Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said that Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) decision to share security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol exclusively with Fox News host Tucker Carlson was “despicable” and damaging to security.
Asked whether he would share the security footage of the attack, some of which was aired publicly during former President Trump’s 2021 impeachment hearing and during the hearings of the House select Jan. 6 committee, he said it would need to be reviewed by experts.
“Look, I think what McCarthy did was despicable, damaged our security,” Schumer said of his House Republican counterpart. “Certainly … when he listens to a small group of the MAGA right, he’s going to run into trouble himself.”
“As for releasing it, security has to be the No. 1 concern,” he said.
McCarthy decided last week to grant Carlson access to all of the Capitol’s security footage from Jan. 6, sparking widespread controversy given Carlson’s work on a 2021 documentary series that framed the attack on the Capitol as a “false flag” operation intended to turn public opinion against former President Trump and his supporters.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Tuesday dodged a question about whether he agreed with McCarthy’s decision to share sensitive footage with Carlson, who entertained Trump’s claims of a stolen election on his show while privately expressing extreme skepticism about them.
“Going back to when Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] was Speaker, my main concern is the security of the Capitol,” the GOP leader said tersely.
Asked if sharing the footage may compromise Capitol security, McConnell reiterated “security of the Capitol,” which he said “was obviously severely threatened on Jan. 6” was his top concern.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the chair of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, said Tuesday that footage from Jan. 6 would be subject to a security review before going to Fox News.
“It’s basically controlled access to be able to view tapes. Can’t record, can’t take anything with you. Then they will request any particular clips that — that they may need, and then we’ll make sure that there’s nothing sensitive, nothing classified — you know, escape routes,” Loudermilk said in response to a question from The Hill.
A Fox News survey showing former President Trump leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 15 points among Republican presidential primary voters is the latest cause for heartburn among Senate Republicans who don't think Trump can win a general election match-up against President Biden.
Predictions by key Senate Republicans that Trump would fade as the 2024 election approached are being upended, putting pressure on party leaders in Washington to consider embracing the former president once again.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans blamed the “chaos” surrounding Trump for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm election. Some thought it would be the final straw to keep Trump off the presidential ticket next year.
And McConnell had privately told several Senate GOP colleagues that Trump’s political strength would fade the more time he spent outside the Oval Office, according to two Republican senators who spoke to The Hill.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Senate GOP colleagues that former President Trump's political strength would fade the longer he was out of office. (Greg Nash)
Yet a Fox News poll of 1,006 registered voters nationwide found Trump leading DeSantis 43 percent to 28 percent among GOP primary voters in a hypothetical match-up.
Republican strategists say the poll shows Trump is more resilient than many party insiders expected. And they warn that Republican senators and other party establishment figures who have ramped up their criticism of Trump since he lost the 2020 election would be wise to carefully reconsider his chances of winning the presidential nomination next year.
“I think Trump’s position is stronger than I thought it was,” said Vin Weber, a GOP strategist and former member of the House GOP leadership.
He cited reports Trump has put together a more professional campaign operation than what he had previously.
“If those articles are true, then Trump is running a very different campaign than he ran in 2016 or 2020. A formidable campaign with a disciplined candidate and 15-point lead in the polls today is more important than just a 15-point lead in the polls,” he said.
Weber said “whatever doubts people may have about Trump’s inevitability … that should not be confused with a presumption that he’s not going to win.”
“I think the Republicans that proceed on the assumption that Donald Trump will not be our candidate are taking a huge risk,” he added.
A recent Fox News poll has former President Trump leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 43 to 28 percent in a hypothetical matchup. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who has criticized Trump from time to time and faced the former president’s wrath as a result, acknowledged Monday Trump still has a good chance of winning the party’s presidential nomination.
“I think it’s possible he could be the nominee but I also think there are other people who could be the nominee. It’s very early on. The field isn’t even close to being set,” he said.
Asked if he is surprised by Trump’s political resilience, Thune responded, “he’s got a very loyal, hardcore base of support and the other candidates aren’t that well known yet.”
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), a member of the Senate GOP leadership team, said national polls don’t necessarily reflect how Trump will do in individual state contests — but the polling shows he could do well if GOP votes are split among many candidates.
“National polls don’t mean to much,” he said. “I just don’t think we know who’s going to be in contention. If there are a lot of people running, that probably will benefit President Trump.”
Sen. John Thune (Greg Nash)
One Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss the GOP presidential primary pointed out that Trump has maintained a solid lead among white working-class conservative voters who don’t have college degrees.
“DeSantis’s problem is this: Trump still has self-identified very conservative primary voters and working-class voters, folks who don’t have a four-year college degree. He has really substantial leads among those folks,” the senator said.
“When you break down DeSantis’s support, it’s almost from self-identified moderates and then Never-Trumpers, which is fine but you’re not going to win a primary with that. So he’s got to make some inroads,” the senator added.
The Fox poll found Trump beating DeSantis by double digits among white Republican voters without a college degree, primary voters earning less than $50,000, white rural voters and white evangelical voters.
DeSantis led Trump 37 percent to 30 percent among white GOP voters with college degrees and they were virtually tied among suburban GOP voters, according to the survey.
NBC News reported Monday that DeSantis will skip the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland this week, a large annual gathering of conservative activists.
“It’s clear that Trump is the front-runner and Republicans in Washington need to get used to that idea,” Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide, said.
“The Fox News poll does indicate that Ron DeSantis is a very strong candidate but that’s it. None of the other candidates are showing the strength to challenge Trump,” he said. “Right now, the race is Donald Trump’s to lose.
“If you’re [New Hampshire Gov.] Chris Sununu or [former Maryland Gov.] Larry Hogan or [former South Carolina Gov.] Nikki Haley, these polls are not good news for you,” he added.
Darling said Trump's critics in the party establishment are feeling heartburn over the former president's popularity with GOP voters.
"He is showing more strength as he gets more active which should give the congressional delegation of Never Trumpers some pause," he added. "He's always going to have that very strong base of support."
But Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump on an impeachment charge related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said he still doesn’t think the former president can win a general election.
“The issue is, 'Can he win?' and I don’t think he can,” he said. “Under President Trump, we lost the House, we lost the presidency and then we lost the Senate.”
Cassidy attributed Trump’s lead in the polls to name recognition but emphasized “ultimately it comes down to, ‘Can you win?’ and over six years we’ve learned no.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy said he doesn't think former President Trump can win a general election. (Greg Nash)
Still, the Fox poll is the latest of a long string of national polls showing Trump with a comfortable lead over DeSantis, despite an unceasing flood of unflattering media reports about Trump’s legal problems and jabs from former members of his inner circle, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Trump has a comfortable 13-point lead over DeSantis in the national polling average calculated by RealClearPolitics.com.
A Harvard Center for American Political Studies—Harris Poll survey of 1,838 registered voters last month showed Trump ahead of DeSantis by 23 points while a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Trump with a 12-point lead over DeSantis in early February.
Jim McLaughlin, Trump’s pollster, said polls are “consistent” in showing that Trump is the clear front-runner for the nomination.
“President Trump’s unique selling point is he has the ability to say, ‘You know all these problems you have right now, whether it’s the economy, it’s inflation, it’s immigration, it’s war and peace? I solved all this stuff, we didn’t have those problems.’ Every day he looks better and better versus Joe Biden,” he said.
McLaughlin said “one of the reasons DeSantis has the popularity that he has is because he’s viewed as Donald Trump,” pointing to the tough-guy approach DeSantis has taken with the media and other liberal causes as well as Trump’s pivotal endorsement of DeSantis in the 2018 Florida governor’s race.
Explaining Trump’s greater popularity among Republican base voters including non-college educated White, evangelical and rural voters, McLaughlin said “it’s like why would want to go to Trump-lite, which is what they view DeSantis as, when I can get the real thing in Donald Trump.”
“It’s the old Coke versus New Coke, people want their old Coke,” he added. “They look at Trump and said he did this stuff, he solved these problems.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is increasingly in the eye of the GOP storm in the aftermath of a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that spilled toxic chemicals.
The disaster, which came just a month after a series of embarrassing air travel issues that snarled plans for millions of Americans, is prompting renewed scrutiny of his tenure atop the department.
But Democrats charge those aren’t the only reasons Buttigieg has become the target of such ire.
“Before, if you got your flight delayed, you weren't like ‘oh that damn Elaine Chao,’” one Democratic operative said, referring to the Transportation secretary under former President Trump. “That's the downside that comes with being such a good public figure.”
Republicans, for their part, point to Buttigieg’s role as one of Biden’s top surrogates and his potential aspirations for higher office as central to their frustrations. They say he’s not paying enough attention to his current job when there are plenty of high-level issues on his plate.
And as an example, they blasted him this month for taking 10 days to make a statement about the crash in Ohio, which occurred Feb. 3, and are turning up the heat on Buttigieg and his department over what caused the derailment and the agency’s response.
“I understand that the secretary is politically ambitious, and he’d like to move to government housing in Washington right up the street, but he does have a job to do,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the ranking member on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, told reporters. “Maybe instead of focusing on gun control and denouncing freeways as racist, he should focus on addressing the enormous challenges we have on our railways, with multiple derailments where the secretary has been AWOL.”
Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Buttigieg on Wednesday raising questions about the department’s oversight of the U.S. rail system.
And Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) floated impeaching Buttigieg over how he has handled the derailment.
"I hope he does resign, and if he doesn't, there's a long list of impeachment criteria,” Davidson told conservative outlet Real America’s Voice Thursday. “I never would have thought we'd see a point where we need to impeach a Secretary of Transportation, but daggon, how many failures have to happen on his watch before we call it?”
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has defended its overall response as it assists the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation into the crash and the Environmental Protection Agency's handling of the fallout from the toxic chemicals that have ravaged the eastern Ohio town.
In a statement, the department said its staff “were on the ground hours after the derailment” in support of NTSB’s probe.
“It’s no surprise to see some playing politics with every crisis, even something as serious as the impacts of a global pandemic on our transportation systems or a train derailment,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson added that Buttigieg and the department is continuing to “focus on getting results” on a number of topics, including requirements for airlines to cover hotel and food expenses for stranded travelers and overseeing the implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure package.
However, the issues with Buttigieg run deeper for Republicans. In addition to his political aspirations, multiple senators argued that his priorities at the department are out of place and that his level of outreach with committee members is far off from those of other cabinet members.
“The thing they want more than anything else is competence, particularly in the midst of crisis. My sense is that he, like many others in the administration, are not the types of, sort of, hands on managers that you need at a time like that,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who is also a member on Commerce Committee. “I think part of it too is just the efforts he makes. … Some members of the cabinet, particularly on the relevant committees, the committees of jurisdiction, do a really good job of outreach and I don’t get that from him.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), another Commerce member, told The Hill that Buttigieg’s “philosophical push for everything to be climate and politically correct” is at the heart of the issues for GOP members.
“We have practical matters we need to do like permitting and building new roads and having new constructions and he pretty much puts his foot down on a lot of that stuff,” Capito said. “He’s just not leading and I think that’s the frustration.”
The Transportation Department disputed criticisms from the two lawmakers, noting that Buttigieg has had more than 100 interactions with GOP members of Congress since taking on the role.
The department added that it is “committed to building more resilient infrastructure,” including roads, bridges and evacuation routes “that can withstand extreme weather and climate events,” pointing to a program unveiled last year alongside Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) that would “help states and communities better prepare for and respond to extreme weather events.”
Buttigieg, 41, has been one of the most visible administration officials over the past two years. After a surprisingly strong but ultimately failed presidential bid, he was a vocal and often-seen proponent of Build Back Better and crisscrossed the country to tout the White House’s bipartisan infrastructure law.
He also drew public condemnation last year from right-wing pundits — though not from lawmakers — for taking paternity leave to care for the newborn twins he welcomed with his husband.
Among cabinet members, Buttigieg is one of the precious few who is considered a potential White House candidate in the coming years. Democrats far and away believe that is the main genesis for the attacks from Republicans and argue that he is an invaluable member of the administration.
The intense criticism led the White House to weigh in on Thursday. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden has “absolute confidence” in the secretary who has turned out to be one of the White House’s most trusted voices in defense of administration policy.
A number of Commerce Committee Democrats have also dismissed attacks against him. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the panel’s chairwoman, said that the criticisms are intense because some consider him “the future of our party.” Others pointed to his key voice in the administration.
“He’s smart and he knows the English language very well, so he represents himself very well under pressure. … He’s pretty damn good, I’m always impressed,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) told The Hill. “The issues with the flights and all that stuff — he’s secretary of Transportation. He’s going to get some shit, that’s the way it is.”
Buttigieg’s political stature coupled with the fact that the areas he oversees — infrastructure and air travel, for example — affect Americans daily creates a perfect storm for attacks by the GOP.
The derailment in Ohio has also led to some strange political bedfellows as Republicans are not the only ones criticizing the former South Bend, Ind., mayor.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee joined the chorus on Wednesday, hitting him for not reinstituting Obama-era safety regulations that were nixed during Trump’s presidency, saying that he has “done nothing in two years to reinstate them.”
Some, however, have held off. When asked if Buttigieg shared any of the blame for the crash in East Palestine, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told reporters, “Was he driving the train?”
Lawmakers are doling out blame and demanding answers on the train derailment in Ohio.
Legislators from both parties are expressing frustration and asking for more to be done, though Republicans in particular have put Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg directly in the hot seat.
“Secretary Buttigieg is nowhere to be found on this issue. It really is a remarkable thing that he hasn't gone to East Palestine to see what happened there,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Fox Business this week. “He hasn't come to Congress to explain what happened. For whatever reason, the Secretary seems to fill his days with politics. I know he has aspirations, but he actually has a day job.”
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) floated impeaching Buttigieg over how he has handled the derailment.
"I hope he does resign, and if he doesn't, there's a long list of impeachment criteria,” Davidson told conservative outlet Real America’s Voice Thursday. “I never would have thought we'd see a point where we need to impeach a Secretary of Transportation, but daggon, how many failures have to happen on his watch before we call it?"
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week that the White House has “absolute confidence” in Buttigieg.
The derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3 released chemicals, including toxic vinyl chloride, into the surrounding community, prompting a temporary evacuation.
State and federal authorities have said that the area’s air and water are now safe, but residents remain fearful and concerned.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are questioning Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) about why it isn’t providing emergency assistance.
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who represents East Palestine, led a letter signed by the entire Ohio congressional delegation urging FEMA to provide assistance.
Johnson also told The Hill in a written statement that there may be room for congressional or administrative action once investigations on the issue are complete.
“Congress and the administration must take a close look at the findings to determine what policies to modify and/or implement to better prevent anything like this from happening again,” he said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has called on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) to declare an emergency, though DeWine’s office has said that it was told by FEMA that it was not eligible for assistance.
Beyond the issue of FEMA, Republicans have sent mixed messages on water quality.
The state has said testing indicated that municipal water in East Palestine is safe, but DeWine has also told residents to drink bottled water out of an “abundance of caution.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has also said that he would drink bottled water; He posted a video on Thursday showing what appeared to be chemicals in a creek, saying there were “dead worms and dead fish all throughout this water.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, traveled to East Palestine and posted a video of himself drinking water that he said came from its taps — saying that he was helping the mayor of East Palestine get the word out that the tap water is safe to drink.
“What's clear is there is a lot of work to do. I thank the first responders and personnel on site for all their efforts thus far. I will work in a bipartisan effort to ensure our freight rail system is as safe as possible and prevent tragedies like this from occurring again,” Nehls said in a statement.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), too, has criticized the administration’s timeliness.
“It is unacceptable that it took nearly two weeks for a senior Administration official to show up,” he said in a statement on EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s visit to the area.
DeWine, for this part, called on Congress to take action if it is true that the railroad was not required to notify the state about the chemicals on the train because they were not considered high hazardous materials, Fox 19 reported.
Vance supported the call for labeling the materials as hazardous, though he said that the responsibility lies not only with Congress but also with the Transportation Department.
“I don’t want to let Congress off the hook here because Congress can legislate a solution to this problem and that’s exactly what I'm going to try to do. We should have some legislation coming out here to that effect in the next few days, but look, the Department of Transportation can act on this issue too. This is a regulatory problem and a legal problem,” he told reporters this past week.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who rose to national prominence as the lead prosecutor in President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, is entering the 2024 California U.S. Senate race.
Senate Republicans are pouring cold water on the idea that President Biden’s classified documents controversy rises to the level of an impeachable offense, heading off House conservatives looking for revenge after former President Trump’s two trials.
Even before Tuesday’s revelation that about a dozen classified documents had been found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, GOP senators were cool to the idea of impeachment.
“I don’t think you want to get into where it’s a tit for tat, every two years or four years you’re dealing with impeachment proceedings in the House and Senate,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) told The Hill. “There has to be a really good reason, obviously, the constitutional reasons and grounds for that. So we’ll see where it goes.”
Asked whether Biden’s possession of classified documents has the potential to rise to the level of an impeachable offense, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate GOP leadership team, gave a simple answer: “No.”
Many Republicans thought the Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump over delaying military aide to Ukraine was a partisan overreach. But that means they are also wary of doing the same thing now that their party has the House majority.
It’s just one of several tension points emerging between Republicans in the two chambers.
Senate Republicans have mostly ignored chatter in the House about impeaching Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or wiping out the tax code and replacing it with a 23 percent to 30 percent national sales tax.
Some Republicans think talk of impeaching Biden will grow in the House, even though GOP senators warn that it’s a bad idea.
House Republicans introduced more than a dozen impeachment resolutions against Biden in the last Congress, and the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee has already initiated an investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents, which could lay the ground for future impeachment proceedings.
Trump has also come under criticism for a separate classified documents controversy, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in an interview with Fox Business argued that Biden’s handling of classified documents was more egregious because the former Republican president at least secured the classified information he held with padlocks.
“That’s much different than what we’re finding now with President Biden, and I think it is severely going to cause him a great deal of trouble in the future as we get more of the truth,” McCarthy told Fox host Larry Kudlow.
A few Senate Republicans entertain the idea that the classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington, D.C., office would lead to a Senate impeachment trial.
“This actually might be an impeachable offense. If there’s a high crime and misdemeanor standard, which there is, this is the closest thing to one in recent years,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “If the special counsel comes up with anything, realizing [Biden’s] a sitting president, I suppose they could draft up what would become articles of impeachment, depending on what they find.”
Cramer said “I personally hate impeachments” but thinks the standard has changed since House Democrats impeached Trump in 2019 after he held up aid to Ukraine to use as leverage to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden’s family’s business dealings in the country.
Only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney (Utah), voted to convict on an article of impeachment during Trump’s 2020 Senate trial.
Cramer said “Democrats created an impeachment cycle and we may be in that cycle,” calling Trump’s first impeachment “far-fetched and silly.”
He said House Republicans now need to decide whether they want to keep the impeachment bar as low as they believe Democrats set it in 2019 or whether to elevate it to cover only the most serious crimes.
The documents found at Pence’s home would further muddy any attempt to argue that Biden’s possession of classified documents meets the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Romney on Tuesday said it will be hard for House Republicans to credibly push an article of impeachment against Biden for keeping classified documents at his Delaware home after Pence admitted the same transgression.
“I can’t imagine that’s where it’s going to head with so many people in the same arena,” he said.
Some key Senate Republicans, such as Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (Fla.), are already on record downplaying Trump’s possession of classified documents at his Florida home as a “storage” issue.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday dismissed a question about whether Biden’s possession of classified documents could rise to the level of an impeachable offense.
“I don’t have an answer to that hypothetical. I do think that the Justice Department seems to be willing to treat everybody the same and to try to retrieve the documents, and obviously it’s not a great idea to take classified documents away from the archives. We’ll see how they continue to handle it,” he said.
Republican senators say it should be up to Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, to decide whether Biden should be charged with a crime, not House Republicans, who filed more than a dozen articles of impeachment against Biden in the last Congress.
“It could be a criminal offense,” Cornyn said. “That’s what the special counsel is for. Mishandling classified materials is very serious.”
Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith in November to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents and whether he unlawfully interfered with the 2021 transfer of presidential power.
Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted some Democrats for “hypocrisy” by trying to minimize Biden’s culpability after hammering Trump for months after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August to retrieve classified documents.
“The thing that’s made this such a story is the hypocrisy, [Democrats] attacking Trump,” he said. “Nobody should take classified materials outside of a secure facility, period.”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said fellow Republicans should “be careful” about “knee-jerking to impeachment.”
“I think the country will fatigue of that,” he said, pointing out that recent impeachment proceedings against former Presidents Clinton and Trump “have not ended up with any real result.”
“If you start doing it on everything, I think it would be bad politically and for the mechanics of government working,” he said.
Democrats picked up five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections as the Republican majority was in the midst of gearing up to impeach Clinton, marking a rare instance when the president’s party picked up House seats in the middle of a second term.
Republicans picked up 14 House seats in the 2020 election after Democrats impeached Trump at the end of 2019.
Democrats are expressing alarm over President Biden’s classified documents controversy, with some criticizing the president as diminished in stature and his staff as irresponsible.
“I’m very concerned,” said Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), one of several incumbent Democrats who face potentially difficult reelection races next year in reliably GOP states in presidential elections.
“We have to get to the bottom of it to find out what the hell happened, why it happened,” he said.
“This is about national security,” Tester added, saying investigators need to find out if “it put our national security at risk.”
Biden’s January has been submerged in revelation after revelation of classified documents found at his former office and home. Most recently, 11 more documents were found during a search at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home on Friday.
The drip-drip-drip nature of the findings has left Democrats and Republicans alike wondering whether there will be more documents found and has left the White House looking off-balance at times.
Biden emerged from the 2022 midterms in a stronger position after Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and held down their losses in the House. Democrats still see Biden as their most likely standard-bearer, and lawmakers in his party have been quick to contrast his handling of classified documents with former President Trump — who is dealing with his own controversy.
At the same time, there’s little doubt the issue has raised some questions for Biden and the White House just as his team prepared to move forward with an expected presidential announcement later this year.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who like Tester is up for reelection next year in a state that Trump won easily in 2020, blasted the lax handling of secret information as “unbelievable” and “totally irresponsible.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Biden’s attempt to dismiss the building scandal last week by asserting “there’s no there there” also drew a barb from Manchin.
He told CNN on Monday “that’s just not a good statement,” adding “we just don’t know” what secrets may have been compromised.
Criticism from Manchin is hardly unheard of, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who represents a safer state for Democrats, was also somewhat critical on Sunday. He said the controversy “diminishes” Biden and noted the president rightly felt “embarrassed by the situation.”
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on November 15, 2022. (Greg Nash)
Durbin on Monday said of the White House: “They were not careful in handling classified documents.”
“When I think of how we deal with them in the Capitol in comparison, whoever was responsible for it didn’t follow the basic rules,” Durbin said of the handling of classified documents.
Durbin said he never took a classified document out of his office, “let alone out of the building.”
Yet Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stopped short of speculating whether Biden committed a potential crime, telling reporters: “I wouldn’t go that far.”
House Republicans are saber-rattling over the issue, signaling they intend to use their newly won oversight powers to look into the Biden documents story in a more aggressive way than they looked into Trump’s controversy.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the new chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has requested that the Secret Service hand over all the information it has on visitors to Biden’s Delaware home in the time since he served as vice president.
The request — made to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday — came after Comer demanded that visitor logs for the residence be turned over. The White House said last week that such records do not exist.
Later on Monday, White House counsel Stuart Delery wrote to Comer that the administration does not have possession of the documents the National Archives and Department of Justice have taken as part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.
Delery pledged to “accommodate legitimate oversight interests” in response to Comer’s request.
One GOP strategist said Republicans will go after Biden aggressively given the Trump controversy.
“The House is going to have a field day with investigations because of the fact that the Biden administration has been so outspoken criticizing Trump for the exact thing,” said Brian Darling, a former Senate aide.
Darling said the House could vote on articles of impeachment if the special prosecutor or House investigators find Biden broken the law or jeopardized national security.
“It’s possible. It depends on how the hearings go in the House. I think it’s quite possible that there will be discussion about impeachment because Democrats seemed so open to the idea of impeachment against President Trump and we’ve seen a lot of the payback from many of the things that happened when Democrats controlled the House, like kicking members off committees,” he said.
Durbin told reporters he expects House Republicans to go overboard in trying to tear down Biden, just as they did when they tried to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Biden’s possession of classified documents now effectively “completely neutralizes” Democratic attacks against Trump for holding sensitive material in Florida.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday, November 29, 2022. (Greg Nash)
“I’m not sure I understand all the laws that pertain to classified documents. I know the procedures that apply, but it seems to me the Justice Department is going to have to sort all that out and I think right now it’s still an evolving situation,” he said.
Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the careful handling of classified documents should always be a top priority and declared: “All of the circumstances are going to be examined …. So there’s a message that nobody is above the law.”
“The rule that I follow scrupulously is you don’t take documents out of the room,” he said. “Obviously there’s a lot of information coming out and I want to wait and see what the facts are.
But Wyden also gave Biden some political cover by drawing a distinction with Trump.
“One point that I don’t believe is in contention is President Biden has voluntarily cooperated and the former president did not,” he said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who faces a competitive re-election in a Republican-leaning state, urged the administration to be as transparent as possible.
“There’s nothing that’s betrayal of national interest, there’s nothing he’s trying to hide but they need to come out with all of it,” he said. “He’s got to deal with it and get it over with.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) expressed frustration that the media attention surrounding the classified documents scandal threatens to eclipse the congressional agenda.
“It’s being looked at to the nth degree,” he said. “I’m concerned that I think we’re wasting an awful lot of effort on something that has a special prosecutor look[ing] into it and at the end of the day it looks like all you’re going to find is some sloppiness. We have real problems to work on,” he said.
A bipartisan group of senators attempting to craft an immigration compromise have an arduous task ahead of them: finding a deal that can attract the support of Democrats, moderate Republicans and the hard-line conservatives who have newfound power and influence in the House.
Ten senators last week visited multiple spots along the border for an up-close look at the issues consuming the immigration system. President Biden also traveled to El Paso, Texas, the epicenter of what members on both sides of the aisle describe as a crisis.
Despite that agreement, lawmakers must navigate the tricky contours of the politics of immigration — an issue that’s famously difficult to get agreement on while also serving as a key talking point in recent presidential elections.
That’s not deterring talks among those in the Senate, however.
"This is going to take months to potentially get to something that we could get the support in the House. We can't simply, because it’s politically difficult, say we can't touch it this Congress," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), one of those that made the border trip, told The Hill.
Tillis and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who was also among those at the border last week, made a last-minute attempt last year to win support for a narrow proposal that would have allocated tens of billions of dollars to border security and processing asylum requests while also handing "Dreamers" — those brought to the U.S. as children without authorization — a long-awaited path to citizenship.
But that push — which consisted of a framework and not a bill — was too little, too late.
Tillis and Sinema’s attempt at bipartisan compromise may have been the last chance for the foreseeable future for Congress to take action, despite both parties in Congress and the White House acknowledging the problem.
Any deal that could emerge from the Senate — meaning with the support of at least nine Senate Republicans — would likely earn resistance from far-right members of the GOP-controlled House.
“It's harder because the politics have gotten even harder for Republicans to get to ‘yes,’” said Alex Conant, who served as press secretary for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) during the “Gang of Eight” immigration fight in 2013. “You look at the political fallout for those involved in the 2013 deal, and how a lot of Republicans have been able to use immigration to win nominations since then, it's an issue that Republicans are very wary of getting on the wrong side of.”
Since the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform package failed, the politics of the topic has only hardened on the right and the voices have gotten louder. Adding to the troubles is that members are heading into a presidential election cycle and are hesitant to deliver any wins for Biden, especially on a topic that matters this much to the base.
Many House Republicans made immigration a central issue and some are already talking about impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) filed articles of impeachment against the secretary last week.
And on Wednesday, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) sent a letter pressing Mayorkas for answers about border issues, writing that “administration cannot continue its erosion of the southern border and its mass-parole of migrants into our country.”
“It’s been a steep hill — steep and tall — for 40 years. That’s why nothing’s gotten done. So this is just a different dynamic,” said Tillis, who blamed the “talking heads” in part for scuttling his efforts with Sinema last year. “I don’t think it’s fair to blame this Congress. This Congress could be the first one since leisure suits were popular to do something on immigration.”
Tillis, who has become a key player in bipartisan negotiations on myriad topics in the past two years, said he is expected to discuss a path to passage of immigration reform with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Freedom Caucus members.
Some political observers believe the impetus for a deal could be simple: The situation at the border now is worse than it was a decade ago as monthly encounters with migrants are near record highs.
One Senate GOP aide added that the road to a bipartisan, bicameral deal is “difficult but not impossible.”
“Details will really matter, though,” the aide said. “At the very least, it’s good to finally see a substantive bipartisan acknowledgement that there’s actually a problem at the border.”
Legislation that passes muster with both chambers, however, would need to overcome another complicating factor in the House: McCarthy, as part of the deals he struck to become Speaker, empowered a far-right contingent of his party and handed them an easier procedural avenue to oust him, just as they did former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in 2015 — two years after Boehner refused to bring the “Gang of Eight” bill to the floor for a vote.
“I don't think it's this,” one conservative Senate aide told The Hill about McCarthy’s lack of willingness to complicate his standing as Speaker over a Senate-negotiated immigration bill.
“What [former President Trump] showed was you can run on a pretty hard-line immigration stance and win on it,” the aide continued. “I don't think they get there without something Democrats can't stomach.”
For now, all eyes are on the Senate to see how it proceeds, though it all comes down to what McCarthy and House conservatives could accept.
“Now we have a gavel,” Tillis said. “And when you have a gavel, you have to govern.”
Ah, Mitch McConnell: the man whose face has launched a thousand quips. His refulgent charm touches our hearts, kidneys, lower intestine, and so on, before awkwardly lingering at our undercarriage and asking us to turn our heads and cough. His smile can light up a roomful of opium pipes. Amazing that we liberals decided to keep him in the Senate while we were stealing the election from Donald Trump. Maybe we need to lay off the adrenochrome for a bit. We’re clearly not thinking straight.
Of course, there was one thing we liberals couldn’t possibly keep Mitch from winning, and that’s the title of most loathed senator in the land.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is the least popular senator in the U.S., according to new polling, as the Kentucky Republican has faced backlash from both the right and the left over the last year.
McConnell holds a disapproval rating of 64 percent in his home state, according to the polling from Morning Consult. He had the approval of just 29 percent of Kentucky respondents.
McConnell, who has been the Senate’s top Republican since 2006, has been the target of much fury from former President Trump, who just this week took him to task for his handling of last year’s omnibus bill and called for him to face a primary challenger.
Moscow Mitch wasn’t alone in stoking the public’s distaste for politics, of course. In fact, the country’s least popular senators should be intimately familiar to anyone who’s kept up with the news over the past two years.
Rounding out the top five are Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, and Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. (Collins is reportedly very concerned about her ranking.) Six through 10 are all Republicans: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and Mitt Romney of Utah.
Of course, it’s obvious what’s happening with some of these characters. Manchin and Sinema spent much of the past two years murdering dreams on behalf of their corporate overlords, while Donald Trump’s frequent criticism of McConnell, Murkowski, and Romney for not being abject lickspittles has no doubt dragged their favorables down. The rest—such as Johnson, Cruz, and Graham—no doubt earned their spots more honestly, by assiduously working on sucking.
Meanwhile, only four senators, McConnell, Manchin, Johnson, and Collins, had disapproval ratings above 50%—though McConnell’s disapproval rating, at 64%, far outstripped the others. The next highest was Manchin’s, at 53%.
But while these senators are generally unpopular, it’s not clear that they’ll ever be punished at the ballot box. McConnell, Collins, and Graham aren’t up for reelection until 2026, and Cruz is still somehow popular among Republicans, at least. In fact, if there’s anyone who might have cause to worry, it’s Romney—but only because of his relatively shaky standing among GOP voters.
Only Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee who voted twice to convict then-President Donald Trump during his impeachment trials, looks in trouble on the right.
Just 41% of Utah Republicans approve of Romney’s job performance, compared with 54% who disapprove. As he weighs a re-election campaign, that leaves Romney only slightly more popular than he was in the wake of Trump’s second impeachment trial in the first quarter of 2021.
The five most popular senators, according to Morning Consult, are Republican John Barrasso, Republican John Thune of South Dakota, Democrat Patrick Leahy (whose final term expired on Jan. 3), independent Bernie Sanders, and Republican Cynthia Lummis. Both Barrasso and Lummis represent Wyoming, while Sanders and Leahy both hail from Vermont.
So where was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday when the House GOP clown caucus failed once again to get its act together to elect a speaker? In a move sure to infuriate Republican extremists, McConnell made a rare joint appearance with President Joe Biden in Covington, Kentucky, to tout a major project funded by the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law in November 2021.
The event offered a sharp contrast to the chaos engulfing the House with the new narrow GOP majority unable to elect a speaker on its second day in control.
Biden began his remarks by thanking McConnell for providing the votes needed to get the infrastructure bill passed according to a transcript of the speeches.
"I wanted to start off the New Year at this historic project with the bi-partisan agreement because I believe it sends an important message to the entire country," Biden said. "We can work together. We can get things done. We can move the nation forward. If we drop our egos and focus on what is needed for the country."
In his remarks, McConnell said, “Even while we have big differences on other things .. this bridge, I think, symbolizes coming together ... If you look at the political alignment of everyone involved, it’s the government is working together to solve a major problem at a time when the country needs to see examples like this, of coming together and getting an outcome … I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
McConnell had fully expected to take over as Senate majority leader on Tuesday when the new Congress convened. But instead, Democrats ended up increasing their Senate majority by one seat in the midterms.
Unlike his spineless House counterpart Kevin McCarthy, McConnell may realize it's beneficial for party leaders to stand up to rather than appease extremist MAGA Republicans. He has blamed Trump for putting up poor quality candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania who lost potentially winnable races that left him as minority leader.
He doesn’t want that to happen again in 2024 when the Senate map favors Republicans. Democrats must defend three seats in states won by Trump—in Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Montana (Jon Tester), and West Virginia (Joe Manchin) as well as in purple states, including Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent).
Additionally, Trump has insulted McConnell in posts on his Truth Social platform as an “Old Crow” RINO (Republican In Name Only) and leveled ethnic slurs at his wife, Trump’s former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. And Trump lashed out at McConnell and Chao again on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform in the wake of McCarthy’s failure to win the speakership. Trump is backing McCarthy’s bid for speaker.
“There is so much unnecessary turmoil in the Republican Party,” Trump said, adding that the disorder is due in large part to “Old Broken Crow” McConnell, his wife Chao “who is a sellout to China,” and their “RINO” allies. They “make it difficult for everyone else by constantly capitulating to Hopeless Joe Biden and the Democrats.”
Of course, McConnell is responsible for much of what ails the nation, including packing the judiciary with Federalist Society conservatives, including three hard-line Supreme Court justices. But McConnell has begun to take a stand against MAGA Republican extremists, even if his actions are too little, too late after he failed to vote against Trump in the 2021 Senate impeachment trial. McConnell incurred the wrath of Trump when he got 18 other Senate Republicans to join him in supporting the infrastructure bill in 2021. In the House, McCarthy opposed the bill, while only 13 Republicans supported it.
He further infuriated MAGA Republicans when he helped the Senate pass the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December, including $45 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine, to fund the government in fiscal year 2023.
On Wednesday, Biden and McConnell appeared together to tout the $1.63 billion in federal grants that Kentucky and Ohio will receive to help repair the overloaded Brent Spence Bridge and build a new span adjacent to it. The bridge over the Ohio River connects Cincinnati and Covington, and is a heavily used freight route connecting the Midwest and the South.
Other speakers at the event included two Republicans, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and former Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, as well as two Democrats, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is up for reelection in 2023, and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and J.D. Vance of Ohio did not attend the event.
Biden has accomplished much more than expected with Democrats narrowly in control of Congress during his first two years in office. But after the November midterms, Republicans gained a narrow House majority and plan to try to stall Biden’s agenda and launch investigations into his family and Cabinet members.
Conservative commentators were irate about the joint appearance. Mark Levin called McConnell a “total fraud” on Twitter. Laura Ingraham tweeted, “Behold the uniparty!”
On Tuesday, McConnell broke the record for longest-serving Senate party leader whether in the majority or the minority, Politico reported. The record had been held by Democratic Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana, who served as majority leader for 16 years.
In his floor remarks to open the new Congress, McConnell actually paid tribute to Mansfield: “Mansfield was a canny strategist who knew how to rally his conference. He knew when to go to battle, and when to coordinate with his counterpart Everett Dirksen,” McConnell said. “In short, he knew how to work the Senate.”
In November, McConnell beat back a leadership challenge. Ten senators voted for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida instead of McConnell.
Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior Biden administration officials will be blanketing the country this week to promote the president’s economic plan. On Wednesday, Harris will be in Chicago and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit New London, Connecticut. On Thursday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will join White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu in San Francisco, California.
Those visits are related to the following infrastructure projects funded under the 2021 bill: four moveable bridges crossing the Calumet River in Chicago; the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London, Connecticut; and the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Here is a video of Biden’s visit to Covington, including the speeches by Biden, McConnell and others. McConnell’s speech begins at the 29-minute mark and Biden’s at the 35-minute mark.
