Politics

DETROIT (AP) — Two men who began their careers on factory floors are competing to lead the 373,000 members of the United Auto Workers, a union that helps set standards for wages across the nation’s manufacturing sector.

It will be the first-ever direct election of a UAW president in the union’s 88-year history.

The election pits the 57-year-old incumbent, Ray Curry, who started his career on the assembly line at a Freightliner truck plant in North Carolina, against Shawn Fain, 54, who began as an electrician at a Chrysler metal casting plant in Kokomo, Indiana.

Curry and Fain were the top two finishers in a five-candidate race held in December for a four-year term as UAW president. Because neither man won more than 50% of the vote, they were placed in a runoff election, with ballot counting to start March 1. Separate runoff races are being held for two other UAW positions — a vice president and a regional director.

Until this year, the leaders of the UAW had always been chosen by delegates to a convention rather than by rank-and-file union members. But in the aftermath of a bribery-and-embezzlement scandal involving union officials, members voted to hold a direct election this time.

Candidates who have positioned themselves in opposition to the established union leadership won six of 14 seats on the International Executive Board and could end up capturing as many as eight seats.

Under Curry’s leadership for the past 19 months, the UAW has taken a more aggressive stance in labor talks, having gone on strike against Volvo Trucks, John Deere, the University of California and CNHI, a maker of agricultural and construction equipment.

In forthcoming contract negotiations, Curry and Fain have each said they would seek to restore traditional pensions, which, beginning in 2007, were replaced by a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan for new hires. Both also want cost-of-living and general pay raises and an end to differing tiers of wages and benefits for workers doing the same jobs, depending on their length of service.

Here’s where the candidates stand on some of the issues, edited for length and clarity:

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, OR WOULD YOU DO, TO CHANGE THE UNION AFTER THE SCANDAL?

FAIN: Let’s look at the reform of this union. The Curry slate didn’t want every member to have a right to vote in this election. They want to keep the same tired system where the International Executive Board controls the convention, and they control the election. We’ve been a one-party state for longer than I’ve been alive. A true reformist would want the membership to have a right to vote in the election. These guys still ascribe to the company-union philosophy (where company and union are business partners). The company continually violates our agreements. There’s no action taken to stop it. They are not reformers.

CURRY: I came off the assembly floor. I’ve had an opportunity to serve on a staff in a 12-state region in the South. I bring a wealth of knowledge and experience, having served as secretary-treasurer, leading reforms that started in 2019. I was the one who put in place the request for proposals with vendors for top-to-bottom reviews. We were responsive to the membership. We’ve offered training. We want to have the members fully engaged. All those pieces are transparent and will move us forward. We’re not just changing policies and rules. We’re also listening to their voice and going to give them a forum to have discussion with the leadership.

WHAT DO YOU WANT IN CONTRACT TALKS WITH DETROIT AUTOMAKERS?

CURRY: Members would like to maintain current provisions, but they want improvements. Those include wage increases. We’ve got to have buying power that’s greater than 2019 in 2023. We’re also looking at reinstatement of cost-of-living allowance. We got that in the truck, defense and aerospace sectors. Our members are really demanding it. In a number of other sectors, we have seen pension increases back for active and retired. We’d also like to talk about those who are post-2007 (hiring date) in the auto sector who do not have a pension. They’ve got traditional 401(k) and savings plans. When we talk about tiers, there’s levels of health insurance, levels of retirement, post-retirement benefits that we believe need to be level for all employees.

FAIN: Go back to bankruptcy. The government basically mandated “these were the cuts.” Those weren’t to be forever. They were for companies to get back on their feet. The companies got back, and they’ve done amazing ever since. But our workers have been still going like this (motioning horizontally). When those two things don’t go hand-in-hand, there’s a problem, and the workers are fed up. Ending tiers is an issue everywhere in our union. People that have pensions. That don’t have post-retirement health care. It’s taking care of retirees who have been neglected for the last 15 years. Our active workers. With the cost of living rising, we have to do better. Look at what ending pensions has done. We used to set the standard.

WILL THERE BE MORE STRIKES IF YOU’RE ELECTED?

FAIN: That’s up to the companies. Our job is to fight for our members. It’s not to fight for the International Executive Board. It’s to prepare our members for whatever action we have to take to protect job security. Job security comes first. Would we strike? Yes, we would. But that’s going to be up to the companies if they don’t treat our workers fairly.

CURRY: I see that happening when the members’ demands aren’t being met. We’re going to be rational in our conversation. We will utilize all the meeting time up to whatever contractual deadline that we have. But when the members believe that the process isn’t moving forward in their best interest, I will be supportive of authorizing strikes.

STELLANTIS WANTS TO CLOSE THE BELVIDERE, ILLINOIS, PLANT. CAN IT BE SAVED?

CURRY: I wasn’t involved early in the process because of not having the assignment and not being president at the time. But when the announcement came about, we immediately started having conversations with the corporation. We also started raising awareness nationally. I had a chance to talk to (Stellantis CEO) Carlos Tavares. I alerted (President Joe Biden) that we had a product in a U.S. state, and the future-generation product for 2023 was to be built in Mexico. We believe we’re making a good business case why Belvidere survives. We’re going to keep fighting.

FAIN: That’s the problem with our leadership: They’re too reactive instead of being proactive in addressing these things up front. When you know that three years ago, and there’s product coming, the leadership should have taken action to secure that work, and they failed to do so. We have language in our contract that says the companies will not spin off, split off, sell or close or idle any plant. And there’s only a couple exceptions, which are an act of God, a severe economic downturn. That’s not the case. A strike is not the only option.

source

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Joe Biden hasn’t announced a reelection campaign, but some of the themes likely to be the centerpiece of that expected run should be on display Friday night when he addresses a national Democratic Party meeting.

The president plans to focus on his administration’s accomplishments creating jobs and stimulating domestic manufacturing when he and Vice President Kamala Harris address a Democratic National Committee gathering in Philadelphia.

“Put simply, I would argue the Biden economic plan is working,” Biden said at the White House before heading to Philadelphia, reacting to a new jobs report showing that employers created a net 517,000 jobs last month, exceeding economists’ expectations.

Before the speech, Biden will visit a water treatment plant and announce $160 million to upgrade Philadelphia water facilities and replace 20 miles of lead service lines — part of a larger effort to remove lead pipes around the country. An additional $340 million will go to upgrade the city’s water system.

Much of that funding comes from a bipartisan infrastructure package Congress passed in 2021, which is also bankrolling railway projects the president spent this week trumpeting.

With the State of the Union address coming next week, Biden has renewed calls for political unity, something he’s acknowledged being unable to achieve despite his promises to do so as a candidate in 2020. But those appeals haven’t tempered Biden’s broadsides against his predecessor, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party’s continued fealty to the former president’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“Look, this is not your father’s Republican Party,” the president said this week at a DNC fundraiser in New York. “This is a different breed of cat.”

He added, “I don’t know what’s gone haywire here” with the GOP. Going forward, he said, Democrats will “have to make clear that we’re not going to put up with MAGA Republicans.”

Biden’s speech will also seek to highlight how Republicans are seeking to undermine the progress the president says has made during his first two years.

The president is facing increasing pressure in Washington, where a special counsel is investigating how classified documents turned up in his home and a former office, and a Republican-controlled House is investigating everything from the administration’s immigration procedures at the U.S.-Mexico border to the overseas ties of the president’s son Hunter.

That’s made some top Democrats anxious to see Biden stay on the political offensive.

“The president is trying to solve the problems of the nation on infrastructure, on microchips, on gun safety, on health care, and I think he’s going to talk about doing that,” said Randi Weingarten, a DNC member and president of the American Federation of Teachers. “And then also compare (that) to the GOP, which seems to be on a revenge agenda.”

Biden’s speech comes the day before the DNC is set to approve an overhauled presidential primary calendar starting next year that would replace Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot. New Hampshire and Nevada would go second, followed by Georgia and Michigan — a change the president has championed to ensure that voters of color have more influence deciding the party’s White House nominee.

The new calendar would be largely moot in the short term if Biden runs again, reducing the chance of a major Democratic primary challenger.

His expected announcement of a reelection campaign is still likely weeks away. But Biden’s advisers have been preparing for one for months, making staffing arrangements and readying lines of political attacks against Republicans seen as early presidential front-runners, including Trump, who launched his campaign in November, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Alan Clendenin, a DNC member from Florida, said Biden has strengthened the economy, reestablished U.S. global standing and promoted inclusive values — the opposite of what Trump and DeSantis stand for.

“They predicted gloom and doom. He’s proved them all wrong,” said Clendenin, who kicked off a DNC Southern caucus meeting by noting that Florida has begun lagging behind other states in key policy areas and joking of its governor, “That’s what happened when you’re led by the devil.”

Biden repeatedly denounced “extreme MAGA Republicans” as a threat to the nation’s democracy in the runup to last fall’s midterm elections, when his party pulled off a stronger-than-expected showing. The president has since worked to portray today’s GOP as beholden as ever to Trump, saying at the New York fundraiser, “You’d think that what would happen is that there would be a little bit, as we Catholics say, (of) an epiphany.”

“Well, instead, it’s been the exact opposite,” Biden said. “They’ve just doubled down.”

The president will have a harder time campaigning on future legislative accomplishments now that a House Republican majority has promised to thwart the White House policy agenda at every turn. A coming fight over extending the nation’s legal debt ceiling may only harden partisan clashes.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he and the White House would continue talking about ways to avoid a debt limit crisis. But, referring to federal spending, McCarthy said, “The current path we’re on we cannot sustain.”

Biden has also suggested that simply bashing Republicans won’t be enough to expand his party’s electoral base. He acknowledged that his 2020 run brought the support of “not enough, but a fair number of blue-collar workers” and lamented that such voters “used to always be our folks.”

The president said his party has seen its support among Americans without a college degree decline “because a lot of people think we left them behind.”

Weingarten, whose union represents 1.7 million members, said Biden is right to acknowledge criticisms that Democrats can be seen as elitist, but said those charges were coming from a GOP that has done little to help workers or families. By contrast, she said, Biden has solidified pension funds, promoted union membership and helped reduce costs for low income families.

“There’s a lot of grievance in the country about the loss of good union jobs,” she said. “Regardless of what has happened in the past, I would say that Joe Biden is a working person’s president.”

___

This story has been corrected to show Michigan, not Nevada, is set to go fifth.

source

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell announced the role for Sanders, 40, the nation’s youngest governor, on Thursday.

“While President Biden keeps repeating old mistakes and failing Americans, a rising generation of Republican Governors are fighting for families, advancing new solutions, and winning,” McConnell said in a statement.

“We are ready to begin a new chapter in the story of America — to be written by a new generation of leaders,” she said.

Biden, 80, will deliver the address on Tuesday Feb. 7.

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington in November, according to a person familiar with the matter, at least a week after his personal lawyers first found classified records there from his time as vice president.

The discovery of the documents at the office blocks away from the U.S. Capitol led to a search of Biden’s homes, including his residence in Wilmington, Delaware, where lawyers and federal agents found additional classified documents in December and January. It was not immediately clear whether the FBI search of Biden’s office — which was conducted voluntarily, without a search warrant — uncovered additional classified documents beyond those found on Nov. 2 by Biden’s attorneys. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

News of the FBI search is the latest uncomfortable development for Biden.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to lead an investigation into how the documents ended up at Biden’s home and former office and whether any laws were broken. Trump is facing an investigation by a separate special counsel over classified documents taken during an FBI raid at his Florida estate.

In the wake of the Biden disclosures, former Vice President Mike Pence said he found classified documents at his Indiana residence and the National Archives has requested that former presidents and vice presidents dating back to the Reagan administration search for any potentially classified or government records improperly in their possession.

Word of the November search of the Penn Biden Center was first reported Tuesday by CBS News, whose initial inquiries about the discovery of classified information at the Biden office sparked the first White House acknowledgement of their discovery.

The White House and the president’s personal lawyers, who have faced criticism from Republicans and even some Democrats for their delayed and incomplete disclosure of information about the classified document discoveries, did not directly reveal the search or comment on the matter Tuesday. An FBI spokesman declined comment, as did the Justice Department.

The special counsel for the Biden documents, Robert Hur, officially begins this week after finishing up other legal work outside the Justice Department, and will take over the investigation and the work done so far from Justice officials.

In a Jan. 21 statement acknowledging that FBI agents had searched and taken custody of classified records at the president’s Wilmington home the day before, Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney said the search “was consistent with the process described in the Statement we released on January 14 and followed after the personal attorney’s discovery of the documents found at the Penn Biden Center.”

The White House and Biden’s personal attorneys have not revealed whether the FBI has already or will search Biden’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. His lawyers previously searched that residence and said they did not identify any classified documents or government records there.

The University of Pennsylvania, which runs the Biden Center, did not respond to a request for comment.

source

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — By this time four years ago, at least a dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls eager to make their case against Donald Trump had either visited Iowa or announced plans to soon visit the leadoff voting state ahead of the 2020 election.

Iowa’s campaign landscape is markedly different this year, with a Republican field seemingly frozen by Trump’s early announcement of a 2024 campaign. So far, only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has visited this year, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is making plans to stop by in the next few weeks.

Even Trump, the only declared candidate in the 2024 race right now, has been absent from Iowa, choosing instead to kickstart his campaign last weekend in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two other early voting states.

With Iowa’s first-in-the-nation GOP caucuses just a year off, the field of would-be White House candidates has largely been content to steer clear of bone-chilling Iowa — and, perhaps more importantly, avoid being the first candidate to announce a bid against the former president.

“No one wants to be on a limb by themselves against Trump,” said Alan Ostergren, a Republican lawyer in Des Moines who is involved in GOP politics. “They’ll all break at some point. But no one wants to go first.”

For now, the quiet in Iowa gives other contenders weighing campaigns — among them former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, all of whom campaigned in Iowa last year for GOP candidates — time to talk to potential donors, promote their new books and summon the mettle to take on Trump.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading GOP presidential prospect coming off a blowout reelection victory, is not expected to make any 2024 moves until the spring, after the Florida Legislature adjourns and he completes a national book tour.

As a warning to other potential competitors, Trump and his team have been lashing out at would-be rivals. The former president has dubbed DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” and said that a DeSantis challenge for the 2024 GOP nomination would be “a great act of disloyalty.”

Trump’s universal name recognition gives him space to stay away from Iowa for now, GOP operatives say, as his team charts a strategy that’s expected to be more organized than his freewheeling 2016 campaign, which resulted in a second-place finish in the state’s caucuses.

Although he remains deeply popular within a core of the Republican Party, Trump is facing a number of investigations that could complicate his third bid for the White House. Among them are a criminal investigation over top-secret documents found at his Florida estate, a probe in Washington into his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election, an investigation in Georgia into his efforts to remain in the presidency after losing reelection, and more probes in New York.

“He’s not looked at as someone who should automatically get the nomination. He’s no longer in office, and two years have gone by,” said Steve Scheffler, Iowa’s Republican National committeeman, who has pledged to remain publicly neutral. “Even though the base loves him and his policies, he may have to do more of what others have to do. I definitely think he’s more vulnerable.”

So far, Trump is the lone 2024 Republican with a paid presence in Iowa. Alex Latcham, the former regional political director for the Iowa Republican Party, now works for Trump’s national team but still lives in Iowa. He is helping recruit an Iowa campaign director for Trump.

Unlike four years ago, around the time then-California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and then-South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, among others, were visiting Iowa, Democrats this year are standing to the side with the expectation that President Joe Biden will seek a second term. In any case, the Democratic National Committee is expected to strip Iowa of its leadoff voting status for the 2024 presidential nominating calendar, though Republicans plan to keep Iowa as its first-voting state.

Despite the relative quiet in Iowa so far this year, potential Republican candidates are still finding ways to make inroads with GOP activists in the state without setting foot there.

At the GOP legislative breakfast on Jan. 9, legislators and party officials flipped through a printed program that included full-page ads from Trump, Pompeo and Scott.

That’s in addition to the tens of thousands of dollars that they and others, including Haley and Pence, contributed to Iowa Republican candidates from their political fundraising organizations for their 2022 midterm election campaigns.

Without setting foot in Iowa, DeSantis, too, worked to sow goodwill last year with Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds by inviting her to meet in Florida.

Several would-be presidential candidates are expected to attend an annual spring fundraiser for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a Christian conservative group, on April 22.

Hutchinson, the only 2024 GOP candidate to visit Iowa this year, made a low-profile visit to Iowa early this month, holding private meetings and speaking to a GOP state legislative breakfast. Scott is scheduled to speak at the Polk County GOP annual fundraising dinner on Feb. 22.

Gloria Mazza, chair of the Polk County Republican Party, said it’s only a matter of time before the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by potential GOP Trump rivals spills out into the open.

“It’s going to pop, but it’s hard to tell when. It’s like a game of chess,” Mazza said. “Who is going to make the first move on him?”

source

CHICAGO (AP) — Emboldened pro-life activists are looking to the 2024 presidential election as an opportunity to solidify their influence over the Republican Party.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the most influential group in the anti-abortion movement, is telling each potential GOP presidential hopeful that to win its backing — or avoid being a target of its opposition — they must support national restrictions on the procedure. Exceptions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother are acceptable, the activists say, but leaving the question for states to decide is not.

“It is a level of protection that goes to every single state. That’s the baseline of what we’re looking to do,” said Frank Cannon, Susan B. Anthony’s chief political strategist. “Anything less than that will not be acceptable and will not be somebody that SBA can support. So, it’s that simple.”

That directive is creating an early litmus test for Republicans considering entering the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that enshrined federal protections for abortion for roughly 50 years. While the hard-line stance could please anti-abortion activists who hold sway in GOP primaries, it could create problems for the party’s eventual nominee in the general election.

Voters protected abortion rights via ballot measures in six states in 2022, including Kansas, a state former President Donald Trump twice won by double-digit margins. AP VoteCast, a survey of the midterm electorate, showed the Supreme Court’s decision was broadly unpopular. About 6 in 10 said they were angry or dissatisfied by it, and roughly the same percentage said they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

Supporters of abortion rights say the issue was a “game changer” that helped Democrats last year and that will motivate voters even more in 2024, after two years of seeing the effects of restrictions.

“We’re in a nation where 18 states have no access to abortion, and that number is not going down. It’s going to go up as additional court cases get decided,” said Jenny Lawson, vice president of organizing and engagement campaigns at Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She predicted people will see headlines “over and over again” about pregnant children forced to travel out of state for abortions or people unable to get proper miscarriage care because doctors are afraid of liability.

Pressure from the anti-abortion movement has put Trump, who announced his third run for the presidency last year, in perhaps the most complicated position.

He is arguably more responsible for the overturning of Roe than anyone else, having appointed three anti-abortion Supreme Court justices who backed last year’s ruling. But he has also made clear that he believes pushing any further will hurt Republicans, and he accused anti-abortion leaders of failing to do enough to help GOP candidates in the midterms.

“I just didn’t see them fighting during this last election, fighting for victory,” Trump said in an interview with David Brody, a longtime commentator for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Trump, who described himself as “very pro-choice” before entering politics, stressed that objecting to exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother makes it “much harder to win elections.” He has criticized evangelical leaders who have been slow to endorse his latest run, blasting decisions by pastors like Robert Jeffress to wait to assess the rest of the field as “a sign of disloyalty.”

Cannon called the notion that opposing abortion hurt the GOP last year “absolutely absurd,” pointing to candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a top potential GOP presidential candidate — who easily won reelection. DeSantis signed into law last year a ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The Republican candidates who got “clobbered,” Cannon said, were those who tried to avoid the topic.

“What you have to do is argue for protections that the American people see as reasonable versus the extremism of no exceptions, even late-term abortion,” Cannon said. “And if you do that, it’s a winning combination.”

SBA Pro-Life America, which raised over $60 million for 2020 campaigns along with its affiliated super PAC, is talking with each potential candidate, Cannon said. While records are being discussed, what matters in 2024 is what policies the candidates prioritize when they announce their bids. SBA’s specific request is to support “at a minimum” a “heartbeat bill” or “pain-capable” bill, he said.

The heartbeat bill would make abortion illegal after cardiac activity is detected, which occurs at roughly six weeks of pregnancy — before some women know they’re pregnant. Legislation that references the fetus feeling pain, such as a measure introduced last year by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would ban the procedure at around 15 weeks. Graham’s bill didn’t advance in the Democratic-controlled chamber, and even some fellow Republicans distanced themselves from it ahead of the midterms.

Trump’s stance has provided an opening on the right for potential rivals like former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of whom are evangelical Christians with long-held anti-abortion stances.

Pence has spent months visiting so-called crisis pregnancy centers that counsel women against abortions. And he has embarked on a tour of megachurches, including Jeffress’ First Baptist Church in Dallas, and spoken before major anti-abortion groups.

His advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom, has pushed for Congress to pass legislation including a national abortion ban beginning around six weeks of pregnancy and a bill that would establish legal personhood at conception. Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff and longtime adviser, said that when it comes to declared and potential 2024 candidates, “I see him as the most comfortable explaining his pro-life convictions and the basis for them.”

For Pence, he said, the issue is about much more than politics.

“Mike does it because this is core to the reason that he ran for office and won for the first time. It’s always been for him a top issue and it’s a priority,” he said.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, is another potential candidate who signed abortion prohibitions into law in her state. The 2016 law bans abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy and includes an exception if the mother’s life is in jeopardy but not for cases of rape or incest.

After the Supreme Court’s decision, Haley said states, and not “unelected justices,” should control abortion policy. That position puts her at odds with SBA and other anti-abortion groups.

Others see abortion as a potential vulnerability for DeSantis. A spokesperson for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who is also exploring a potential run, recently unloaded on DeSantis, questioning where he stands on the issue.

“Governor Noem was the only Governor in America on national television defending the Dobbs decision,” Ian Fury wrote in an email to the National Review. “Where was Governor DeSantis? Hiding behind a 15-week ban. Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don’t have a right to live?”

Cannon stressed that those in the anti-abortion movement are the “foot soldiers” of the Republican Party during elections and comprise a huge percentage of primary voters.

“No Republican candidate can win the presidency without the backing of the pro-life movement,” he said.

___

Colvin reported from New York.

source

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. George Santos of New York told GOP colleagues Tuesday he is temporarily stepping down from his two congressional committees, a move that comes amid a host of ethics issues and a day after he met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Santos has faced numerous calls for his resignation and is facing multiple investigations by prosecutors over his personal and campaign finances and lies about his resume and family background.

Santos was assigned to two fairly low-profile panels, the House Committee on Small Business and to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., says Santos “referenced the drama and everything surrounding the situation and he just felt like it was the appropriate thing to do.”

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Olka., said the decision was well-received from the GOP conference, saying “I think it was the appropriate thing to do and I was proud of him for getting up and doing this.”

McCarthy met with Santos on Monday night, but did not disclose their conversation.

source

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The first Black woman elected to the Mississippi Legislature said Tuesday that she will not seek another term, 38 years after she first took office.

Democratic Rep. Alyce Clarke of Jackson, 83, announced her decision one day before candidates’ qualifying deadline for statewide, regional, legislative and county offices in Mississippi.

“You can’t make a difference unless you’re at the table. And I’m glad we finally got to the table,” Clarke told The Associated Press after she made her announcement to her House colleagues.

The first Black man to win a seat in the Mississippi Legislature in the 20th century was Robert Clark, no relation, a Democrat from Ebenezer who was elected in 1967.

Alyce Clarke won a March 1985 special election. Her time as the only Black woman in the Legislature was relatively short, since in 1987, Democrat Alice Harden of Jackson won a seat in the state Senate.

Several other Black women have since been elected to Mississippi’s 122-member House and 52-member Senate, but women generally remain a small minority in both chambers.

Only three white women were House members when Clarke arrived. The men had a restroom near the House chamber on the Capitol’s third floor, but the women had to go to restrooms on another floor — an inconvenience that prevented them from sneaking out during long debates.

Clarke said that early in her legislative career, she saw a House staff member slip a key to one of her white female colleagues for a private women’s restroom on the second floor. Clarke had been going all the way down to a public restroom on the first floor.

“Stupid me,” Clarke recalled Tuesday. “I said, ‘It’s never been locked when I was in there.’ And then I saw the other two ladies look at each other kind of strange. I said, ‘Something’s not quite right about this.’”

She said she went home and told her husband: “’The white ladies have a bathroom.’”

Her husband urged her to call reporters. She did, and the snub of the only Black female legislator made headlines.

Clarke said when she arrived at the Capitol the next day, a security officer gave her a key to the private restroom and told her she was being summoned to see then-House Speaker C.B. “Buddie” Newman, a Democrat.

Clarke said Newman — who apparently hadn’t read the newspapers — told her that if she promised not to tell the media about the restroom situation, he would get a committee to work on putting a new women’s restroom near the House chamber.

“I said, ‘I promise you I won’t tell them because I told them last night,’” Clarke said.

Within a relatively short time, female lawmakers had the same ease of access to a restroom as their male colleagues, with the women’s room installed in a space formerly used for the men’s shoeshine stand.

Potty parity aside, Clarke said Tuesday that women have made a difference in the legislative process.

“If you happen to be in the committee, quite often there are things you think of that they don’t think of,” she said. “And it appears that we are really more concerned about educating our children and making sure they don’t end up in prison.”

Democratic Rep. Ed Blackmon — who for many years shared a two-person desk with Clarke in the House chamber — said Tuesday that Clarke accomplished goals by being persistent.

“She bothers you — I’ll put it that way,” Blackmon said with a chuckle. “But she’s real nice in the way she bothers you.”

Clarke pushed early in her legislative career to establish Born Free, a drug and alcohol treatment center for pregnant women. She said she had seen a need for the program while working in a nutrition program at a public health center.

In the 1990s, she led an effort to establish Mississippi’s first drug courts, which provide supervision, drug testing and treatment services to help keep some people out of prison.

She was also instrumental in persuading her colleagues to establish a state lottery. Clarke filed lottery bills for 19 years before legislators voted in 2018 to create a lottery to help pay for highways. Recognizing her persistence, the House and Senate voted to name the legislation the Alyce G. Clarke Mississippi Lottery Law. When lottery tickets went on sale in 2019, Clarke bought the ceremonial first ticket at a Jackson convenience store.

The current House speaker, Republican Philip Gunn, said Tuesday that Clarke has served with class and dignity.

“You have made the state of Mississippi proud,” he told Clarke, and her colleagues applauded.

source

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan House Democrats voted Tuesday to move the state’s presidential primary to the fourth week of February and become a part of a new group of states slated to lead off the Democratic party’s presidential primary starting next year.

The move, which was approved by the state Senate along party lines on Thursday, comes after a Democratic National Committee panel voted last month to approve a plan that would make Michigan the fifth state to hold its presidential primary in early 2024, and potentially, in years to come.

Democratic leaders in the state have said that the move will give Michigan an increased voice in national politics and drive more attention to the battleground state.

“Our population is a more reflective mix of suburban, urban and rural constituents than just about any other state that has had this early vote,” said Democratic state Sen. Jeremy Moss, the chair of the Senate’s election committee. “We’re serious about putting Michigan at the forefront of presidential politics because then that puts us at the forefront of setting a national agenda.”

House Republicans argued Tuesday that the move could cost the state party nearly all of its delegates in 2024 after the Republican National Committee set an early primary calendar that does not include Michigan. Republican state Rep. Andrew Beeler, of Port Huron, said the move would “disenfranchise” Republican voters and was “basically spitting in the face of half of the state.”

“There’s a 90% loss of your delegates if your primary is held before March 1. So if this becomes law, no Republican candidate for president is going to come to Michigan to campaign,” Beeler said.

A new presidential primary calendar that was championed by President Joe Biden would strip Iowa’s caucus of its traditional post leading off the primary and replace it with South Carolina, which would open primary voting on Feb. 3. Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan would follow in that order with the majority of the rest of the country holding their primaries on Super Tuesday in early March.

As Democratic leaders in Michigan moved to match the DNC’s plan, they also looked to garner Republican support for the move in hopes of receiving a two-thirds vote that was needed in the state Senate for the change to take immediate effect.

With the legislation passing along party lines, it now heads to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk and is not scheduled to take effect until 90 days after the end of the session — leaving questions about how it will be implemented for 2024. The Legislature typically adjourns in December but would need to finish by Nov. 29 for the bill to apply to the 2024 presidential primary.

The Democrats’ 2024 primary calendar could be moot if Biden opts to run for reelection, as expected. But no matter what happens in 2024, Moss said that the state “seized the opportunity that was presented to us” and will continue to do so to be a “key player in presidential politics.”

source

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced Tuesday that he wouldn’t seek his state’s open U.S. Senate seat next year, ending weeks of speculation about whether he would enter a vicious Republican primary fight against a combative defender of former President Donald Trump.

The decision by the 73-year-old Daniels comes two weeks after U.S. Rep. Jim Banks announced he was running for the seat being vacated by GOP Sen. Mike Braun as he makes a 2024 run for governor.

“With full credit and respect for the institution and those serving in it, I conclude that it’s just not the job for me, not the town for me, and not the life I want to live at this point,” Daniels said in a statement released by a longtime adviser.

The Washington-based anti-tax Club for Growth had already endorsed Banks and criticized Daniels as an insufficiently conservative “old guard Republican,” signaling a line of attack for a nasty intraparty race in the GOP-dominated state.

Daniels, who was considered a 2012 presidential contender with a conservative fiscal reputation, ended eight years as governor in early 2013 with high approval ratings. He stayed in the public eye for the past decade as the high-profile president of Purdue University before stepping down at the end of December.

His decision leaves Banks as the only declared candidate some 15 months ahead of Indiana’s 2024 primary.

Banks, 43, was first elected to Congress from a heavily Republican district in northeastern Indiana in 2016, the year after he returned from an eight-month military deployment to Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve.

He has since become a frequent Fox News Channel guest and Trump ally who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential election victory after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, then the House speaker, months later rejected Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s pick of Banks as the top GOP member on the committee investigating the deadly Capitol insurrection, citing the need to protect the review’s “integrity.”

Rep. Victoria Spartz, in her second term from a central Indiana district, is another Republican who has stated interest in the Senate race. The Ukrainian-born Spartz has been critical at times of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began last February.

Banks has been eager to pull at political divides. His campaign video announcement invoked disputes over transgender girls’ sports, blamed China for COVID-19 and claimed that “anti-Americanism” is being pushed in schools and the military, criticizing both “the radical Democrats and the spineless Republicans.”

Daniels, who was President George W. Bush’s budget director and a senior executive at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. before becoming governor, caused a stir among cultural conservatives while considering a 2012 White House run by saying the next president facing economic crisis “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues.”

Daniels said Tuesday that he didn’t believe he “would be well-suited to legislative office, particularly where seniority remains a significant factor in one’s effectiveness.”

Daniels said the country faces critical problems with its national debt, the stability of safety-net programs, aggression from China and the need “to secure our borders without depriving the nation of the talent and energy that grateful immigrants can bring.”

“I would have tried to work on these matters in a way that might soften the harshness and personal vitriol that has infected our public square, rendering it not only repulsive to millions of Americans, but also less capable of effective action to meet our threats and seize our opportunities,” Daniels said.

Not waiting for Daniels’ decision, Donald Trump Jr. had likened Daniels to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney as a “weak RINO,” or Republican in name only. The deep-pocketed Club for Growth recently released an ad reaching back to Daniels’ time as President George W. Bush’s budget director to criticize him for increasing the federal debt and calling him an “old guard Republican clinging to the old ways of the bad old days.”

A longtime Daniels adviser knocked the Club for Growth for helping to push failed Republican candidates as the party fell short of recapturing the Senate in last year’s election.

source