Biden

Gig firms fight Biden’s Labor pick

March 22, 2023 By Jordan Fabian 2 Comments

Uber, Lyft and others raise concern over Julie Su’s stance on worker classification.

A group representing Uber, Lyft and other app-based services is raising concern about President Biden’s nominee to lead the Labor Department over her stance on worker classification rules.

In a letter to Biden dated Monday, the Flex Assn. asked that the nominee, Julie Su, explain how she would implement a proposed rule that could make it easier for workers to be considered employees rather than independent contractors “in a manner that protects independent work.”

It also requested that the Labor Department “delay action” on the proposal until the Senate confirms a nominee for secretary.

Gig companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart rely heavily on contractors to staff their fleets and have closely scrutinized the rule.

The letter illustrates the battle lines around Su’s nomination to replace Marty Walsh as Labor secretary. Business groups and Republicans have criticized her support for measures affecting the gig economy, while she has earned plaudits from Democrats and labor groups for her stance on workers’ rights.

The White House sent Su’s nomination to the Senate last week, allowing the confirmation process to begin.

Flex Chief Executive Kristin Sharp wrote to Biden that the group is concerned that Su “does not fully appreciate the potential impact” of the measure and “has a record indicating an oppositional approach to policymaking that carries real implications as she seeks to be elevated to serve as the department’s primary policymaker.”

A White House official defended Su, saying that, if confirmed as Labor secretary, she would ensure workers receive all rights and protections available to them under federal law. Proper classification of workers would benefit the economy and guarantee they are eligible for unemployment insurance, overtime and minimum wage, the official said.

Su led California’s labor department before joining the Biden administration. She supported a law making it more difficult for companies to classify workers as contractors, which allows businesses to save millions of dollars but deprives workers of protections such as minimum wage and benefits.

Sharp said the California law, which is being challenged in federal court, “wreaked havoc across multiple industries.” While stopping short of opposing Su’s nomination, Sharp demanded that Su explain her views on the policy during Senate confirmation “so that stakeholders can properly evaluate their position on her nomination.”

The Biden administration issued a proposal on independent-contractor status in October that would undo a Trump-era standard that made it easier for companies to hire people as contractors, which critics said left workers vulnerable to misclassification. The proposed rule isn’t final yet.

The proposal imposes a multifactor test that considers all elements of the working relationship equally in determining whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee. The Trump-era test gave more weight to a person’s degree of control over their work and the opportunity for profit and loss.

Click here to read the full article at LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Biden, Lyft, Uber

DOJ Searches Biden’s Home, Finds More Documents with Classified Markings

January 23, 2023 By Wendell Husebo 2 Comments

The Justice Department conducted a search of President Joe Biden’s Wilmington home Friday and found even more documents with classified markings, according to Biden’s personal attorney on Saturday.

The latest trove includes six documents. The content of the classified materials is unknown.

The White House had previously claimed on January 14 the search for all classified documents was completed.

The trove is in addition to the about 25 classified documents unearthed by Biden’s personal attorneys in past weeks between the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s residence.

Critics have questioned why Biden’s personal attorneys were initially searching for Biden’s illegally stashed documents. The White House has failed to provide the initial reason or cause for the search.

Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, claimed Saturday that Biden offered to allow the Justice Department to conduct the search.

The search began “at approximately 9:45 AM and concluded at around 10:30 PM and covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home,” Bauer said in a statement, noting “representatives of both the personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office were present” for the search.

The White House Counsel’s Office, which is a distinction from Biden’s personal attorneys, issued a statement that “[n]either the President nor the First Lady were present during the search. The President’s lawyers and White House Counsel’s Office will continue to cooperate with DOJ and the Special Counsel.”

The investigation of wrongdoing was reportedly widened after the DOJ and Biden’s personal attorneys agreed to hide the scandal from the American people.

According to the Washington Post, not only did the White House and DOJ try to obscure the scandal from public view, but they also refused to divulge that the second trove of classified documents were already unearthed at Biden’s home in Wilmington when CBS News first contacted the White House about the initial leak of classified documents apparently illegally stored at the Biden Penn Center.

Click here to to read the full article at BreitbartCA

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Biden, DOJ, Top Secret Documents, White House

D.C. Journalist Proves Biden Did Absolutely Nothing Wrong By Assuming He Did Absolutely Nothing Wrong

January 21, 2023 By Eddie Scarry 5 Comments

Missing classified documents are only a problem when a president that the bureaucracy doesn’t like has them.

If the entire news media, plus Biden’s vindictive Justice Department, hadn’t put the country through months of insanity over the petty “confidential documents” drama at Mar-a-Lago, Biden’s own scandal of having illegally retained government material when he was a private citizen would be a pretty boring affair.

But they didn’t. They decided to get cute and make this a criminal matter. Now they get the same treatment.

Wait! they claim in unison. This is different! Biden did the right thing and Trump did the wrong thing!

Admittedly, that’s a totally fair and obvious point when you start with the assumption that over the six years Biden was in wrongful possession of government secrets, the material just sat there, untouched and unread (and make the concurrent assumption that the same wasn’t true of the Trump documents). They simply gathered dust, month by month, sound asleep in office drawers and garage boxes, forgotten by Biden, time, and the federal bureaucracy. Then, when one fateful day Biden’s lawyers happened upon the documents, they immediately dialed the National Archives for a swift transfer to the proper authorities.

That’s the entire premise of longtime Washington, D.C., journalist Garrett Graff’s essay this week in The New York Times: Biden says he did nothing wrong, and anyway, he immediately handed over all the materials that he possessed (but definitely never looked at) for six years!

“Mr. Biden’s scandal so far feels more like an administrative error; there’s no evidence he even knew the documents were misplaced or in his possession, and when discovered they were promptly and properly returned to authorities,” wrote Graff. “The government didn’t know they were missing (which itself is a bit of a mystery, since classified documents are usually tightly controlled, which is how the National Archives knew Mr. Trump had missing documents in the first place), and Mr. Biden didn’t try to hold onto them in the face of a legal process ordering otherwise.”

See?! Biden had no problems turning over the documents he’d been sitting on, doing absolutely nothing with, for six years! Besides, the government didn’t even know they were missing! No harm, no foul!

That version of events doesn’t do what Graff, Washington’s least interesting writer, thinks it does. He thinks it portrays Biden as an innocent hoarder who didn’t realize the things in his possession were not his to have. What it does is prove what right-wingers have been saying all along: that Donald Trump (along with what he represents) is the subject of a political persecution, that the rules don’t apply to everyone, and that the media are every bit a part of the corruption.

Missing classified documents are only a problem when a president that the bureaucracy doesn’t like has them. If they like you, hold onto them — for six years, even! Meanwhile, Trump was in possession of what he purportedly believes is his property and it took far less time for the FBI to decide to raid his private residence to get it back.

As for the presumption of innocence — that’s reserved for people whom Graff and Washington like. Biden says he never used the government secrets while he was a private citizen. He didn’t even know he had them.

What’s that you say? Biden’s son Hunter regularly rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars doing business with foreign governments? Totally unrelated! Besides, like Biden said, he didn’t know he had the classified documents!

Click here to read the full article in the Federalist.om

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Biden, documents, Donald Trump

Jonathan Turley Slams Chuck Todd Over ‘Angry’ Hunter Biden Interview with Sen. Ron Johnson

January 16, 2023 By Mark Moore 5 Comments

Chuck Todd and Sen. Ron Johnson got into a heated conversation on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” over whether Hunter Biden committed any crimes through his overseas business dealings — sparking a fierce rebuttal from legal scholar Jonathan Turley eviscerating the NBC News anchor.

The fiery exchange started after Johnson, who with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), led a Senate investigation into Hunter Biden’s business relationships in Ukraine and China, was pressed by Todd on what actual laws President Biden’s son may have violated.

“Senator, do you have a crime that you think Hunter Biden committed because I’ve yet to see anybody explain? It is not a crime to make money off of your last name,” Todd said to the Wisconsin Republican.

Turley, a professor at George Washington University, provided his own answer to Todd’s question in a lengthy Twitter thread — while also pointing out an apparent double standard on the part of the anchor.

“While Todd just heaps insults upon those who have called for investigations, he previously gave entirely non-confrontational and supportive interviews for investigating the possible ‘compromising’ of Trump or his family through foreign deals,” Turley said.

“There are of course a host of crimes, including some which may be charged. However, on the influence peddling scandal, there are foreign transfers, gifts, and other matters that could prove criminal,” he wrote. “The point is not that there are proven crimes but the need to have a special counsel to look into these offenses, including some that involve emails referencing the President.”

Johnson, in his response on the Sunday morning program, referenced allegations made in a report released last month by Garrett Ziegler, 26, a former Trump White House adviser who founded the conservative nonprofit group “Marco Polo.”

“Chuck, you ought to read the Marco Polo report, where they detail all kinds of potential crimes. You know, Senator Grassley has certainly covered …” Johnson said as Todd interrupted.

“Hold on, let me stop you there. Potential. This is potential. Potential is innuendo,” Todd said.

Johnson raised accusations in his Senate report, released in September 2020, that Hunter Biden paid about $30,000 to prostitutes caught up in European sex trafficking operations.

“Is that a crime?” Johnson asked Todd. “It sounds sleazy as you know what.”

‘ll take you at your word that you’re ethically bothered by Hunter Biden. I’m curious though, you seem to have a pattern,” Todd said.

“Are you not? Are you not?,” Johnson broke in.

Todd replied that he deals in “facts” and is skeptical of claims made by both political parties.

“I’m curious, were you at all concerned? Your Senate Democrats want to investigate Jared Kushner’s loan from the Qatari government when he was working in the government negotiating many things in the Middle East. Are you not as concerned about that? Are you not concerned about that? And I say that because it seems to me if you’re concerned about what Hunter Biden did, you should be equally outraged about what Jared Kushner did,” Todd said to Johnson.

The senator said he wanted to get to the “truth,” adding, “I don’t target individuals.”

Todd said Johnson was “targeting” Hunter Biden.

“Chuck, you know, part of the problem, and this is pretty obvious to anybody watching this, is you don’t invite me on to interview me. You invite me on to argue with me. You know, I’m just trying to lay out the facts that certainly Senator Grassley and I uncovered,” he said.

“They were suppressed. They were censored. They interfered in the 2020 election. Conservatives understand that. Unfortunately, liberals and the media don’t. And part of the reason our politics are inflamed is we do not have an unbiased media. We don’t. It’s unfortunate. I’m all for a free press,” Johnson said.

After some back-and-forth and talking over each other, Todd told Johnson: “Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it’s part of your identity” before switching topics.

Click here to read the full article in the NY Post

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Biden, Donald Trump, Hunter Biden

Report: Joe Biden Left Classified Documents in an Old Office

January 11, 2023 By Jordan Dixon Hamilton 4 Comments

Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned a U.S. attorney to review the roughly ten classified documents that were found in an old office of President Joe Biden, CBS News reported on Monday.

The classified documents are from Biden’s vice-presidential office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, which is within close proximity to Capitol Hill.

The classified documents were found by Biden’s personal attorneys just days before the midterms on November 2, according to Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber.

Sauber said the White House “is cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records.”

Once Biden’s attorneys found the documents, they notified the National Archives, who reportedly referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), leading to Garland’s appointment of U.S. Attorney John Lausch to investigate how the classified documents ended up in Biden’s old office.

Sauber said:

The President periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign. On the day of this discovery, November 2, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives. The Archives took possession of the materials the following morning.

The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys. The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.

The classified documents were reportedly in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified materials, according to CBS News.

However, CBS News’s sources did not confirm what level of classification the documents were nor what the contents of the documents.

Click here to read the full article in Breitbart Ca

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Biden, FBI, Top Secret

GOP Elites Want to Turn from Trump. Will the Base Let Them?

November 19, 2022 By Melanie Mason 13 Comments

Forget the scathing editorials from conservative media blaming former President Trump for the GOP’s mediocre midterm. Never mind their underwhelmed reception to his 2024 presidential launch. Disregard the major donors who are bailing this time around.

Keith Korsgaden is firmly on board for a Trump reprise. He’s quite sure he’s not alone.

“There are 74 million people that voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and those 74 million of us still feel the same way — that he’s one of us,” Korsgaden said. The Visalia restaurant owner has been a Trump supporter since that momentous descent down Trump Tower’s escalator in 2015.

There may not be quite the unanimity that Korsgaden predicts, but his loyalty underscores a stark reality: Republican power brokers may be ready to break from Trump, but a significant slice of Republican voters? Not so much.

As the 2022 midterm election wheezes to an end, the start of the 2024 campaign feels both uncharted and uncannily familiar. Trump began his bid for a comeback — the first attempt by a former president since Herbert Hoover — as the front-runner for the Republican nomination who nonetheless appears vulnerable to a serious intra-party challenge.

The fundamental question facing the Republican Party during this long run-up to the next election is who truly is in control: the elected officials and opinion leaders who have shaped their party’s agenda from the top, or the grassroots bloc of Trump faithful who have ruled from below. The latter may have shrunk in numbers since the former president left office, but they still command outsize influence in GOP primaries — and there may be just enough of them to propel Trump forward in a crowded field of competitors.

Republicans face daunting scenarios: an ugly primary battle that could aggravate ideological tensions within the party, or an easy waltz to the nomination by a candidate with proven unpopularity among crucial voters such as women and independents.

“I don’t believe he is completely intractable from the Republican Party,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump GOP consultant. “Here’s what I do believe — I believe the Republicans have so swallowed the hook that when you rip it out, it’ll bring up all its guts and probably kill it.”

Republican elites have been here before, publicly breaking from Trump after the predatory vulgarity of the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, his equivocation in denouncing white supremacists in Charlottesville, and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that was catalyzed by his false allegations of election fraud. But so long as Trump was able to mobilize infrequent voters to back him or his endorsed candidates, his influence on the party was never in doubt.

It may be different this time. In tones typically reserved for Trump, media personalities are speaking reverently about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 19-point romp to reelection. The party’s strong performance in Florida’s congressional races also enhanced DeSantis’ reputation for carrying down-ballot candidates to victory. By contrast, top party figures have pointedly noted, Republicans have struggled in three consecutive national elections since Trump won the White House in 2016.

“If a political party can’t stay committed to their central premise, which is winning elections, then what’s the point?” said David Kochel, a veteran Republican strategist.

There is some evidence the GOP is ready to move on. A recent NBC poll found that 62% of Republicans said they considered themselves more a supporter of the party than of Trump, the highest number since the question was first polled in January 2019. Club for Growth, a conservative group once allied with Trump, circulated pollsshowing DeSantis with a healthy lead over the former president in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states on the path to the GOP nomination, as well as Florida and Georgia.

Christine Matthews, a pollster who has Republican clients, said the sense that primary voters ready to look beyond Trump is “very real,” driven by their belief that he is hobbled by his antagonistic relationship with the media.

“They’re able to justify moving on from him by saying, ‘The media will never give him a fair shot. They’ll always be against him. So even though we really like him and think his policies were great, it’s probably time for someone new,’” Matthews said.

So far, the consensus pick for that someone new is DeSantis, who offers the former president’s instinct for culture war combat in a less chaotic presentation.

“DeSantis is the stock to buy, Trump is the stock to sell in politics,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based GOP strategist.

The most pressing challenge for DeSantis will be how to parry Trump’s attacks, Mackowiak said. The Florida governor “has survived a lot of attacks from a lot of people, but Trump is different. He just is.”

By announcing his bid before the Senate runoff race in Georgia next month, Trump risks even more of a rupture with his party if Republicans end up losing that race.

Many GOP operatives still smart over the Georgia Senate runoff in January 2021, when Trump’s fixation on his election loss dampened turnout among his supporters and Democrats went on to win the two races and control of the Senate.

One of those victors, Sen. Raphael Warnock, is hoping Trump will have a similar effect on the electorate this time around. On Thursday, his campaign released an ad that is solely footage from Trump’s 2024 announcement, in which the former president endorses Warnock’s GOP challenger, Herschel Walker. The commercial ends with two taglines: “Stop Donald Trump” and “Stop Herschel Walker.”

Some of Trump’s onetime allies in conservative media have been withering in their criticism about his drag on the party after his preferred candidates flopped in key Senate and House races in last week’s election. The New York Post has been especially lacerating; the day following his 2024 kickoff, it tersely teased “Florida Man Makes Announcement” on the cover and buried the story about the speech on page 26 with the headline, “Been there, Don that.”

Other outlets greeted Trump’s candidacy with similarly unenthused headlines. “Trump 3.0 is a changed man — he’s now a loser,” said the Washington Examiner. “Oh, Trump Believes in Yesterday,” opined Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal. The National Review’s take was simply titled, “No.”

“The way and force [with which] they’ve turned on him has blown my hair back,” said Howard Polskin, whose daily newsletter, TheRighting, rounds up headlines from the conservative media ecosystem.

But recent GOP history is full of cautionary tales about the challenges of reorienting the party, especially if its most committed voters aren’t on board.

In 2012, after two consecutive bruising presidential losses, party stalwarts decided it was necessary to remake Republicans’ image. Fox News’ Sean Hannity said he “evolved” in his thinking on immigration and endorsed a pathway to citizenship. The Republican National Committee commissioned what was widely called an autopsy, which prescribed softening stances on social issues and promoted immigration reform as a way to attract voters of color, young people and women.

The Republican grassroots felt differently. Conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh railed against the document. Four years later, the party backed a candidate whose hard-line immigration stance could be summed up with the phrase, “Build the Wall.”

“We were projecting what we thought was going to be best for the party onto the voters, rather than listening to what the voters wanted and trying to fashion a party that appeals to them,” said Tim Miller, a former RNC official who worked on the report.

For years, party leaders tried to steer conservatives to more electable candidates, leading to John McCain and Mitt Romney becoming the GOP nominees. Both lost in the general election.

“Donald Trump broke the mystique” of that strategy, Miller said, by being a candidate who gave the grassroots what they wanted and still won a general election. Now, “it’s hard to see them buying an electability argument again,” said Miller, who has been a fierce Trump critic.

Despite myriad commentators and editorials decrying Trumpism as a cause for the most recent GOP disappointments, some supporters of the former president haven’t been persuaded.

“Blaming President Trump is preposterous,” said Celeste Greig, a longtime GOP activist from Northridge. She said the fault lies more with poor campaign efforts by local and state parties.

Greig said that in her wide network of conservative stalwarts, “I haven’t found any of my friends, any of my acquaintances, that said he shouldn’t run.”

For all the high-profile breaks from Trump, others were quick to show their support. Grassroots favorites such as Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia swiftly endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid. Sen.-elect J.D. Vance of Ohio, who won the primary thanks to the former president’s backing, penned an op-ed titled, “Don’t Blame Trump.”

“What will be critical to watch will be how Fox News prime time treats him,” said Polskin, who tracks conservative media. “They are by far the biggest megaphone in the biggest right-wing media universe.”

The crowded right-wing media ecosphere may also pressure some of the bigger outlets to return to Trump’s camp. When Fox News recognized Biden’s 2020 win, Trump publicly bashed the channel and urged his supporters to move to smaller, more hard-line channels — OAN and Newsmax — and Fox’s ratings plunged.

Even if this current antagonistic tone persists from major outlets, a vast array of podcasts, streaming shows and conservative websites will continue to generate plenty of Trump-aligned content.

“We’re in a new media terrain,” said Heather Hendershot, professor of film and media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contrasting the monolithic audience in the network era to the current fractured media landscape. “You can’t point back to as splintered a moment as it is today.”

That’s a reason Korsgaden, the committed Trump fan, has not been swept up in the DeSantis fervor of the major conservative outlets. He is not a fan of Trump’s swipes at the Florida governor, but he thinks DeSantis has plenty of time for a White House bid in the future. And good luck to any media personality or party leader who tries to convince him otherwise.

Click here to read the full article on LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Biden, Donald Trump, Presidential Campaign

Battles with Biden and Within New Majority Anticipated

November 18, 2022 By Melanie Mason Leave a Comment

Republicans secured the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, boosting the party’s ability to stymie President Biden’s agenda even though the midterm results stop well short of a mandate from the electorate.

It took more than a week for the Associated Press to determine the GOP had won the 218 seats needed to win control. The belated milestone underscored Republicans’ underwhelming performance in an election cycle when economic conditions, historical precedent and a sour national mood had been expected to give them a greater advantage.

The party’s gains mean Biden will contend with a divided government in the latter half of his current term. Democrats have cemented control of the Senate with 50 seats, and can further bolster their ranks if Sen. Raphael Warnock wins reelection in a Georgia runoff next month.

Republicans had projected confidence before last week’s election of a “red wave” that would yield them at least a dozen more House seats. But Democrats’ surprising strength, powered largelyby voter outrage over the Supreme Court’s reversal of federal abortion protections, blunted the GOP’s edge to single digits.

Republicans claimed their majority with a victory by Rep. Mike Garcia over Democrat Christy Smith in a northern Los Angeles County district that Biden won by 12 points in 2020. The AP called the race Wednesday, though official results will take longer. Six competitive races, including four California contests, remain to be called.

“Republicans have officially flipped the People’s House! Americans are ready for a new direction, and House Republicans are ready to deliver,” House GOP leader Kevin Mc-Carthy tweeted after his party clinched control of the chamber.

Biden congratulated McCarthy and pledged a willingness to collaborate with the GOP, reiterating his call to move past “political warfare.”

“The American people want us to get things done for them,” he said. “They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them and on making their lives better. And I will work with anyone — Republican or Democrat — willing to work with me to deliver results.”

A Republican House is widely expected to clash with the Democratic president on policy, including potential standoffs over raising the debt limit and providing more aid to Ukraine. GOP members have also threatened impeachment proceedings against Biden and members of his Cabinet, and have vowed to launch multiple investigations, particularly into allegations against Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

But the GOP confer-ence’s relatively small majority could exacerbate its ideological fissures. Many of the incoming members from deep-red districts hail from the party’s right flank and are loyal to former President Trump, even as prominent Republicans grow increasingly vocal about his drag on the GOP. A narrow majority means that a small number of defectors can have an outsized impact on the party’s agenda.

McCarthy, who has doggedly pursued the speakership, has played down disappointment that Republicans didn’t pick up a larger number of seats.

“Remember, in the House, they don’t give gavels out by ‘small,’ ‘medium’ and ‘large.’ They just give you the gavel,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters, referring to the symbol of House control. “And we’re going to be able to govern.”

But his party’s slim margin leaves the Bakersfield Republican little room for error as he seeks the votes to become the next speaker. Though McCarthy had assiduously worked to strengthen alliances with the GOP’s most conservative faction, he nevertheless faced open hostilities from the right after he led the party to a lackluster midterm showing.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a staunch Trump ally, blasted McCarthy last week, tweeting that he represented “FLIGHT over FIGHT when the chips are down” and “is not a Speaker for these times.”

McCarthy cleared the first hurdle for the job on Tuesday after House Republicans voted for him to be nominated speaker. But with roughly 30 conservatives backing a challenge by Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, it is clear McCarthy does not yet have the 218 votes necessary to cement his place as top House leader.

“My bid to run for speaker is about changing the paradigm and the status quo,” Biggs tweeted before the vote. “Minority Leader McCarthy does not have the votes needed to become the next speaker of the House and his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion.”

The speaker of the next Congress will officially be determined by a vote of the entire House in January.

The current speaker — Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco — agreed in 2018 to step down from House Democratic leadership by the end of 2022. Her spokesman said she would announce her plans Thursday.

“House Democrats defied expectations with an excellent performance: running their races with courage, optimism and determination,” Pelosi said Wednesday. “In the next Congress, [they] will continue to play a leading role in supporting President Biden’s agenda — with strong leverage over a scant Republican majority.”

Republicans had reason for high hopes this election cycle. Large majorities of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, polls have shown, an indicator that theoretically should bode well for the party that does not hold the White House. Persistent inflation gave them an opportunity to run on the economy — an area where many people tend to favor the GOP over Democrats.

Biden threatened to be an albatross for Democrats. Only twice in the decades after World War II has the party that controlled the White House gained seats in Congress — in 1998 and 2002, when the approval ratings for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively, were in the 60s. Biden’s ratings, in contrast, have been in the low 40s.

That Democrats performed so well — not picking up House seats, but avoiding significant losses — makes this midterm even more of an anomaly, said Jacob Rubashkin, an analyst with Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter.

“For the first time, it really does feel like midterm voters were willing to get beyond their dissatisfaction with the president,” he said.

The GOP’s underperformance was most apparent in its failure “to make inroads into places that they were hoping would be most competitive. … They were unable to claw back the suburbs. And they were unable to make New England Republicans a reality again. And they were unable to dislodge quite a few strong Democratic incumbents in places that they had hoped they could.”

Trump, launching his 2024 presidential bid this week, cheered Republicans’ House takeover, but acknowledged they should have done better.

Click here to read the full article at the LA Times

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Biden, Legislature, Republicans