Category: US

PHOENIX — Stephen Lumpkin, dressed in a “Trump 2020” T-shirt at a Republican rally on the eve of Arizona’s primary, wants the former president to run again in 2024, and believes, against all evidence, he could even get “reinstated” before the next election.

Lumpkin is also a fan of Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — and wants to see her vote down her party’s new bill funding health care and clean energy with a 15% minimum tax on corporations.

“I like her,” said Lumpkin, who lives in Glendale. “I would like to see Sinema stop it. It’s just another money grab, that’s all it is.”

Laura Schroeder, a 54-year-old physician in Phoenix who’s backing Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Blake Masters for Senate, said she’s counting on Sinema to help block the legislation after Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., “p–sied out” and cut a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“She needs to kill that thing,” Schroeder said.

Arizona Democrats, aware of Sinema’s history of bucking her party, are nervous ahead of planned legislative action given the senator’s decisive vote in the evenly split chamber, where all Republicans are expected to oppose the bill. And some are voicing their frustration with Sinema.

“It’s just astonishing — the fact that she can’t come out and give a strong ‘yes’ on a bill that lowers health care costs, lowers prescription drug costs, makes major investments in climate change,” said Emily Kirkland, 30, a consultant based in Tempe who works in progressive politics.

‘No future in politics as a Democrat’

In Kirkland’s eyes, Sinema’s eventual vote on the bill will play a decisive role in her re-election prospects for 2024. “It really feels like the ball is in her court in that way,” she said. “If she is the lone ‘no’ vote that dooms this deal, to me that she says she knows she has no future in politics as a Democrat.”

Remarks like those capture the peculiar position Sinema finds herself in as she’s pressured to green-light or torpedo — or perhaps demand changes to — Democrats’ best hope of passing core elements of their agenda. In response, she has remained quiet about the bill, released Wednesday, with her office de ella saying she’s “reviewing the text” and waiting to see if it’ll be revised to satisfy Senate rules.

Asked about the pressures she’s facing, Sinema spokeswoman Hannah Hurley told NBC News on Tuesday: “Senator Sinema makes every decision based on one criteria: what’s best for Arizona.”

That decision is likely to further shape the public’s perception of Sinema, an enigmatic first-term centrist who has sought to build a reputation as a maverick in this swing state. She sided with Republicans last year to reject a $15 federal minimum wage and block tax rate increases on the wealthy. She has all but cut ties with the state Democratic Party, which censored her in January for rejecting a Senate rule change to pass a voting-rights bill.

A former Sinema aide said the senator has “never cared about pissing off the Democratic base,” and even tends to enjoy being criticized by her party. The former aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said Sinema is “stubborn about her positions de ella” and relishes being liked by the most conservative Republicans. The former aid further pointed to campaign contributions from pharmaceutical and financial industries as a hint to why Sinema may be conflicted about the new Democratic bill.

Given that Sinema has not spoken publicly about the legislation, the former aide said, “it’s only normal to wonder, who is she talking to? Who is she going over her thoughts with her?

After speaking with Sinema on Tuesday, Manchin told reporters in Washington that the two had a “nice talk” — but he made no predictions about how she would vote when the bill comes before the Senate, which Democrats are aiming to set in motion this week .

“She’ll make a decision based on the facts. We’re exchanging texts back and forth,” he said. “Ella She’s extremely bright. Ella She works hard. She makes good decisions based on facts. And I’m relying on that.”

Cultivated image as party-bucker

Luis Ávila, a volunteer with the group Primary Sinema, who is poised to support a challenge to her in 2024, claimed the senator will “absolutely” lose re-election if she sinks the bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

“She’s an egomaniac that is just really trying to get money from special interests to do what’s best for her,” he said. “And that’s not why we elect people.”

But Ávila said that if Sinema votes for the bill, “of course we’ll make sure that voters know.”

“In order for her to regain the trust of voters, she has to show with her actions,” he said. “And one really good one is what’s in front of her right now, with this deal.”

If she chooses to seek revisions, Sinema faces a different conundrum. The one provision in the legislation that she is known to oppose — closing the carried interest tax break for investment fund managers — is a difficult position to defend politically. She conveyed to Democratic leaders last year that she wants to preserve that tax break, according to multiple sources. But Sinema and her office have not publicly discussed her position.

Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist advising the pro-Masters super PAC Saving Arizona, said that “there are some people who are cautiously optimistic” about Sinema scuttling the bill given her image as a party-bucker.

“I do think that if she supports it without any changes, it would cut against that image,” Surabian said. “It wouldn’t surprise me for her to say, ‘I’m for 80% or 90% of it, but I want one change to the bill’ — so she can kind of keep that image up.”

A 12-year-old girl found walking on an Alabama road Monday morning led to the discovery of two decomposing bodies inside a nearby home and the arrest of a man on a kidnapping charge, officials said.

Jose Paulino Pascual-Reyes, 37, could also face capital murder and other charges after the child was found by a passerby around 8:30 am, authorities said Tuesday.

“I would say she’s a hero,” Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett said at a news conference Tuesday.

Investigators later found two decomposing bodies in the home, which is south of Dadeville, and Pascual-Reyes was arrested on a first-degree kidnapping charge in Auburn, Abbett said.

The connection between the girl and Pascual-Reyes, and more details about the people whose bodies were found, were not released.

The first time the sheriff’s office had contacted the girl was Monday after the passerby found her, Abbett said, and she had not been considered a missing person.

NBC affiliate WSFA of Montgomery reported that court records indicate the girl had been tied up and drugged with alcohol before she was able to escape.

District Attorney Jeremy Duerr said multiple counts of capital murder would likely be filed in addition to the kidnapping charge.

“And of course, once we continue and finish our investigation, I feel certain that several more charges will follow,” Duerr said.

Pascual-Reyes was being held in jail Tuesday night. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

The identities of the people found dead and how they died was not released Tuesday.

The girl received medical care and was doing well, Abbett said.

“She’s safe now, and so we want to keep her that way,” he said.

Associated Press contributed.

Buoyed by the financial support of the DeVos family and the endorsement of Donald Trump, conservative commentator Tudor Dixon held serve to win the GOP nomination for Michigan governor on Tuesday.

In Oakland County, Democratic incumbent Rep. Haley Stevens dominated fellow Rep. Andy Levin to oust him from Congress in a battle of colleagues.

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib won the Democratic primary early Wednesday, essentially ensuring a third term in Congress in Michigan’s newly redrawn 12th district.

Other big races were left to be decided Wednesday, largely because meaningful Michigan counties (including Wayne and Macomb) relied on the physical transfer of election results rather than electronic transfer due to outdated modems. Neither reported any results before 11 pm

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• A watchdog group filed a FOIA request for Jan. 6 messages between top Pentagon and Army officials.
• But the Defense Department and Army claimed all messages were deleted after employees left the agencies.
• Some messages belonged to officials directly involved with the DoD’s response to the Capitol attack.

Text messages between several top officials in the Department of Defense and the Army were deleted shortly after they left the Trump administration, leaving a significant hole in correspondence that may have occurred on the day of the Capitol attack.

American Oversight, a DC-based watchdog group, had sought all communications related to the Capitol riot from several senior members of the Trump administration, including the former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, and former Acting Secretary of Defense Kash Patel.

The watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit six days after the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

“The lawsuit seeks the release of communications those officials had with former President Trump, former Vice President Pence, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, or anyone communicating on their behalf on Jan. 6,” the watchdog group wrote in a press release .

In March of this year, the Defense Department and the Army responded that any messages from former employees of their agencies could not be reproduced because the phones were “wiped” after they left, according to court filings.

“DoD and Army conveyed to plaintiff that when an employee separates from DoD or Army he or she turns in the government-issued phone, and the phone is wiped,” the court document stated. “For those custodians no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched, although it is possible that particular text messages could have been saved into other records systems such as email.”

The Army did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An officer for the Defense Department said that the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Some of the messages American Oversight is seeking belong to top officials who are seen as key witnesses to the Pentagon’s response to the January 6 attack.

Miller, who was deposed by investigators of the riot, previously said he was “never given any direction or order or knew of any plans” to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops — a claim Meadows once made to Fox News host Sean Hannity.

McCarthy has also been of interest for the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. A senior Army official once wrote in a memo that the former Army secretary was “incommunicado or unreachable for most of the afternoon” on the day of the attack, according to Politico.

Retrieving communications from key Trump officials and players throughout January 6, 2021, has lately become a cumbersome task, faced with roadblock after roadblock.

When the January 6 House panel requested messages between Secret Service agents, Joseph Cuffari, who served as inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, claimed that any correspondence was deleted as part of a pre-planned “system migration” process.

Members of the January 6 committee asked Cuffari on Tuesday to “step aside” from any investigation into the Secret Service after reports revealed that Cuffari’s office may have known about the deleted text messages earlier than was previously revealed.