A new Siena College poll shows Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul with a 14-point lead over Republican nominee Rep. Lee Zeldin ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
When asked who they’d “vote for today” if Hochul and Zeldin were the candidates for their respective parties, 53% of respondents said they’d vote for the governor while 39% said they would vote for Zeldin.
Another 7% said they “don’t know” or had no opinion and 2% said they would not vote for governor at all.
“Hochul dominates in New York City, leading by nearly 50 points, while Zeldin has slim 3-point leads both upstate and in the downstate suburbs,” pollster Steven Greenberg said.
Political experts say a pathway to victory for Zeldin requires winning at least 30% of the vote in Democrat-dominated New York City while winning big in the surrounding suburbs and upstate.
The incumbent governor is up in every demographic category based on race, age and income in the survey of 806 likely voters conducted July 24 to July 28.
Women are favoring Hochul by a whopping 26 points while Hochul and Zeldin have 46% support each among men.
While 36% of New Yorkers believe the Empire State is heading in the right direction, just 19% say they same about the country – an all-time high that could help Republicans like Zeldin campaign on such issues as historically high inflation.
Gov. Kathy Hochul dominates in New York City, leading by nearly 50 points.Matthew McDermottPresident Joe Biden is receiving mixed reviews from the Democratic Party.Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker
New Yorkers are split on Democratic President Joe Biden, who is rated as favorable and unfavorable by 46% of respondents to the Siena poll.
The results of the poll are similar to a separate survey released Tuesday morning by Emerson College Polling, which showed Hochul with a 16-point edge over Zeldin, with similar margins separating the candidates in New York City and other regions of the state.
While Zeldin appears to be falling short of his electoral targets, he appears better positioned at this point in the race compared to other recent GOP nominees.
A 2018 Siena poll showed Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, a Republican, was 22 points behind Democratic incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo weeks after they won their respective party primaries, held in September that year.
NY State Congressman and 2022 candidate for governor Lee Zeldin has slim 3-point leads both upstate and in the downstate suburbs.J. Messerschmidt/NY Post
“While Democrats have taken the last four gubernatorial elections, Zeldin’s current 14-point deficit matches the closest Republicans have come in those races, when Andrew Cuomo defeated Rob Astorino 54-40% in 2014. In August 2014, Cuomo led Astorino by 32 points , 58-26%,” Greenberg said in the press release.
But Zeldin has ground to make up if he wants to replicate the success of George Pataki, the last Republican to serve as governor.
Republican challenger George Pataki led Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo by 3 points statewide – with an 11-point edge in New York City – in an October 1994 poll conducted by The New York Times/WCBS-TV News ahead of Pataki’s upset victory over the three-term incumbent that November.
Other GOP candidates on the statewide ticket in November 2022 appear to face even longer odds than Zeldin of becoming the first Republican to win a statewide election since Pataki won his third term in office in 2002.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is leading in his race.Rod Lamkey / CNP / MediaPunch
US Sen. Chuck Schumer and state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli have 21-point leads in their respective races against Republican nominee Joe Pinion, a former Newsmax host, and banker Paul Rodriguez, according to the Siena poll.
State Attorney General Letitia James is 14 points ahead of commercial litigator Michael Henry in her own reelection bid.
Hochul has raised more than $34 million in her bid to become the first woman to get elected governor after taking over last August for ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned amid multiple scandals.
Campaign finance disclosures filed in mid-July show her with $11.7 million on hand to spend for the campaign ahead compared to $1.6 million for Zeldin.
Hochul has advocated for stricter gun control after a major Supreme Court decision last month. AP/Philip Kamrass
In recent months, she has campaigned heavily on abortion rights and gun control following controversial decisions by the US Supreme Court that might be weighing down Republicans’ chances in the Empire State this November.
“Although a small majority of Republicans support the Dobbs decision, it is opposed by 89% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and at least of 62% of voters from every region, age group, gender, and race,” Greenberg said in reference to the recent SCOTUS decision on abortion.
“Support for the new law expanding eligibility requirements to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon – background checks with character references and firearms safety training courses – is through the roof with all demographic groups,” he added about new state laws passed following another ruling striking down long time New York rules on carrying concealed weapons.
Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office interfered with efforts to recover erased Secret Service texts from the time of the US Capitol attack and attempted to cover up their actions, two House committees said in a letter on Monday.
Taken together, the new revelations appear to show that the chief watchdog for the Secret Service and the DHS took deliberate steps to stop the retrieval of texts it knew were missing, and then sought to hide the fact that it had decided not to pursue that evidence. .
The inspector general’s office had initially sought to retrieve the lost texts from across the DHS – spanning both the Secret Service as well as the former DHS secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli – as part of its internal review into January 6.
But six weeks after the inspector general’s office first requested Secret Service communications from the time of the Capitol attack, that effort was shut down by Thomas Kait, the deputy inspector general for inspections and evaluations, the House committees said.
“Use this email as a reference to our conversation where I said we no longer request phone records and text messages from the USSS relating to the events on January 6th,” Kait wrote in a July 2021 email to a senior DHS liaison officer, Jim Crumpacker , that was obtained by Congress.
The House committees also disclosed they had learned that Kait and other senior officials manipulated a memo, authored on 4 February 2022, that originally criticized the DHS for refusing to cooperate with its investigation and emphasized the need to review certain texts.
By the time that Kait and other senior officials had finished with the memo, the House committee said, mentions about the erased texts from the Secret Service or the DHS secretary had been removed and instead praised the agency for its response to the internal review.
The memo went from being a stinging rebuke that said “most DHS components have not provided the requested information” to saying “we received a timely and consolidated response from each component”, the House committees said.
Appearing to acknowledge the removal of the damaging findings in the memo, Kait asked colleagues around that time: “Am I setting us up for anything by adding what I did? I spoke with Kristen late last week and she was ok with acknowledging the DAL’s efforts.”
The disclosures alarmed the House oversight committee chair, Carolyn Maloney, and House homeland security committee chair, Bennie Thompson – who also chairs the House January 6 committee – enough to demand that top DHS officials appear for transcribed interviews.
In the four-page letter, the two House committees again called for the recusal of the DHS inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, and demanded communications inside the inspector general’s office about not collecting or recovering texts from the agency relating to the Capitol attack.
The deepening investigation has also revealed that Cuffari’s office was notified in February 2022 that texts from Wolf and Cuccinelli could not be accessed and that Cuccinelli had been using a personal phone – yet never told Congress.
Kait has a history of removing damaging findings from reports. In a DHS report on domestic violence and sexual misconduct, Kait directed staff to remove a section that found officers accused of sexual offenses were charged with generic offenses, the New York Times reported.
The controversy over the missing texts erupted several weeks ago after Cuffari first informed Congress in mid-July that his department could not turn over Secret Service texts from the time of the Capitol attack because they had been erased as part of a device replacement program.
That prompted Thompson, through the House January 6 select committee, to issue a subpoena to the Secret Service for texts from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack as it examined how the agency intended to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence on January 6 .
But the Secret Service provided only one text exchange to the select committee, the Guardian has previously reported, telling investigators that every other message had been wiped after personnel failed to back up data from the devices when they were swapped out.
Georgia taxpayers can now list embryos as dependents on their tax returns.
In a news release on Monday, Georgia’s department of revenue said it would begin to “recognize any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat … as eligible for [an] individual income tax dependent exemption”.
The announcement follows the supreme court’s ruling on June 24 that overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that established the nationwide right to an abortion nearly 50 years earlier. A lower federal appellate court had also decided on July 20 to let the Georgia law banning most abortions in the state take effect.
Officials added that taxpayers filing returns from 20 July onward can claim a deduction of up to $3,000 for any fetus whose heartbeat could be detected. That “may occur as early as six weeks’ gestation”, before most women even know they are pregnant, the statement said.
Taxpayers must be ready to provide “relevant medical records or other supporting documentation … if requested by the [revenue] department”.
Legal analysts and advocates for abortion rights greeted the announcement with dismay and skepticism.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor and political scientist, tweeted that some pregnancies detected within six weeks of gestation “result in natural miscarriages”, which could leave the Georgia’s treasury “handing out a lot of cash for pregnancies that would never come to finish.”
And given how high the percentage of pregnancies that result in natural miscarriages, the treasury is going to be handing out a lot of cash for pregnancies that would never come to term. (That might be good public health policy though it may be a lot more money than anticipated.)
Lauren Groh-Wargo, manager of Stacey Abrams’s campaign for Georgia governor, tweeted: “So what happens when you claim your fetus as a dependent and then miscarry later in the pregnancy, you get investigated both for [possible] tax fraud and an illegal abortion?”
The Georgia revenue department’s announcement Monday came less than a month after a pregnant woman in Texas memorably argued to police that her unborn child should count as an additional passenger upon receiving a traffic ticket for driving alone in a high-occupancy – or HOV – lane. The woman did not talk her way out of the ticket but she has said she plans to go to court to try out her argument there.
More than half the states in America have either banned or are expected to ban abortion after the supreme court returned regulation of abortion to the state level. Bans like Georgia’s have forced patients seeking abortions to travel hundreds of thousands from home, at times placing them, their friends, their families and abortion rights organizations in legal jeopardy as some states seek to criminalize helping people terminate pregnancies.
By his own admission, Adam Hollier is not the kind of guy you want to have a beer with.
“You remember when George W. Bush was running and they were like, ‘He’s the kind of guy you want to have a beer with?’” he told me, by way of explaining his personality. “No one wants to have a beer with me.”
Why not, I asked?
“I’m not fun,” he said. “I’m the friend who calls you to move a heavy couch. I’m the friend you call when you’re stuck on the side of the road. Right? Like, I’m the friend you call when you need a designated driver.”
He repeated it again, in case I didn’t get it the first time: “I am not fun.”
Hollier, 36, a Democratic candidate for a House seat in Michigan’s newly redrawn 13th Congressional District, which includes Detroit and Hamtramck, is a whirlwind of perpetual motion. A captain and paratrooper in the Army Reserves, he ran track and played safety at Cornell University despite being just 5-foot-9. After a fellowship with AmeriCorps, I have earned a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Michigan.
Hollier’s brother, who is 11 years older, is 6-foot-5. His eldest sister of him is a federal investigator for the US Postal Service who went to the University of Michigan on a basketball and water polo scholarship.
“I grew up in a household of talent. And I don’t really have much of it,” Hollier said with self-effacing modesty. “My little sister is an incredible musician and singer and, you know, she has done all of those things. I can barely clap on beat.”
Hollier is running — when I spoke with him, he was quite literally doing so to drop his daughters off at day care — to replace Representative Brenda Lawrence, a four-term congresswoman who announced her retirement early this year.
Her district, before a nonpartisan commission remapped boundaries that were widely seen as unfairly tilted toward Republicans, was one of the most heavily gerrymandered in the country, a salamander-like swath of land that snaked from Pontiac in the northwest across northern Detroit to the upscale suburb of Grosse Pointe on Lake St. Clair, then southward down the river toward River Rouge and Dearborn.
Defying the odds, Hollier has racked up endorsement after endorsement by doing what he’s always done — outworking everybody else.
Early on, Lawrence endorsed Portia Roberson, a lawyer and nonprofit leader from Detroit, but she has failed to gain traction. In March, the Legacy Committee for Unified Leadership, a local coalition of Black leaders run by Warren Evans, the Wayne County executive, endorsed Hollier instead.
In late June, so did Mike Duggan, the city’s mayor. State Senator Mallory McMorrow, a fellow parent and a newfound political celebrity, backed him in May. A video announcing her endorsement of her shows Hollier wearing a neon vest and pushing a double jogging stroller.
Hollier’s main opponent in the Democratic primary, Shri Thanedar, is a self-financing state lawmaker who previously ran for governor in 2018 and came in third place in the party’s primary behind Gretchen Whitmer and Abdul El-Sayed. His autobiography of him, “The Blue Suitcase: Tragedy and Triumph in an Immigrant’s Life,” originally written in Marathi, tells the story of his rise from lower-class origins in India to his success of him as an entrepreneur in the United States.
A wealthy former engineer, Thanedar now owns Avomeen Analytical Services, a chemical testing laboratory in Ann Arbor. He has spent at least $8 million of his own money on the race so far, according to campaign finance reports.
Pro-Israel groups, worried about his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have backed Hollier, as have veterans’ groups and two super PACs backed by cryptocurrency donors. The outside spending has allowed Hollier to compensate for Thanedar’s TV ad spending, which dwarfs his own.
A firefighter’s son who couldn’t become a firefighter
The son of a social worker and a firefighter, Hollier recalls his father sitting him down when he was 8 years old and telling him he must never follow in his footsteps.
Asked why, his father replied, “You don’t have that little bit of healthy fear that brings you home at night.”
The comment stunned the young Hollier, who still considers his father, who ran the Detroit Fire Department’s hazardous material response team and retired as a captain after serving on the force for nearly 30 years, his own personal superhero.
“And that’s a weird experience,” Hollier said. “Because, you know, at Career Day, nothing trumps firefighter except astronaut. Every kid’s dad is their hero, but my dad is, you know, objectively” — objectivelyhe said again, emphasizing the word — “in that space.”
When he was 10 years old, in 1995, he persuaded his father to take him to the Million Man March in Washington, a gathering on the National Mall that was aimed at highlighting the challenges of growing up Black and male in America. They went to the top of the Washington Monument, where young Adam insisted on taking a photograph to get a more accurate sense of the crowd size.
His parents were not political “at all,” he said — he notes that when Martin Luther King Jr. visited Detroit just ahead of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, his father went to a baseball game instead.
Years later, Hollier admitted sheepishly, he did rebel against his father — by becoming a volunteer firefighter in college.
Hollier says he’s most proud of scrambling to save jobs in his district after General Motors closed a plant in Hamtramck just after he took office in the State Senate.Credit…Emily Elconin for The New York Times
Early interest in politics
Hollier was very much a political animal from a young age, he acknowledged.
“I know it’s in vogue for people to say they never thought they would run for office, but I always knew I was, right?” he said. “Like, I was always involved in the thing.”
That same day in Washington, for instance, he met Dennis Archer, the mayor of Detroit at the time, who told him he should “think about doing what I do” someday — a heady experience for a 10-year-old. He took the advice to heart, winning his first race for student council president in high school.
Hollier’s first official job in politics was in 2004, working as an aid to Buzz Thomas, a now-retired state senator who considers his political mentor. Hollier lost a race for the State House in 2014 to the incumbent then, Rose Mary Robinson. In 2018, he was elected to the State Senate, where he worked on an auto insurance overhaul and lead pipe removal.
But the achievement he’s most proud of, he said, is scrambling to save jobs in his district after General Motors closed a plant in Hamtramck just after he took office. In a panic, he called Archer, who gave him a list of 10 things to do immediately.
One of the top items on Archer’s list was tracking down former Senator Carl Levin, a longtime friend of labor unions who had recently retired, and whom he’d never met.
Don’t accept that GM would close the plant, Levin told him when they spoke.
“They’re not going to produce the vehicles that they produce there right now,” Hollier recounted Levin saying. “But you’re fighting for the next product line.”
Hollier took that advice to heart, and worked with a coalition of others to steer GM toward a different solution. The site is now known as Factory Zero, the company’s first plant dedicated entirely to electric vehicles.
Motivations and milestones
If Hollier loses, Michigan is likely to have no Black members of Congress for the first time in seven decades.
When I ask him what that means to him, he jumps into an impassioned speech about how important it is for Black Americans, and for young Black men in particular, to have positive role models. It’s one I suspect he has been giving some version of him for his entire life in politics.
Growing up in north Detroit, Hollier often ran into his own representative, John Conyers, the longest serving African-American member of Congress. Conyers, who died in 2019 at age 90, was known for walking every nook and cranny of his district.
But when Hollier knocked on his first door the first time he ran for office, the woman who opened it asked him, “Are you going to disappoint me like Kwame?” — a reference to Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor of Detroit.
That experience sobered him about running for office as a Black man in Detroit, a highly segregated city where Black men are disproportionally likely to end up jobless or in prison. But it also motivates him to prove the woman wrong.
On his 25th birthday, Hollier recalled going to pick up some food from a store near his parents’ house. Told about the milestone, the man behind the counter replied: “Congratulations. Not everybody makes it.”
With just one day left before the primary, Hollier has spent 760 hours asking for donations over the phone, raising more than $1 million. His campaign says it has made 300,000 phone calls and knocked on 40,000 doors — double, he tells me with pride, what Representative Rashida Tlaib was able to do in the district next door.
But when I asked him if he would be at peace if he lost, he confessed, “That’s a tough one.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “I feel strongly that I’ve done everything I could have done.”
what to read
Republican missteps, weak candidates and fund-raising woes are handing Democrats unexpected opportunities in races for governor this year, Jonathan Martin writes.
Sheera Frenkel reports on a potentially destabilizing new movement: parents who joined the anti-vaccine and anti-mask cause during the pandemic, narrowing their political beliefs to a single-minded obsession over those issues.
Madison Underwood, a 22-year-old woman from Tennessee, was thrilled to learn she was pregnant. But when a rare defect in the developing fetus threatened her life from her, she was thrust into post-Roe chaos. Neelam Bohra has the story.
—Blake
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].
“This historic legislation makes crucial investments in energy, health care, and in shoring up the nation’s tax system. These investments will fight inflation and lower costs for American families while setting the stage for strong, stable, and broadly-shared long-term economic growth,” 126 economists said in a letter sent to congressional leadership Tuesday, which was first obtained by CNN.
The letter was signed by key economists including former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Obama Labor Department chief economist Betsey Stevenson, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf, and Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, among others.
“This started to come together late last week with some of the signatories connecting with each other to discuss how they could highlight the economic value of the bill and push back on some of the economic disinformation surrounding it,” a familiar source said of the letter .
The economists touted the bill’s historic $369 billion investments in combating the climate crisis and, they wrote, it will “quickly and notably bring down health care costs for families” by allowing Medicare to negotiate certain prescription drug prices, along with extensions to expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Those investments, the group wrote, “would be more than fully paid for,” pointing to its provision to impose a 15% minimum tax on certain corporations.
“This proposal addresses some of the country’s biggest challenges at a significant scale. And because it is deficit-reducing, it does so while putting downward pressure on inflation,” the economists said.
That relief comes as prices continue to rise, with inflation hitting 40-year highs. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that inflation surged to a pandemic-era peak in June, with US consumer prices jumping by 9.1% year-over-year.
The bill, which was negotiated by moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, is currently undergoing a technical process with the Senate parliamentarian known as the “Byrd Bath,” a test designed to keep out extraneous provisions from legislation using the reconciliation process. Once the legislation has gone through that process, Democrats should be able to pass the bill with a simple majority. It remains to be seen, however, whether key holdout Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Democrat from Arizona, will vote with her party on the legislation.
Schumer said Monday he expects the parliamentarian’s process to be complete and for the Senate to vote on the bill this week ahead of the August recess.
“This week the Senate will take action on a groundbreaking piece of legislation, one that we haven’t seen in decades,” he said on the Senate floor. “Over the coming days, both sides will continue conversations with the parliamentarian in order to move forward the bipartisan ‘Byrd bath’ process. Our timeline has not changed, and I expect to bring this legislation to the Senate floor to begin voting this week. “
Some economists have said the legislation would do little to curb rapidly rising prices, particularly in the short term. Moody’s Analytics estimates that the legislation would have a “small” impact on inflation, and the Penn Wharton Budget Model also indicated it would have little impact on prices.
And Senate Republicans opposed to the legislation are pointing to an analysis from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which said the bill would raise taxes on Americans.
Kimberly Clausing, one of the signers of the letter and an economist at the UCLA School of Law, disputed the JCT’s analysis, suggesting in a tweet that it was incomplete.
“Many key factors are left out in these tables including, importantly, the effects of deficit reduction, the positive effects of the spending on clean energy, and the benefits from lower drug prices,” Clausing wrote.
CNN’s Tami Luhby, Matthew Egan, and Ali Zaslav contributed to this report.
Senate Republicans are looking for a way to quietly end a standoff over legislation to help veterans suffering from toxic exposure that has turned into a major distraction and put them on the defensive at a critical moment.
Activists representing veterans are enraged after GOP lawmakers blocked a $278 billion bill aimed at helping veterans suffering from health ailments because of their exposure to toxins. They’ve been staging a sit-in protest on the Capitol steps since Thursday to draw attention to the Republican opposition.
The legislation initially passed the Senate in June by a lopsided 84-14 vote, and Republican senators are struggling to explain why they’re now holding up the same bill on the Senate floor.
Jon Stewart, the former “Daily Show” host who for years has acted as an activist for veterans and first responder groups, has relentlessly pummeled the GOP over its stance, drawing a barrage of media attention to the issue.
Stewart took delight in pillorying conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a recent video in which he responded to Cruz’s objections to the bill point by point. He characterized Cruz’s arguments as “inaccurate, not true, bullshit” and concluded the video with footage of Cruz fist-bumping a colleague after the legislation failed on the floor last Thursday.
Republicans concede the standoff is not a good look for them three months before a crucial election and that they’re taking most of the blame for the stalled bill.
Asked if Republicans are getting blamed, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a combat veteran, replied: “Yeah, and it’s unfair.”
Now Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), are predicting the bill will pass this week, even if they can’t amend it, signaling they’re ready to move on from the politically damaging fight.
GOP senators insist they support the substance of the bill, but are objecting to what they say is an accounting gimmick that will likely add to future budget deficits.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), whose home state has one of the highest numbers of veterans per 100,000 residents, said strong Republican support for the bill was demonstrated by the bipartisan vote to pass it in June.
“I want to see the PACT Act pass,” Daines said referring to the Honoring Our Pact Act.
He said that he and other Republicans agreed to support Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-Pa.) objection to the bill because “Sen. Toomey raised a legitimate question about how the funding works.”
Toomey, a leading Republican voice on fiscal issues, says the bill designates the $400 billion the Department of Veterans Affairs is slated to spend over the next decade to help veterans exposed to toxins as mandatory spending. Traditionally, this spending is classified as discretionary, which means it needs to fit under annual discretionary spending caps.
Toomey, who is not up for reelection this year because he is retiring from the Senate, argues that converting to the mandatory side of the ledger will give Congress flexibility to fit other spending programs under the annual budget caps.
“Here’s the problem with this bill, here’s the budgetary gimmick, this is what’s outrageous,” Toomey said on the floor recently. “It enables that spending to be shifted from the discretionary category to the mandatory category of spending.
“By moving this big category of spending, this $400 billion, out of the discretionary category and putting it into mandatory, you create this big hole under the [budget] chap,” he added. “Guess what happens with that big hole? It gets filled with spending on who knows what.”
The problem for Senate Republicans, however, is that it’s not easy to explain to the American public why this is a deal-breaker.
It’s complicated by the fact that 34 Republicans voted for the bill six weeks ago, even though that version of the bill also designated the new veterans funding as mandatory spending.
Stewart in the video responding to Cruz and other Senate GOP critics declared: “There was no budgetary trick and it was always mandatory and when they voted in the Senate June 16, they actually got 84 votes.”
Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough warned in a CNN interview over the weekend that Toomey’s amendment could lead to the “rationing of care for vets” because it would place “a year-on-year cap” on what his department can spend to help veterans suffering from exposure to burn pits.
Republicans have also come under criticism from Democrats over their motivation for blocking the bill.
Several Democrats view it as retaliation for a separate deal worked out last week by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (DN.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.). That budget reconciliation package is a top priority for Democrats and is being moved under special budget rules that prevent a GOP filibuster.
After 25 Republicans who had previously voted “yes” for the veterans bill voted “no” on a measure to advance it last week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (DN.Y.) accused them of “holding our service members hostage for the sake of politics.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) accused them of plotting revenge after learning of the Schumer-Manchin deal on climate and taxes.
“Republicans are mad that Democrats are on the verge of passing climate change legislation and have decided to take their anger out on vulnerable veterans,” he told Vox.com.
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who has led the floor debate, said it’s “a very bad decision by the Republicans.”
Democratic aides say Schumer offered Toomey a vote on an amendment related to the mandatory spending designation six weeks ago, but 34 Republicans still voted for the bill even though that amendment vote never happened.
In other words, even many of Toomey’s GOP colleagues weren’t prepared to block the popular bill over arcane debate over mandatory and discretionary spending earlier this summer. That changed when Democrats announced a breakthrough deal on climate and taxes.
But now Republicans are being forced to play defense and offer complicated explanations about why they’re holding up the veterans bill.
They would prefer to go on the offense and attack Democrats for raising taxes and fueling inflation with the climate and tax bill they intend to pass later this week.
Republicans backed Toomey last week but are ready to end the standoff soon.
“Some of our members are like, ‘Toomey’s talking about this for several weeks in our conference meetings, let’s try and fix this.’ He’s got a legitimate issue but clearly at some point this is going to pass and it’s going to pass big,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (SD).
Jon Stewart has called on the US Senate to remain in session for as long as it takes to pass burn pits legislation in an impassioned speech on the steps of the US Capitol this week.
The comedian and activist turned up the heat on Republicans ahead of a second vote on The PACT Act, which provides healthcare for veterans exposed to burn pits, on Monday night.
Speaking to a group of veterans who have been camped out for days in Washington DC, Stewart said the Senators shouldn’t be allowed to leave the building until the bill had passed.
“My suggestion to this Senate would be when you come back, if all the members aren’t here, keep the lights on, keep the doors open, and don’t leave here tonight until you do the right thing by these folks.”
The host of The Problem with Jon Stewart has been on a media blitz in recent days, appearing on all of the cable news channels and filming viral social media videos attacking the Republican senators who blocked passage of the bill last week by name.
Stewart has himself become a target. Senator Pat Toomey recently called him a “pseudo celebrity” on CNN’s State of the Nation and Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested he should stick to farming.
Jon Stewart at protest in support of the bill providing health care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits:
“I get it: I am a liberal piece of shit…I’m Hunter Biden’s cocaine dealer…But the VFW isn’t…and the Wounded Warriors Project isn’t, so why are they standing here?” pic.twitter.com/b5MugIOZtP
In his speech on Monday, Stewart joked that the right was trying to smear him as “Hunter Biden’s cocaine dealer” and “more gay pride flag than man”.
Jon Stewart speaks on the steps of the US Capitol on Monday ahead of a vital vote on veterans healthcare in the US Senate
(Twitter/Reuben Jones)
“You can attack me all you want. And you can troll me online…. but here’s the beautiful thing, I don’t give as**t. I’m not scared of you. And I don’t care,” he said, before gesturing to the veterans standing behind him. “Because these are the people that I owe a debt of gratitude to, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to. And it’s about time we start paying it off.”
The PACT Act easily passed the Senate by 84 votes to 14 in June, but was voted down last week after some changes were made to the legislation in the House.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz accused Mr Stewart of misrepresenting the bill, saying that Democrats were attempting a “budgetary trick” of including $400bn in spending unrelated to veterans.
“What Ted Cruz is describing is inaccurate, not true, bulls***t”, Stewart said in a video posted on Twitter, mocking Mr Cruz for saying that the Democrats put “discretionary” funds in the legislation that they made “mandatory” .
Footage of Mr Cruz fist-bumping Montana Senator Steve Daines on the Senate floor after the bill was blocked provoked outrage, and was seized on as proof the Republicans were playing politics with veterans’ lives.
Despite reporting of a potential prisoner exchange to bring home Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, a deal between the United States and Russia to free the detained Americans still appears to be a ways away.
A top White House official slammed Russia in a CNN interview Saturday for attempting to tack on an additional convict — a murderer who was tried, sentenced, and imprisoned in Germany — to the United States’ proposed prisoner exchange of Griner and Whelan for notorious arms dealer Victor Bout.
Griner competes for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
John Kirby, the Biden administration’s National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, called the Kremlin’s counteroffer “a bad faith attempt to avoid a very serious offer and proposal that the United States has put forward.”
“Holding two American citizens hostage in exchange for an assassin in a third-party country is not a serious counteroffer,” Kirby said, adding: “We urge Russia to take [our] offer seriously.”
Even despite his criticism of Moscow’s counter, Kirby was hesitant to agree that discussions between the two superpowers had “stalled.” He also denied that the Russians “hold the cards,” as CNN’s Jim Sciutto phrased his question about him, at the negotiating table.
John Kirby, the Biden administration’s National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, speaks at a White House press briefing.
REUTERS/Leah Millis
Instead, Kirby underscored the Biden administration’s stance since early May, when they designated Griner as “wrongfully detained.” A source previously told Insider that the classification change sends a “strong signal that the US government does not believe that there is a legitimate case against her.”
“We very much want to see Brittney and Paul come home to their families, where they belong,” Kirby said. “They’re wrongfully detained there, and we’re just gonna keep at that work.”
Griner, an eight-time WNBA All-Star, has been in Russian custody since February 17. The 6-foot-9 Phoenix Mercury center was charged with the large-scale transportation of drugs and moved to a Russian jail shortly after customs agents at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport claimed to have found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage.
Griner is led to a July hearing in Russian court.
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images
Whelan, meanwhile, has been wrongfully detained in Russia since December 2018. The former Marine-turned-security executive was arrested at a Moscow hotel over suspicions that he was an American spy. He was subsequently convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in Russian prison, with the possibility of serving time at a labor camp.
Though Griner’s trial — which legal experts characterize as a “show trial” with a “predetermined” outcome — is still underway, sources have repeatedly told Insider that a prisoner exchange is Griner’s most likely path home. The same goes for Whelan.
The US government’s offer to release Bout is a serious one. Known to many as the “Merchant of Death,” the 55-year-old is infamous for supplying rebel groups and terrorist organizations with weapons that fueled bloody wars across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
American detainee Paul Whelan holds a sign ahead of a hearing in Moscow.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
However, Bout’s 2008 arrest in Thailand was not actually based on charges for the high-stakes trafficking operations that have since served as inspiration for several movies, documentaries, and books. Instead, he has been in foreign custody for over a decade after he was caught in a US Drug Enforcement Agency sting operation.
American officials lured the elusive arms distributor to engage with purported representatives of a Colombian guerilla group. He offered to sell weapons to the rebels, even with the understanding that the materials could have been used to kill Americans.
Soon after, Bout was arrested in Bangkok and, following an extended legal battle and protests from the Russian government, extradited to the US. Nearly four years after his initial capture of him, Bout was convicted of a trio of crimes and handed his minimum 25-year sentence.
Victor Bout.
PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP via Getty Images
Expert opinions vary on whether the weapons dealer would still pose a national security threat to the United States if he were set free. And even though Bout has already served 11 years of his sentence, many see his release of him as a major concession from the US government.
Adding another dangerous criminal — Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted late last year of killing a man in broad daylight — would make the deal even less palatable to those concerned about the initial trade proposed by the Biden administration.
Griner’s Russian legal representation previously estimated that she’d be sentenced sometime in August. The 31-year-old is expected to appear in court again this week.
Former President Donald Trump on the eve of the Missouri primaries gave his much-coveted endorsement in the republican primary for Missouri’s open Senate seat, but there was some confusion about who had been selected.
“I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections, and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Full Endorsement!” Trump wrote in a statement Monday night.
And with that, Trump apparently rejected anyone in the field of 19 who is not named Eric. There are two leading candidates who share the first name: Attorney General Eric Schmitt and former Attorney General Eric Greitensand one candidate trailing them.
The semi-endorsement came as Schmitt has broken ahead in recent polls, including one by Emerson College released in late July where he led Rep. Vicky Hartzler by 12 points. Greitens was third in that poll.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a ‘Save America’ rally in support of Arizona GOP candidates on July 22, 2022 in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Arizona’s primary election will take place August 2.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Greitens, a controversial candidate who resigned in 2018 after a sex scandal and misuse of campaign funds, has been dropping in the polls since June after more than $11 million has been spent on the airwaves by outside groups to keep him from winning the primary and potentially putting this state at play in November’s general election.
Earlier this year, Greitens’ ex-wife has also claimed he abused her and their son, allegations that the Greitens campaign has denied. Sheena Greitens repeated the allegations on Twitter on Monday.
Shortly after Trump’s statement, both Greitens and Schmitt claimed to have Trump’s full support.
“President Trump has looked at the candidates and all that’s at stake in this race, and he has given me his COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT!” read a campaign fundraising email from Schmitt.
“Honored to have the support of President Trump! We will MAGA!” Greitens tweeted. Greitens also has ties to Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, and he tweeted a video of Guilfoyle backing him.
Making matters more complicated, there is a third Eric in the race: Eric McElroy. In a statement, Hartzler said “Congrats to Eric McElroy. He’s having a big night.”
Trump said in July that he explicitly would not endorse Hartzler.
Aaron Navarro
Aaron Navarro is an associate producer for the political unit at CBS News, focusing on House and gubernatorial campaigns as well as the census and redistricting.
The random box-cutter attack on an Asian woman in Times Square was a hate crime, cops said Tuesday – as they busted and charged the suspect in the case.
Anthony Evans, 30 was allegedly caught on shocking video slashing the 59-year-old seamstress Sunday morning as she was walking along Seventh Avenue near West 42nd Street in Manhattan.
The 30-year-old suspect was arrested around 8:45 am Tuesday and now faces raps of assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon.
Police could not immediately say what specifically raised the case to hate-crime status. The NYPD had released Evans’ photo Monday evening and named him as a suspect.
Anthony Evans, 30, has been linked to the random slashing of a woman in Times Square early Sunday.NYPD
The victim – who has lived in the city for decades – was pulling a shopping trolley down the block when the suspect walked up behind her, raised the weapon in the air and slashed the blade down on her right hand, footage previously released by police shows .
Evans fled the scene afterward, cops said.
The victim’s 23-year-old daughter, who asked that her name not be used, told The Post on Monday that the assault left her mother “traumatized.
Footage shows the moment the alleged slasher, identified as Anthony Evans, 30, attacked the 59-year-old woman without provocation on Seventh Avenue near West 42nd Street.NYPDThe 59-year-old victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she was listed in stable condition.Paul MartinkaThe victim’s daughter said she was left traumatized by the event.
“It was a very violent event, a very violent thing to do,” the daughter said. “I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody — even my worst enemies.
“I hope it wasn’t for malicious reasons,” the daughter said.
“I just want to make sure that it’s clear that we don’t know what is the motivation behind the attack,” she added. “If it’s mental health-related, I hope [the suspect is] find and receive[s] the necessary treatment. If the perpetrator had malicious reasons, I hope they’re found and prosecuted.”
