Closing summary
The pieces on the American political chess board continued moving today, with less than two weeks to go until the 8 November midterms. Donald Trump announced a slate of campaign rallies, including a visit to Florida, where he will not be joined by Republican governor Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, Joe Biden traveled to a New York semiconductor factory to promote legislation boosting domestic technological competitiveness, with the greater goal of drumming up voter support for his handling of the economy. And Trump foe Liz Cheney bucked her hardcore Republican credentials to endorse a Democrat running for another term in the House.
Here’s what else happened today:
A Capitol rioter was sentenced to seven-a-half years in prison for his part in the attack on Washington police officer Michael Fanone on January 6.
Democratic lawmakers want the enhanced child tax credit restored in year-end legislation. During 2021, the program was credited with lowering child poverty.
Democratic senator John Hickenlooper asked the Federal Reserve to hold off on increasing interest rates further. He is the second Democrat this week to urge the central bank exercise caution in its fight against inflation.
Once a swing state, Democrats in Florida worry they are being pushed decisively into the minority, and could lose ground even in their strongholds in the upcoming elections.
Call them the Arizona accords. A far-right Republican lawmaker invited the leaders of Russia and Ukraine to negotiate peace in the southwestern state. Don’t expect it to go anywhere.
Why are there always reporters following Joe Biden around? Because people tell him interesting things.
Such as top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, who Fox News overheard giving Biden his assessment of how things are looking in two states crucial to determining Senate control:
Schumer on hot mic talking to Biden about the midterms:
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 27, 2022
“Looks like the debate didn't hurt us too much in Pennsylvania and we’re picking up steam in Nevada.”
pic.twitter.com/6KPjJ4YfMc
Despite Democrat John Fetterman’s rocky performance on Tuesday, Schumer said, “looks like the debate didn’t hurt us too much in Pennsylvania.”
He can also be heard saying “we’re picking up steam in Nevada.” Polls in the western state have shown Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto in a very tight race against her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt.
Control of Congress isn’t the only thing voters will decide in the 8 November midterms. In five states, Americans will vote on whether or not to approve ballot measures removing laws that allow slavery and involuntary servitude for prisoners, the Associated Press reports.
The measures won’t immediately change conditions in state prisons, but could form the basis for future legal challenges over how convict labor is treated.
Here’s more from the AP’s report:
The effort is part of a national push to amend the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception has long permitted the exploitation of labor by convicted felons.
“The idea that you could ever finish the sentence ‘slavery’s okay when ... ’ has to rip out your soul, and I think it’s what makes this a fight that ignores political lines and brings us together, because it feels so clear,” said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a criminal justice advocacy group pushing to remove the amendment’s convict labor clause.
Nearly 20 states have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments. In 2018, Colorado was the first to remove the language from its founding frameworks by ballot measure, followed by Nebraska and Utah two years later.
This November, versions of the question go before voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.
Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, was shocked when a fellow lawmaker told her about the slavery exception in the Tennessee Constitution and immediately began working to replace the language.
“When I found out that this exception existed, I thought, ‘We have got to fix this and we’ve got to fix this right away,’” she said. “Our constitution should reflect the values and the beliefs of our state.”
A judge in Washington has sentenced a Tennessee man who participated in the January 6 insurrection to seven-and-a-half years in prison for attacking police officer Michael Fanone, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Albuquerque Cosper Head, 43, was part of a group that overwhelmed Fanone as he tried to fend off the assault, dragging him into a mob and holding him down while he was tased by other rioters. Fanone, who resigned from the Washington police department last year, has become one of the most outspoken law enforcement figures who responded to the attack by supporters of Donald Trump.
Here’s more from the Journal:
Calling him one of the “most serious offenders” during the Capitol riot, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed the 90-month sentence on Albuquerque Cosper Head during an emotional court hearing Thursday in the District of Columbia.
Mr. Head, a 43-year-old construction worker, pleaded guilty in May to participating in a group attack on Michael Fanone, a former Washington Metropolitan Police Officer. Mr. Fanone has spoken extensively about the attack and the injuries he sustained, including a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury.
According to a recent Justice Department court filing, Mr. Head “forcibly dragged Officer Fanone into the riotous mob” and “continued to restrain Officer Fanone while another rioter applied a Taser to the base of the officer’s skull.”
Judge Jackson called Mr. Head’s actions “some of the darkest acts committed on one of our nation’s darkest days,” adding that he went after the officer like he was “prey” and a “trophy.”
Mr. Head will receive credit for time spent in custody since his arrest in April 2021.
The Justice Department had asked Judge Jackson to impose the maximum potential sentence of 96 months, citing Mr. Head’s criminal history, which includes convictions for domestic violence and approximately 45 arrests.
Mr. Head’s lawyer, G. Nicholas Wallace, argued unsuccessfully for a 60-month sentence, saying his client was “embarrassed and remorseful” and has accepted responsibility for his actions.
Republican lawmaker invites Putin, Zelenskiy to Arizona for peace talks
Rightwing Republican congressman Paul Gosar has invited Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Arizona to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
In a letter posted on Donald Trump’s Truth social network, Gosar, who was censured and stripped of his committee posts last year for tweeting a violent anime sequence depicting him killing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden, proposed talks in Phoenix to end a conflict he feared poses nuclear peril.
He described Arizona’s capital as “far enough away from the conflict, and away from the entities that are currently encouraging more war, to be a productive location.”
Here’s how he put it, on Twitter:
The horrible reality is that western leaders do not want peace between Russia and Ukraine.
— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) October 27, 2022
Our political and military leaders are marching straight into nuclear war for the sake of 'our democracy'.
We need peacemakers, not death cultists.
The letter is unlikely to amount to anything more than a stunt for the Trump acolyte representing the southwestern state. But it does point to a larger reality: some Republicans are growing wary of Washington’s continued backing of Kyiv, saying it’s getting too expensive. Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy, who is poised to lead the chamber if the GOP wins a majority in the upcoming elections, said as much in an interview last week.
Democrat woes deepen in New York
Much has already been made of the unusually tight race in New York state for the governor’s mansion, where Kathy Hochul only has a relatively narrow lead over her Republican challenger.
Now, adding to those New York woes, is evidence that other races are starting to look troublesome for Democrats, including the House Democratic campaigns chief Sean Patrick Maloney in the Hudson Valley.
Once thought safe, the race there has tightened considerably.
Politico has more:
Republicans first targeted House Democratic campaigns chief Sean Patrick Maloney’s blue district here in the Hudson Valley as an act of trolling their arch-nemesis. Now they’re taking their prospects seriously.
And so is Maloney. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair and his allies are answering the GOP’s escalation with millions of dollars from outside groups, while Maloney steps up his already grueling campaign schedule at home.
Swooping in to rescue their own campaigns chief is the last place Democrats wanted to be in the final days of the midterms. His struggles have led some in the party to rethink their tendency to elect swing-seat DCCC leaders, but for the moment Maloney’s just looking to hang on.
But also a note of optimism.
“This is nothing new for me,” [Maloney] claimed of the GOP onslaught after a Wednesday town hall to promote his work on lowering prescription drug prices. Indeed, in 2016 he won reelection even as most voters in his then-district picked Donald Trump for president
Joe Biden is undoing some of the Trump administration’s nuclear weapons policies, but critics want the White House to do more, The Guardian’s Julian Borger reports:
The Biden administration has confirmed it will cancel a submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile programme begun by Donald Trump, as part of its review of nuclear policy.
The administration will also retire a gravity bomb, the B63, from its arsenal as part of its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), but arms control advocates argued the changes from the Trump era did not go far enough.
The administration is retaining another weapon variant introduced by Trump, a low-yield warhead called the W76-2, intended to deter an adversary like Russia using a low-yield weapon. The Democratic party manifesto in 2020 had called the W76-2 “unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible”.
The Biden NPR said that the “fundamental role of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners”. That declaratory policy stops sort of saying deterring nuclear attack is the sole purpose of the arsenal, which is what Biden promised in his election campaign. Instead, the NPR says that the US could strike back against “a narrow range of other high consequence, strategic-level attacks”.
Liz Cheney endorses Michigan Democrat
Despite her fairly hard core conservative credentials, anti-Trump Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has now endorsed a Democrat in the upcoming midterm elections.
Having used her position on the January 6 committee to bludgeon Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection and for seeking to overturn the 2020 election result, Cheney clearly feels her split with her own party is nearly complete.
Crossing America’s political divide and supporting a Democrat will infuriate the Trumpist-dominated Republican party.
AP has the details:
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Thursday endorsed and plans to campaign for Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, the first time that the critic of former President Donald Trump who lost her GOP primary has crossed party lines to formally support a Democrat.
Cheney, of Wyoming, announced her support for the two-term House member from Holly, Michigan, in a statement by the Slotkin campaign that notes she plans to headline a campaign event with Slotkin in the Lansing-area district next Tuesday.
Slotkin is competing against Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. Their race is considered a toss-up by both sides and one of the Republicans’ chief targets in their campaign to win the House majority on Nov. 8.
And this is likely the crucial detail.
Both [Cheney and Slotkin] have been vocal critics of House Republicans who have sought to downplay the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Updated
Could Donald Trump soon return to Twitter? With Elon Musk on course to meet a Friday deadline to finish his acquisition of the company, chances are rising that the former president will make a return to the social network he used as a megaphone in his presidency. Here’s the latest on the deal from The Guardian’s Alex Hern:
Elon Musk has claimed he has “acquired Twitter” in a post to the social network reassuring advertisers it will stay a safe place for their brands, amid fears one of his first actions as chief executive will be to restore Donald Trump’s account.
After months of uncertainty over whether or not his $44bn acquisition of the social media platform would go through, the Tesla chief executive’s post is the strongest acknowledgment yet that the deal is expected to be sealed before its deadline of 5pm in Delaware on Friday.
Musk wrote in a statement attached to the tweet: “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
He added: “That is why I bought Twitter. I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”
Living in conservative-run states takes a toll on Americans, according to a new study that found a gap in life expectancies based on a state’s political orientation. Martin Pengelly reports:
Americans die younger in conservative states than in those governed by liberals, a new study has found.
The authors wrote: “Simulations indicate that changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives.”
The study was published on Plos One, “an inclusive journal community working together to advance science for the benefit of society, now and in the future”.
The authors were from Syracuse University in New York, Harvard in Massachusetts, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Washington, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Western Ontario, in Canada.
They wrote: “Results show that the policy domains were associated with working-age mortality.”
From its central role in the disputed 2000 election to its more recent rightward shift under governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has long been one of the most politically interesting states in the union.
The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland traveled to the Sunshine State, seeking answers to one of the biggest questions of the upcoming midterms: will it keep trending Republican, or is a Democratic revival possible? Here’s what he found:
The day so far
Donald Trump has announced a slate of campaign rallies in the last days before the 8 November midterm elections, including a visit to Florida, where he will not be joined by Republican governor Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, Joe Biden will today travel to a semiconductor factory to promote legislation he supported to boost domestic technological competitiveness, with the greater goal of drumming up voter support for his handling of the economy.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Democratic lawmakers want the enhanced child tax credit restored in year-end legislation. During 2021, the program was credited with lowering child poverty.
Democratic senator John Hickenlooper wants the Federal Reserve to hold off on increasing interest rates further. He is the second Democrat this week to ask the central bank to exercise caution in its fight against inflation.
Once a swing state, Democrats in Florida worry they are being pushed decisively into the minority, and could lose ground even in their strongholds in the upcoming elections.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain broke a federal law with a retweet from his official account, an investigation has found, according to the Associated Press.
The AP reports that Klain violated the Hatch Act when he retweeted from his White House account a message from Democratic group STRIKE PAC. The tweet was about deliveries of baby formula, but also included the message, “Get your Democrats Deliver merch today!”
That’s a violation of the act, which bars government officials from trying to influence elections in their official capacities, and Klain was issued a letter of warning, according to the AP.
Here’s more from their report:
Klain removed the retweet as soon as he was notified of the complaint. No disciplinary action will be pursued and the office, an independent government watchdog that monitors violations of the Hatch Act, considers the matter closed. Klain was warned to be more careful in the future.
The conservative legal group America First Legal, led by Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, complained about the tweet and sought an investigation.
Miller and at least a dozen other former Trump administration officials repeatedly violated that same law, without consequence and with Trump’s approval, as part of a “willful disregard for the Hatch Act,” the Office of Special Counsel found in 2021. The office investigated comments by Trump officials leading into the 2020 presidential election, including at the Republican National Convention, which was held at the White House in a major break from historical norms.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre often cites the Hatch Act in deflecting political questions during news briefings. Earlier this week she was asked whether Biden was doing everything he can possibly do to get Democrats across the finish line in the Nov. 8 elections.
“I have to be careful of what I say, because we do respect the Hatch Act here in this administration,” she said.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic candidate for Senate John Fetterman has meanwhile hit out at Shell for reporting massive profits, accusing the oil giant of gouging American consumers while raking in cash.
Here’s the statement from the candidate’s communications director:
NEW: Statement from Fetterman on Shell’s reported $9.45 billion in profits for the third quarter, their second-highest profit on record. pic.twitter.com/0l7cldq81K
— Joe Calvello (@the_vello) October 27, 2022
The message that corporate profiteering is to blame for America’s ongoing inflation wave is one Democrats have pushed throughout this year, and polls indicate it has some resonance with voters.
The House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has joined in on criticizing Democrat John Fetterman for his performance in Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate.
Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, is recovering from a stroke and at times spoke haltingly in his face-off against Republican Mehmet Oz. His performance raised concerns among Democrats that voters will view Fetterman as not fit for the job, depriving them of one of their best chances to win a Republican-controlled seat in Congress’ upper chamber this year.
Here’s what McCarthy had to say, on Fox News:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy goes after Pennsylvania Sen. nominee John Fetterman (D) after his debate against Dr. Oz (R):
— The Recount (@therecount) October 27, 2022
“Even those Democrats on CNN were embarrassed of who their nominee was and the capability of carrying out the job. This is a big job in the Senate.” pic.twitter.com/yIMFrJVW2n
Joe Biden plans to use his speech at a semiconductor factory in New York today to make the case that the economy is benefiting from Democratic policies, and Republicans would undo that progress, CNN reports.
“We can talk about what we’ve done, all these huge legislative wins, ‘til we’re blue in the face,” a Democratic campaign official told the network. “If people can’t feel it, it doesn’t matter at this point.”
Congress’s Democratic majorities have given Biden several legislative wins he can use to strengthen his argument, including the Inflation Reduction Act meant to lower prescription drug prices and fight climate change, and the Chips act to boost American semiconductor production. There’s also the progress made by the labor office since he took office, where the unemployment rate has dipped back to where it was before Covid-19 broke out.
But polls indicate voters rank the economy as the biggest problem facing the country today, and the inflation wave that’s pushed prices up ever since Biden took office is a big reason why. Other surveys indicate they are skeptical of Democrats’ ability to fight it, while Biden himself is struggling with low approval ratings.
Major House Democratic group calls for restoration of child tax credit
The second-largest Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives is calling for the restoration of a tax provision that lowered child poverty, as well as changes to a research and development credit.
The asks from the New Democrat Coalition come as Democrats hope to make the most of the finals months of the year, which may be their last controlling the House and the Senate, depending on the outcome of the 8 November midterms. Congress is expected to vote on end-of-the year legislation before 2022 ends, including one aimed at defense needs, and lawmakers are angling to use those as vehicles for a variety of priorities.
In a letter to House democratic leadership, the New Democrat Coalition is asking for the restoration of the enhanced Child Tax Credit, which was implemented in 2021 and lowered child poverty rates, but was allowed to expire after Democrats failed to agree on extending it. The caucus also wants changes congressional Republicans made to the Research and Development tax credit reversed, arguing its effectiveness in boosting American technological prowess has been undermined.
You can read the full letter here.
Another Democratic senator has spoken up ahead of the Federal Reserve’s meeting next week, explicitly calling on the American central bank not to continue raising interest rates.
The letter from John Hickenlooper of Colorado to Fed chair Jerome Powell comes after Democratic senator Sherrod Brown earlier this week urged the central bank to exercise caution in its campaign of raising rates to fight America’s high rate of inflation. Brown worried that elevated interest rates would cause layoffs, and undo the gains the labor market has made since Joe Biden took office.
Hickenlooper’s letter goes even further, and calls on the Fed to forgo increasing rates entirely. “Raising rates now when prices may come down would be foolish and damaging to American consumers and small businesses,” the senator said.
He continues:
The Fed’s bluntest tool is interest rate increases, and it has wielded that hammer repeatedly. However, after five straight rate increases by the Fed, I worry any additional action will undermine economic growth and harm American families. To date, the Fed’s actions have failed to stem inflationary pressure on Americans. As one Nobel Prize winning economist stated, ‘Will raising interest rates lead to more oil, lower prices of oil, more food, lower prices of food? Answer is clearly not. In fact, the real risk is it will make it worse.’
The Fed’s policy setting committee will announce the decision from its two-day meeting on Wednesday. With inflation data still coming in hot in recent months despite the central bank’s tightening of lending conditions, the Fed is widely expected to again agree to raise rates, perhaps by another three-quarters of a percentage point.
The US economy returned to growth over the past three months, according to data released today, but dark days may be ahead. Here’s more from the Associated Press:
The US economy grew at a 2.6% annual rate from July through September, snapping two straight quarters of economic contraction and overcoming punishingly high inflation and interest rates.
Thursday’s estimate from the commerce department showed that the nation’s gross domestic product – the broadest gauge of economic output – grew in the third quarter after having shrunk in the first half of 2022. Stronger exports and steady consumer spending, backed by a healthy job market, helped restore growth to the world’s biggest economy.
Still, the outlook for the economy has darkened. The Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates five times this year to fight chronic inflation and is set to do so again next week and in December.
Fed chair Jerome Powell has warned that the Fed’s hikes will bring “pain” in the form of higher unemployment and possibly a recession.
The government’s latest GDP report comes as Americans, worried about inflation and the risk of recession, have begun to vote in midterm elections that will determine whether Joe Biden’s Democratic party retains control of Congress. Inflation has become a signature issue for Republican attacks on the Democrats’ stewardship of the economy.
Yesterday, attorneys for Donald Trump accepted a subpoena compelling his appearance before the January 6 committee. Now the question is, will he testify? Hugo Lowell looks at which direction the ex-president is leaning:
Donald Trump’s attorneys have now accepted service of the subpoena issued by the January 6 select committee, setting into motion the countdown for the former US president to inform the panel investigating the Capitol attack whether he intends to cooperate with the congressional investigation.
The acceptance of the subpoena means Trump must settle on his response to the sweeping demand from the panel – requesting documents and testimony about contacts with political figures as well as far-right groups that stormed the Capitol – that will set him on a path without room for reversal.
Trump has several options to consider, which range from total noncompliance to some cooperation as he weighs whether to respond to the select committee’s subpoena, according to sources familiar with recent discussions circulating around the former president and various lawyers and advisers.
The noncompliance option revolves around the calculation that the subpoena essentially lacks teeth and is probably legally unenforceable, meaning he could simply decide to ignore the summons in its entirety.
Among other things, the sources said, the justice department’s internal opinions about current and former presidents having absolute immunity from testifying to Congress would suggest that Trump would not be prosecuted even if the select committee referred him for contempt of Congress.
The former president’s advisers have noticed, for instance, that the justice department declined to charge senior Trump White House official Dan Scavino with contempt after he refused to cooperate – and if that was the case for an adviser, it would naturally extend to the principal.
But whether Trump will follow the advice of his attorneys to ignore the subpoena remains unclear, in part because of the former president’s reflexive belief that he will always be his own best spokesman and can convince investigators that he should be exonerated, the sources said.
The idea is not merely theoretical: Trump expressed to aides immediately after the select committee voted to issue him a subpoena earlier this month that he might consider testifying as long as it is live and in public.
Across the country, election workers are facing unprecedented threats ahead of the 8 November midterms, many of them driven by Donald Trump’s campaign to undermine the results of the 2020 vote, Dani Anguiano reports:
Inside the office of the Shasta county clerk and registrar of voters, which runs elections for about 111,000 people in this part of far northern California, Cathy Darling Allen can see all the security improvements she would make if she had the budget.
“We have plexi on the counter downstairs for Covid but that won’t stop a person. It’s literally just clamped to the counters,” the county clerk and registrar said. For about $50,000, the office could secure the front, limiting access to upstairs offices, she estimated. Another county put bulletproof glass in their lobby years earlier, she knew, something officials there at one point considered removing, though not any more.
Elections offices didn’t used to think about security in this way, Allen said. Now they can’t afford not to.
Following Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Allen says the once low-profile job of non-partisan local election official has transformed in counties like hers. A culture of misinformation has sown doubt in the US election system and subjected officials from Nevada to Michigan to harassment and threats. The FBI has received more than 1,000 reports of threats against election workers in the past year alone.
Democrats are also on the back foot in Oregon, Hallie Golden reports, raising questions of whether they can maintain their longstanding hold on the Pacific coast state’s governor’s mansion:
For the first time in more than 40 years, a Republican could win the governor’s seat in Oregon, breaching the seemingly solid Democratic line of states running along the Pacific coastline of the US.
The tight race between former Oregon House speaker Tina Kotek, a Democrat, and former Oregon House minority leader Christine Drazan, a Republican, which in the latest polling showed Drazan with a hairline lead, indicates a rebuff of the current term-limited liberal governor, Kate Brown.
Brown has one of the lowest approval ratings of any governor in the country amid brewing concern over how state leadership has handled everything from the pandemic to homelessness.
But it’s a third-party candidate with support from both Republicans and Democrats, along with contributions from the richest man in the state, that have truly set a Republican on a path toward possible victory.
“Democrats are pretty good at running a red-blue race in Oregon … But the dynamics of a three-way race have really kind of thrown that playbook out the window,” said Jake Weigler, a progressive political strategist in Oregon not involved in the race.
Updated
Ron DeSantis might have a Trump problem, but it pales in comparison to the problems Democrats are having with voters in Florida, who Politico reports may deal them a decisive wipeout in the upcoming elections.
Democrats in the state fear a rout for their candidates, particularly Charlie Crist, who is standing against DeSantis for governor, and Val Demings, who is running to unseat senator Marco Rubio. According to Politico, Democrats have been outgunned in fundraising, while Crist and Deming’s campaigns have lacked coordination. Joe Biden has only visited the state twice during his presidency, and both times involved disasters, not campaigning, though he does plan a get-out-the-vote visit next week.
The situation is so bad that Politico reports some Democrats believe DeSantis could win Democratic stronghold Miami-Dade county on 8 November, part of a broader breakdown in party strength that would end Florida’s days as a swing state. It has been generally trending toward the GOP in recent elections, backing Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and failure in these midterms could seal Democrats’ fate.
Here’s more from Politico:
Most worrisome for Democrats, national organizations and donors have all but abandoned their candidates — setting off fears that Florida is no longer viewed as competitive.
That would have dire implications for the next presidential election.
“If Democrats follow this building national narrative and decide not to compete in Florida in 2024, it will be one of the most short-sighted decisions of the last 30 years,” said Greg Goddard, a veteran Florida Democratic fundraiser. “Where do we think the pathway to winning a future presidential election lies?”
Updated
Show up in Florida to campaign for the GOP, but without inviting the state’s Republican governor? Sounds like exactly the sort of thing Donald Trump would do.
Trump spares no opportunity to put those who get on his bad side in their place, and he seems to have chosen to do that to Ron DeSantis, who Politico reports won’t be there when the former president holds a rally on 6 November in Miami for senator Marco Rubio.
“You’ve got the Sunday before Election Day totally hijacked by Trump parachuting in on Trump Force One taking up the whole day,” complained a longtime Republican consultant that Politico said is close to DeSantis. “No Republican could go to a DeSantis event that day. None. And DeSantis won’t be here? This is big.”
The outlet got comment from another DeSantis associate, who described Trump’s move as “an elbow to Ron’s throat”.
The governor’s pursuit of anti-gay and anti-trans laws while in office has made him relatively popular among Republicans nationwide, to the point that he went on his own tour earlier this year in support of candidates backed by Trump. But the former president has soured on a politician he once endorsed in a crucial primary, complaining he lacks charisma, while viewing him as a potential rival.
There appears to be less drama around Trump’s other appearances planned for the coming days. On 3 November, he’s in Sioux City, Iowa with senator Chuck Grassley and governor Kim Reynolds. On 7 November, he’ll be in Dayton, Ohio with senate candidate JD Vance.
With days till midterms, Trump hits campaign trail – but not everyone is happy
Good morning, US politics blog readers. A familiar face will take to the campaign trail in the final days before the 8 November midterms: Donald Trump. He’s heading to Florida, Iowa and Ohio to stump for Republican candidates, but only the ones he likes. In Florida, he won’t appear alongside governor Ron DeSantis, an erstwhile ally who is seen as a potential heir to Trump’s helm as the most popular man in the GOP.
It’s exactly the kind of snub you’d expect from Trump to a potential rival, and a reminder of the ex-president’s chaotic touch, even when he’s trying to be helpful.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Joe Biden is heading to upstate New York to promote his Chips act, which Congress passed this summer and is meant to bolster US technological prowess. He’ll visit a semiconductor plant in Syracuse and make remarks at 3:30 pm eastern time, before heading to Delaware.
More debates are planned, including between New Hampshire’s Democratic incumbent senator Maggie Hassan and Republican challenger Don Bolduc, and Maine’s incumbent Democratic governor Janet Mills and and Republican challenger Paul LePage.
