Romney’s decision probably predates Manchin’s and Sinema’s by months. Manchin is looking at an end-of-year choice, which would be just before his state’s January filing deadline. Romney has urged Manchin not to seek the White House on a third-party ticket.

“I encouraged him not to run [for president]. I tell Joe that in my opinion, him running would only serve to elect Donald Trump,” Romney said.

Since Sinema is an independent, she faces even less time pressure to decide. She’s giving almost nothing away about her thinking; senators of all stripes are unsure of where she stands, despite having close relationships with her.

In a statement, Sinema spokeswoman Hannah Hurley said that “Arizonans are sick of career candidates constantly fighting the next election. Kyrsten promised Arizonans she’d be an independent senator who delivers lasting solutions, and that’s exactly what she’s done.”

Romney said he’s encouraging his friend Sinema to run again, despite his own decision to retire. Both first-termers, their circumstances are otherwise different: Romney is 76 and at the end of his career; Sinema is 47 and could serve in the Senate for decades if she keeps winning.

Manchin is 76 and faces by far the most difficult political circumstances of any Democratic incumbent. But as the only game in town for the Democratic Party, he’s winning some converts who might not seem like obvious Manchin fans.

“I really, really like Joe Manchin. He’s a good dude. I don’t agree with some of his votes, but he’s just a good dude,” said Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who said he would support Gallego over Sinema if he lived in Arizona. “He would be a much, much better senator than Gov. Justice.”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate voted Thursday to fire the battleground state’s nonpartisan top elections official, prompting a legal challenge from Democrats who say the vote was illegitimate.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a lawsuit that Senate Republicans don’t have the authority to oust Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe and accused them of attacking the state’s elections.

It’s the latest in a whirlwind of deep partisan divisions in Wisconsin, where Republicans who control the Legislature are threatening to impeach a newly elected Supreme Court justice before she’s even heard a case. They’re also floating plans to overhaul the state’s electoral maps before the high court can toss out current boundaries that favor the GOP.

The fight over who will lead the elections agency stems from persistent lies about the 2020 election and creates instability ahead of the 2024 presidential race for the state’s more than 1,800 local clerks who actually run elections.

Some takeaways:

• Judge McAfee has authorized releasing the names of unindicted co-conspirators Individuals 1 through 30 to Defense
• Defense wants the transcripts from the Special Purpose Grand Jury. State will need to turn over portions of the transcripts related to witnesses the State intends to call. Defense makes a good argument for receiving all transcripts, on the basis of "What if there is a witness the State does not intend to call, who would be a good withness for the Defense?" I believe a ruling on that is forthcoming.
• Defense puts forth a thinly-veiled accusation that the prosecution unlawfully influenced the grand jury (the one which made the indictments), and wants to interview grand jurors "the ensure they were not unduly influenced by the prosecution." But that falls into deliberation, which is necessarily secret. Ultimately, Judge requests that questions be submitted by Defense, along with case law to support those being questions that can be asked of grand jurors, essentially making the Court a gatekeeper between Defense and grand jurors.
• Defense complains that the State is using PowerPoint.
• Defense - after having impugned the reputation of the State, complains loudly that the State has impugned the reputation of Defense counsel, and accuses the State of lying to the court. Judge shuts this down quickly.
• Defense wants the State to provide specifically requested pieces of discovery. State says, "We gace them everything, they just want us to do the searching for them.: Judge directs Defense to make a motion about "discrete information as reqwuested," to include applicable case law.

Saudi Arabia’s $700bn sovereign wealth fund – which has been used as a lever of global influence by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has been subpoenaed by a powerful Senate committee after it refused to voluntarily comply with information requests about its US dealings.

The subpoena, which was issued by the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, is targeting the Public Investment Fund’s wholly-owned US subsidiaries in connection to the group’s proposed golf deal and “related investments throughout the United States”.

The PIF is also the majority owner of the Newcastle United football club.

The subpoena was announced on Wednesday at a committee hearing led by its chairman, the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. On its face, the hearing was meant to focus on Saudi’s controversial proposed golf merger.

But the hearing – and lengthy remarks by both Democrats and Republicans – delved instead into Saudi’s record human rights abuses, the kingdom’s alleged role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and fundamental objections to attempts by the oil rich nation to takeover assets of national interest.

Senators were visibly agitated by the PIF’s lack of compliance with voluntary requests for disclosure, which is seen by the lawmakers as part of a troubling posture by Saudi officials to put themselves out of reach of US law.

“The Saudi Public Investment Fund cannot have it both ways: if it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight,” Blumenthal said.

Expert witnesses described the PIF as “inextricably intertwined” with the Saudi state and Prince Mohammed, who the Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea said wields “unilateral decision-making” over the fund, with little transparency or accountability”.

In her testimony, Shea also pointed to internal Saudi government documents, which have been submitted to a Canadian court in connection to a legal claim, which show how the crown prince’s advisers ordered Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the fund, to transfer 20 companies that were captured as part of a so-called anti-corruption campaign directly into the fund.

The transfers in at least one case involved a deed that was stamped by the Saudi ministry of justice but never signed by the individuals who were said to have agreed the transfer to the government’s coffers, Shea said.

“There is a risk that these companies were “transferred” from their owners without due process,” she added.

Blumenthal, one of the Senate’s biggest critics of Saudi Arabia, pointed to PIF’s ownership of a company whose jets were later used to transport the killers of Jamal Khashoggi from Saudi Arabia to Turkey, where the Washington Post journalist was murdered in 2018.

“Saudi Arabia’s use of foreign of sovereign wealth fund resources to attempt to gain influence in the United States should provoke us all. Under Crown Prince bin Salman Saudi Arabia remains a brutal regime, utterly resistant to criticism, devoid of any right of free speech,” Blumenthal said. “The PIF has been implicated in some of Saudi Arabia’s most abhorrent atrocities.”

He also pointed to the PIF’s role in financing the development of Neom, a desert city that is a critical element of Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030, an economic plan he has put forward to diversity Saudi’s wealth away from oil revenue. Members of a tribe who have resisted the Neom project have been sentenced to death.

It is far from clear whether the PIF will comply with the subpoena. The fund has in the past described itself in contradictory terms. In the UK, the fund’s bid to take over Newcastle was approved in part because the investors denied that the Saudi government would have a direct say over the football club’s management. But in the US, where the fund has faced its most serious legal and political scrutiny, the fund has sought protection under diplomatic protocols such as sovereign immunity.

The hearing on Wednesday was noteworthy for one other fact: it provided a rare glimpse of agreement between Democrats and Republicans, including its senior Republican senator Ron Johnson, who centered his remarks on remaining questions about Saudi’s role in 9/11.

“This inquiry started with an event that interested in me – the PGA trying to come to an agreement with the PIF – but it is certainly expanding well beyond that,” Johnson said. He also suggested that he believed Blumenthal had “higher goals” in pursuing an investigation into Saudi’s PIF.

“It’ll be interesting to see where this progresses,” he said.

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he will not run for reelection, ending a storied two-decade political career that included the 2012 Republican GOP nomination for president and a term as Massachusetts governor.

Romney, 76, said the country’s many challenges call for a younger generation of leaders. He said the U.S. would be better served if the two front-runners for their parties’ 2024 presidential nominations — Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump — stepped aside. Biden is 80 and Trump is 77.

“The times we’re living in redemand the next generation step up and express their point of view and to make the decisions that will shape American politics over the coming century,” Romney said in a news conference at the Capitol. He said baby boomers like him are “not the right ones to be making the decisions for tomorrow.”

He said after he leaves the Senate he plans to focus on getting more young people voting and involved in the political process.

The former president has talked regularly with members of the House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment.

On a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., former President Donald J. Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman. But over halibut and Diet Cokes, Ms. Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Mr. Trump — the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year’s election.

“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Ms. Greene said in a brief phone interview.

Mr. Trump’s dinner with Ms. Greene came just two nights before Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced his decision on Tuesday to order the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, under intense pressure from his right flank.

Over the past several months, Mr. Trump has kept a close watch on House Republicans’ momentum toward impeaching Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has talked regularly by phone with members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to publicly discuss the conversations. Mr. Trump has encouraged the effort both privately and publicly.

Ms. Greene, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, said she told Mr. Trump that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr. Trump would win back the White House in 2024 and that she wanted “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”

While Mr. Biden’s son Hunter is under investigation by a special counsel who is expected to lodge a gun charge against him soon and could also charge him with failure to file his tax returns on time, Republicans have not shown that Mr. Biden committed any crimes. House Republicans are proceeding with the impeachment inquiry without proof that Mr. Biden took official actions as vice president to benefit his son’s financial interests or that he directly profited from his son’s foreign deals.

Mr. Trump has also spoken weekly over the past month to Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking House Republican, according to a person familiar with the conversations who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. During those conversations, Ms. Stefanik also briefed Mr. Trump on the impeachment inquiry strategy, this person said.

The former president thanked Ms. Stefanik for publicly backing the impeachment inquiry in July, the person added. Ms. Stefanik, who talked to Mr. Trump again on Tuesday after Mr. McCarthy ordered the impeachment inquiry, had been the first member of House Republican leadership to publicly call for taking the first step in the process of impeaching Mr. Biden.

A person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said that despite his eagerness to see an inquiry move forward, the former president has not been twisting Mr. McCarthy’s arm. Mr. Trump has been far more aggressive in pushing several members to wipe his own impeachment record clean, the person said, potentially by getting Congress to take the unprecedented step of expunging his two impeachments from the House record.

Mr. Trump has not been expressing concern about the possibility that the McCarthy impeachment effort might backfire and benefit Mr. Biden, according to two people with direct knowledge of his private statements over several months. Instead, he wondered to an ally why there had been no movement on impeaching Mr. Biden once he learned that the House was back in session.

A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy did not respond to a question about his interactions with the former president regarding impeachment.

When asked for comment, Mr. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, pointed to Mr. Trump’s public statements about impeaching Mr. Biden.

The former president’s public commentary on the possibility of a Biden impeachment has escalated from wistful musings about the Justice Department’s supposed inaction to explicit demands.

“They persecuted us and yet Joe Biden is a stone-cold criminal, caught dead to right, and nothing happens to him. Forget the family. Nothing happens to him,” the former president said at a rally in March.

In a June town hall with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, Mr. Trump lamented what happened after authorities found boxes of classified documents in both Mar-a-Lago and the Bidens’ Delaware residence.

“It is a dual system of government,” Mr. Trump said. “You talk about law and order. You can’t have law and order in a country where you have such corruption.”

That same month, after Mr. Trump was arraigned on charges that he had improperly retained sensitive national security documents and obstructed investigators, he declared that if re-elected he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Mr. Biden and his family.

By July, Mr. Trump had begun suggesting that Republicans should impeach the president, and as the summer wore on, he conveyed his desire with greater urgency.

“So, they impeach me over a ‘perfect’ phone call, and they don’t impeach Biden for being the most corrupt president in the history of the United States???” Mr. Trump wrote in all caps on his website, Truth Social.

In yet another nearly all-cap Truth Social post in late August, the former president wrote, referring to congressional Republicans: “Either impeach the bum, or fade into oblivion. They did it to us!”

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for “overall excellence in White House coverage” in 2022.

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia.