Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said Sunday that he tested positive for COVID-19, marking the third time he has contracted the virus in the past year.
The diagnosis means Durbin will miss votes in the Senate this week before Congress is expected to break for the month of August.
“Unfortunately, I tested positive for COVID-19 today,” he tweeted. “I'm disappointed to have to miss critical work on the Senate's NDAA this week in Washington. Consistent with (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines, I'll quarantine at home and follow the advice of my doctor while I work remotely.”
The Senate is slated this week to consider the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed the House earlier this month along largely partisan lines. The legislation was met with sharp criticism from Democrats after GOP-sponsored amendments about abortion, transgender rights and diversity and inclusion initiatives were attached to the bill.
The Democrat-led Senate is likely going to reject the GOP-backed amendments to the bill, which was typically passed with bipartisan support in previous years.
Durbin also tested positive for the virus at the end of July 2022 and in March of this year. In recent months, COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths have remained low compared to the peak of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While individuals can have immunity once contracting the virus, reinfections can be considered to occur as soon as 90 days after the first positive test.
Senior lawmakers are increasingly demanding that military and other government officials provide them with information about intelligence on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).
The demands reflect frustrations on the part of some lawmakers that they are being kept in the dark about what’s known about UFOs and UAPs.
The lawmakers do not necessarily believe the government is hiding signs of extraterrestrial life from the public and congressional oversight. But they are frustrated they are not learning more about unknown objects flying in restricted U.S. air space.
“My primary interest in this topic is if there are … object[s] operating over restricted air space, it’s not ours and we don’t know whose it is, that’s a problem that we need to get to the bottom of,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“If there’s an explanation for it that’s being kept from Congress, then we need to force the issue. We’re not getting answers,” Rubio told The Hill.
The Senate has adopted an amendment to an annual defense bill that would require the federal government to collect and disclose all records related to UFOs and UAPs unless a special review board determines they must be kept classified.
The amendment was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, and is backed by Rubio and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats, as well as Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.), a former Marine intelligence officer, and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).
Rubio, the top-ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, has more access to classified information than the vast majority of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He said he suspects there are records related to unidentified aerial phenomena that are being kept secret from congressional oversight.
“Right now, what I know is reliable people tell us that and we’ve seen objects operating over restricted military and national security airspace. They claim it’s not ours. They claim they don’t know whose it is. That’s like the definition of a national security threat,” he said.
“Either there’s an answer that exists and is not being provided, or there is no answer. Beyond that, I don’t want to speculate anything,” he added.
Rubio said he was familiar with the claims of David Grusch, a career intelligence officer who worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He claims the federal government has retrieved “non-human origin technical vehicles” that have landed or crashed on Earth.
“We have a number of people including that gentleman who have come forward both publicly and privately to make claims,” Rubio said.
“One of two things are true. Either A, they’re telling the truth or some version of the truth or B, we have a bunch of people with high clearances and really important jobs in our government are nuts. Both are a problem. And I’m not accusing these people of being nuts. That said, that’s something we’ll look at and continue to look at seriously,” he said.
Interest in the subject is also reflected by this week’s House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday on UAPs and UFOs.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who is chairing the hearing, says lawmakers will hear testimony from Grusch, as well as former Navy Cmdr. David Fravor and former Navy pilot Ryan Graves.
Burchett claimed on a podcast this month that the federal government has known about UFOs for decades and “they can fly underwater and don’t show a heat trail,” appearing to defy the laws of physics.
Congressional sources familiar with efforts to gain more information from the Defense Department and intelligence agencies say UAPs and UFOs are being detected more frequently because of improvements in military sensor technology.
The Department of Defense released three Navy videos in 2020 that show objects flying in extraordinary ways and capturing confused and awe-struck comments of Naval aviators who witnessed the phenomena.
Grusch, who describes himself as a whistleblower, says senior intelligence officers have told him they participated in a secret UAP task force, though he says he has not personally witnessed nonhuman intelligence. He says he was retaliated against when he tried to gain more information about the program.
Rubio said “we don’t know” if such a program exists and what evidence it might have collected.
“Without speculating or adding to intrigue about this whole topic, there’s no doubt that in this field, generally, there’s more than what we know,” he said. “We’re trying to get to a process where at least some people in Congress do know.”
Asked why he suspects there’s more for Congress to know about UAPs, Rubio said “there’s pieces of puzzles that don’t fit.”
“Most certainly there are elements of things, whether historic or current, that potentially Congress has not been kept fully informed of — and that would be a problem,” he said. “There’s really no function of the executive that shouldn’t require congressional oversight at some level.”
The language in the Senate defense bill would require the National Archives and Records Administration to create a collection of records related to UAPs across government agencies that would be declassified for public use.
“UAPs generate a lot of curiosity for many Americans, and with that curiosity sometimes comes misinformation,” Schumer said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
Most lawmakers are extremely reluctant to say they suspect aliens from other solar systems are visiting Earth because there isn’t any undisputable evidence of such visits in the public domain.
Also, the nearest star to planet Earth is 40,000 billion kilometers away, making it seem impossible that any alien craft could travel the distance necessary to span solar systems. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is so far away that it would take the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which travels at 17.3 km per second, 73,000 years to reach it, according to NASA.
It’s also hard to fathom that a foreign adversary such as China possesses such advanced technology that it can fly aerial vehicles in ways that appear to defy the laws of physics, as U.S. military personnel have observed of UFOs or UAPs.
Rounds said he has seen “no evidence personally” that extraterrestrial craft are visiting the planet but said, “I know that there’s a lot of people that have questions about it.”
“It’s just like with JFK and the [1963] assassination. We set up separate archive for that or central collection place for all that data, which I think gave the American people a sense of security that there was a location where it was being held. This is following that same approach,” he said.
The White House announced late last month that the National Archives had concluded its review of documents related to the assassination of former President Kennedy and that 99 percent of the relevant records had been made publicly available.
Asked about whether he personally believes military personnel and sensors are encountering extraterrestrial visitors, Rounds said: “I don’t think you can discount the possibility just simply because of the size of the universe.”
“I don’t think anybody should say that they know for certain either way,” he said. “If we simply refuse to acknowledge there’s even a remote possibility, then we’re probably not being honest.”
“Some of the items we simply can’t explain,” he said of the Naval videos of UAPs.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) warned on Friday that a government shutdown appears likely, as Congress faces down a September deadline to pass its annual spending bills.
“We are going to scare the hell out of you,” Coons said at the Aspen Security Forum, alongside Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and James Risch (R-Idaho). “We're really good at that.”
“On the debt ceiling, on default, we came right up to the end,” he continued. “We're gonna have a government shutdown because we're gonna fight between the House and Senate about appropriations. Maybe, I sure hope not. We keep coming right up close.”
Lawmakers have until the end of September to pass the 12 annual appropriations bills to fund the government, but with the August recess approaching, they are staring down a tight deadline.
However, Coons suggested that bipartisan efforts, like those between himself and his Republican colleagues on Friday’s panel, will ultimately get the job done.
“In the end, it is exactly these kind of gentlemen with whom I am able to work and where we are able to continue to deliver sustained, strong, forward-leaning initiatives around strengthening our country, our defense, our military, our manufacturing and our system,” he said.
“It’s really only because of the personal relationship that are at the core of the Senate that we’re still able to work,” he added.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines after a more-than-three-hour markup Thursday to advance a Supreme Court ethics reform bill in the wake of media reports that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts and perks from wealthy Republican donors.
The committee voted 11 to 10 to approve the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would require justices to adopt a code of conduct and create a transparent process for members of the public to submit ethics complaints against members of the court.
Every Democratic member of the committee voted for the reforms while every Republican voted no.
The bill would also require the Supreme Court to adopt disclosure rules for gifts, travel and income received by justices and law clerks that are as rigorous as Senate and House disclosure rules.
It would establish a panel of chief judges from the lower courts to investigate and make recommendations in response to complaints and require greater disclosure of funding behind amicus curiae briefs to the court.
Senate Republicans filed 61 amendments to the legislation to drag out the Judiciary Committee’s markup for several hours. The panel ended up voting on fewer than a dozen of them.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the ranking member of the panel, accused Democrats of trying to “destroy” the court in retaliation for recent landmark decisions by the court’s conservative majority to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, to reject the affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina and invalidate President Biden’s student loan relief program.
“What you’re trying to do is not improve the court, you’re trying to destroy it as it exists,” he told his Democratic colleagues on the panel.
“You have to look at this in terms of what’s been going on for a couple years,” he said, pointing to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) warning to conservative Supreme Court justices in a rally held outside the court in March of 2020 that they would “pay the price” for ruling in favor of abortion restrictions.
Schumer later clarified that he never intended to suggest anything other than political and public opinion consequences for the Supreme Court if it restricted abortion rights.
Graham also accused Democrats of wanting to expand the Supreme Court to dilute the influence of conservative justices.
“You have done just about everything there is to do to delegitimize this court,” he said. “Members of the Democratic leadership went to the steps of the Supreme Court and literally threatened people.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) rejected that accusation.
“Some have suggested that Democrats are pursuing Supreme Court ethics reform to target the court’s current right-wing majority. Far from it. The reforms we are proposing would apply in equal force to all justices,” he said.
Durbin noted that he first urged Chief Justice John Roberts 11 years ago, when the composition of the court was much different, to adopt a binding code of conduct.
“Unfortunately, he did not accept my suggestion. Since then as more and more stories have emerged of justices’ ethical lapses, the American people’s confidence in the Supreme Court has dropped to an all-time low,” Durbin said.
ProPublica reported in April that Thomas accepted gifts of private plane travel and luxury vacations from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow over two decades without disclosing them publicly.
The outlet also reported that Thomas didn’t disclose that one of Crow’s companies bought a property in Savannah, Ga., where Thomas’s mother lives and in which the justice owned a third interest.
Another ProPublica report revealed that Crow paid for the private school tuition for Thomas’s teenage grandnephew, whom Thomas said he was raising “as a son.”
ProPublica reported last month that Alito accepted a vacation at a luxury fishing lodge in Alaska in 2008 paid for by conservative donors and didn’t disclose it publicly.
Alito traveled to the lodge aboard a private jet owned by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and six years later ruled in a case, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, that resulted in Singer’s hedge fund recouping a $2.4 billion payout.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), a member of the panel, argued Thursday that Thomas’s wife, Ginni, a conservative activist, accepted payments from groups with business before the court that were not properly disclosed.
“How is it that you can have a Supreme Court justice who does not recuse himself when his wife is involved in the very issue that is before him?” she said. “Those kinds of examples really raise the question of why the Supreme Court shouldn’t have a code of ethics.”
More recently, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor came under criticism after The Associated Press reported that the her staff pushed colleges and a library to purchase copies of her book when she was scheduled to speak at their sponsored events.
Democrats voted along party lines to defeat Republican amendments to the bill, including one sponsored by Graham to empower the Supreme Court’s police force to investigate threats to justices and another by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to allow judges to carry guns for self-protection without restriction by state and local laws.
Durbin argued that the Department of Justice and FBI already has the job of investigating threats against justices and voiced concerns that expanding the mission of the Supreme Court’s relatively small police force would overtax it and require additional resources.
Durbin and other Democrats argued that Cornyn’s gun proposal wasn’t relevant to Supreme Court ethics reform. Cornyn argued that arming justices would protect them from potential attackers motivated by criticism of their decisions and ideology.
Democrats also defeated an amendment sponsored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to delay the implementation of the Supreme Court ethics reform bill until Congress learns who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
Durbin said Blackburn’s proposal wouldn’t do anything to address the “crisis of confidence” in the court.
The committee adopted an amendment sponsored by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to condemn denigrating rhetoric used against Thomas or any justice. Republicans who supported the amendment cited several examples of Democratic officials using such rhetoric to criticize Thomas.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who condemned former President Trump two years ago for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, declined Wednesday to say whether Trump should now be criminally charged for those actions
McConnell, asked about a possible indictment of Trump, stated that he does not plan to “critique” GOP candidates for president.
“I’ve said every week out here that I’m not going to comment on the various candidates for the presidency. How I felt about that I expressed at the time, but I’m not going to start getting into sort of critiquing the various candidates for president,” McConnell told reporters when asked whether it would be legitimate for the Justice Department to charge Trump in connection with efforts to stop Congress’s certification of President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addresses reporters after the weekly policy luncheon on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. (Greg Nash)
Trump announced Tuesday that special counsel Jack Smith had informed him in a letter that he is the target of a grand jury investigation related to Jan. 6.
The target letter cites three statutes that Trump may be charged under, including the deprivation of rights, conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States and tampering with a witness, according to news outlets.
McConnell excoriated Trump on the Senate floor in February 2021 at the conclusion of his second impeachment trial for provoking a mob of supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol and overrun its security to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” McConnell said.
More than 1,060 people have been charged by federal prosecutors because of their actions that day, and more than 600 people have pleaded guilty, according to a database compiled by National Public Radio.
More than 80 people have been convicted on all charges, while only two people have been acquitted on all charges.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Tuesday that being “practically and morally responsible” didn’t necessarily warrant criminal charges and that prosecutors would have to hew closely to the law and facts of the case.
“Practically and morally is something very different than legally, and I think that’s what the Justice Department has to look at. They’ve got to look at the law, the facts as they’ve interviewed people, and then make a determination about whether laws were broken,” he said.
The revelation that former President Trump faces a possible grand jury indictment connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and his efforts to hold on to power has landed like a bombshell on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers saw firsthand the violence unleashed that day.
Some GOP lawmakers rushed to Trump’s defense, but many Republicans in the Senate held back from defending the former president, who has been accused of stoking the Jan. 6 mob and who waited before calling on protesters to disperse.
The expected indictment separately poses a tough political problem for many Republicans critical of Trump, who remains wildly popular with the party’s base.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who hasn’t spoken to Trump since December 2020, stayed quiet about the news of yet another indictment against his onetime ally, who is now leading the Republican presidential primary field by 30 points in national polls.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addresses reporters after the weekly policy luncheon on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. (Greg Nash)
His top deputies, Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), reacted with caution.
Asked whether it would be “legitimate” for special counsel Jack Smith to charge Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Thune said it would depend on the facts and evidence presented.
“That’s going to depend on whether or not laws were broken," he said. "So clearly, I don’t know what they’re looking at. But I’m sure we’ll know in due time.”
Cornyn dodged the politically charged topic altogether, arguing the Justice Department has the authority to investigate whether Trump broke the laws in trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
“I think that’s entirely within the purview of the Department of Justice and has nothing to do with the United States Senate,” he said.
Asked if Smith is a “credible prosecutor,” he said, “I have no knowledge of anything approaching that.”
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who called the indictment of Trump last month for violating the Espionage Act “political” and “rotten,” was the only senior member of the Republican leadership to accuse the Justice Department of acting on political motives.
“It looks like the president is targeting his most popular opponent. Isn't that interesting? Sounds political to me,” he said.
Asked if he saw any qualitative difference between the 37 felony counts federal prosecutors brought against Trump last month for refusing to turn over classified documents he kept improperly at Mar-a-Lago and new charges related to Jan. 6, Barrasso saw both indictments as political attacks.
“The administration is siccing its dogs on the former president of the United States and their most formidable opponent,” he said.
Senate Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) only said, “It’s a never-ending story, that’s my comment.”
The generally muted response from Senate Republican leaders posed a stark contrast with House Republican leaders, who rushed to Trump’s defense.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested the Justice Department is bringing new charges against Trump because he is leading the Republican presidential field by double digits and pulled ahead of President Biden in a recent poll.
“Recently, President Trump went up in the polls and was actually surpassing President Biden for reelection. So what do they do now? Weaponize government to go after their No. 1 opponent,” McCarthy said Tuesday.
“This is not equal justice. They treat people differently and they go after their adversaries,” he said.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks to reporters during a media availability in Statuary Hall of the Capitol on Wednesday, July 19, 2023.
McCarthy’s comments reveal how his views of Trump’s culpability for the attack on the Capitol have evolved since January 2021, when he told GOP colleagues that Trump “bears responsibility for his words and actions — no if, ands or buts.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) accused the Justice Department of waging a politically motivated prosecution to distract from a whistleblower’s claims that senior administration officials interfered with an Internal Revenue Service investigation of Hunter Biden.
“Now you see the Biden administration going after President Trump once again, and it begs that question, ‘Is there a double standard? Is justice being administered equally?’” Scalise asked at a press conference.
Other Trump allies in the House joined the attack against the administration.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claimed Biden’s Justice Department did little to prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters who breached a federal courthouse in 2020 or to prosecute threats against conservative Supreme Court justices.
“But if you’re President Trump and do nothing wrong? PROSECUTE. Americans are tired of the double standard!” he tweeted.
Another Trump ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), attacked Smith on Twitter as a “lousy attorney” and pointed to the Supreme Court overturning his conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R).
“He only targets Republicans because he’s a weak little bitch for the Democrats,” she tweeted.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asks a question during a hearing on Wednesday, June 21, 2023 to discuss the report from Special Counsel John Durham about the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe into allegations of contacts between Russia and former President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Senate Republicans, many of whom have made clear they don’t want to see Trump as the party’s nominee for president in 2024, however, broke with their House GOP colleagues over the claim that the Justice Department is operating a “two-tier” system and holding Trump to a special standard.
“I think you’ve got to go where the facts lead you and determine whether or not laws are broken. But there shouldn’t be two systems of justice; everybody should be held accountable and there ought to be equal justice under the law,” Thune told reporters.
“Clearly in these circumstances, it’s a politically charged environment. I think it puts an even higher burden of proof on the Justice Department given the perceptions that people have about that but this has got to be driven by the law and the facts,” he said.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) addresses reporters after the weekly policy luncheon on Wednesday, July 19, 2023.
McConnell excoriated Trump on the Senate floor at the end of his 2021 impeachment trial for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol hallways and ransacked the Senate parliamentarian’s office.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” he declared, referring to the violence and chaos that resulted in injuries to more than 100 Capitol police officers.
One officer, Brian Sicknick, died of natural causes while defending the Capitol.
Thune said just because the Senate Republicans’ top leader called Trump “practically and morally” responsible, that did not necessarily warrant criminal charges.
“Practically and morally is something very different than legally, and I think that’s what the Justice Department has to look at. They’ve got to look at the law, the facts as they’ve interviewed people, and then make a determination about whether laws were broken,” he said.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted twice to convict Trump on impeachment charges — including on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6 riot — warned his House GOP colleagues about relentlessly attacking the Justice Department.
He voiced concern about "the diminution of institutions in which we rely as a society."
"A democracy works when we have confidence in the justice system, in the legal system, in our prosecutors and so forth. If we constantly attack and diminish them, that weakens the democracy," he said.
Republican senators say they’re worried that conservative populism, though always a part of the GOP, is beginning to take over the party, becoming more radical and threatening to cause them significant political problems heading into the 2024 election.
GOP senators are saying they’re being increasingly confronted by constituents who buy into discredited conspiracy theories such as the claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election or that federal agents incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Growing distrust with government institutions, from the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, make it more difficult for Republican lawmakers to govern.
Republican senators believe their party has a good chance to take back control of the White House and Senate, given President Biden’s low approval ratings and the favorable map of Senate seats up for reelection, but they regularly face political headaches caused by populist members of their party who say the rest of the GOP is out of step with mainstream America.
“We should be concerned about this as Republicans. I’m having more ‘rational Republicans’ coming up to me and saying, ‘I just don’t know how long I can stay in this party,’” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “Now our party is becoming known as a group of kind of extremist, populist over-the-top [people] where no one is taking us seriously anymore.
FILE - Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asks a question during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
“You have people who felt some allegiance to the party that are now really questioning, ‘Why am I [in the party?]” she added. “I think it’s going to get even more interesting as we move closer to the elections and we start going through some of these primary debates.
“Is it going to be a situation of who can be more outlandish than the other?” she asked.
Some Senate Republicans worry the populist winds are downgrading their chances of picking up seats in 2024.
“There are an astonishing number of people in my state who believe the election was stolen,” said one Republican senator who requested anonymity to talk about the growing popularity of conservative conspiracy theories at home.
As an example, some Republicans point to Arizona, where Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), an independent who left the Democratic Party last year, is up for reelection.
Sinema is likely to face a challenge from the left in the likely Democratic nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) as well as a GOP nominee. If that nominee is former TV anchor Kari Lake, who has embraced conspiracy theories about elections and lost a gubernatorial race last year, many in the GOP think they’re in trouble.
One senior Senate Republican strategist, assessing the race, lamented that “the Republican Party in Arizona is a mess.”
Republican senators say they are alarmed at how many Republicans, including those with higher levels of education and income, buy the unsubstantiated claims that the last presidential election was stolen.
A second Republican senator who spoke with The Hill said the growing strength of radical populism “makes it a lot more difficult to govern, it makes it difficult to talk to constituents.”
“There are people who surprise me — I’m surprised they have those views. It’s amazing to me the number of people, the kind of people who think the election was stolen,” the lawmaker said. “I don’t want to use this word but it’s not just a ‘red-neck’ thing. It’s people in business, the president of a bank, a doctor.”
The lawmaker, who requested anonymity to discuss the political challenge posted by surging conservative populism, accused some fellow Republicans of trying to exploit voter discontent to gain local or national prominence.
“In my state there are a lot of folks who see Washington as disconnected, they see their way of life threatened. There’s something that generates discontent that elected officials take advantage of,” the senator said.
Tuberville’s controversies
Some of the biggest populist-linked headaches recently have come from Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R), a staunch ally of former President Trump who is now holding up more than 260 nonpolitical military promotions to protest the Defense Department’s abortion policy.
Tuberville caused an uproar early last week by defending the idea of letting white nationalists serve in the military and disputing the idea that white nationalism is an inherently racist ideology.
Tuberville later reversed himself after Senate Republican colleagues ranging from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) forcefully denounced white supremacy and white nationalism.
GOP senators also have to regularly distance themselves from the radical proposals of populist conservatives in the House, such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who earlier this year proposed cutting Department of Justice and FBI funding in response to federal investigations of Trump.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) pushed back on calls to defund the Justice Department, telling reporters: “Are we going to get rid of the Justice Department? No. I think defunding is a really bad idea.”
Thune later explained to The Hill: “There are seasons, swings back and forth in politics and we’re in one now where the dominant political thinking is more populist with respect to national security, foreign policy, some domestic issues.”
But he said “that stuff comes and goes and it’s built around personalities,” alluding to the broadly held view that Trump’s election to the presidency in 2016 and his lasting influence over the party has put his brand of populism at the forefront.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an advisor to the Senate Republican leadership, said bread-and-butter conservative economic ideas still resonated with voters, but he acknowledged “the cable news shows” continue to keep attention on themes that Trump likes to emphasize, such as election fraud and the “deep-state” control of the federal government.
“So there are some people paying attention to that but most people are trying to just get on with their lives,” he said. “There’s a lot of distrust of Washington, and who can blame people.”
“It concerns me that people lose faith in their institutions, but this has been a long story throughout our history. It’s nothing new although it’s troubling,” he said.
Waving off impeachment
Senate Republicans tried to wave off their House colleagues from advancing articles of impeachment authored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) against President Biden and rolled their eyes at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) attempt to expunge Trump’s impeachment record.
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) warned, “I fear that snap impeachments will become the norm, and they mustn't.”
Asked about efforts to erase Trump’s impeachment record, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) quoted the popular show “Succession”: “Logan Roy made a good point. These are not serious people.”
Romney, who was the GOP nominee for president in 2012 before Trump took over the party four years later, last year called Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) “morons” for speaking at a white nationalist event in Florida.
Asked this week about Tuberville’s defense of white nationalism and how it reflected on the GOP, Romney said: “Our party has lots of problems, add that to the list.”
The party of Reagan has transformed into the party of Trump, and to the dismay of some veteran Republican lawmakers, it doesn’t look like it’s going back to what it was anytime soon.
One ascendent young conservative leader, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who supported objecting to certifying Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, thinks the Republican Party’s embrace of populism is more than a passing fad.
He says the new era of politics is more than a battle between Trump allies and Trump haters, or even between Republicans and Democrats.
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference two years ago, he declared: “We have been governed by a political consensus forged by a political class that has lost touch with what binds us together as Americans. And it has lost sight of the basic requirements of liberty.”
“The great divide of our time is not between Trump supporters and Trump opponents, or between suburban voters and rural ones, or between Red America and Blue America,” he said. “No, the great divide of our time is between the political agenda of the leadership elite and the great and broad middle of our society. And to answer the discontent of our time, we must end that divide.”
Lawmakers are returning to Washington this week after the July Fourth recess with a number of priorities on the docket, including high-profile hearings, legislative pushes and, at the top of the list, the appropriations process.
The Senate returns to session Monday, and the House will gavel in Tuesday. Both chambers are scheduled to be in session for three weeks ahead of the August recess.
The House on Wednesday is set to hold a hearing featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray, who has emerged as a boogeyman on the right amid GOP claims that federal law enforcement agencies are politicized against Republicans.
On the Senate side, top officials from the PGA Tour are scheduled to testify as the organization’s merger with LIV Golf comes under scrutiny from congressional lawmakers. And senators are scheduled to receive a classified briefing on artificial intelligence as the matter comes under increased focus in the current Congress.
For both chambers, however, appropriations will be top of mind this week and throughout July as Congress stares down a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown. House and Senate lawmakers have started marking up appropriations bills, but they are doing so at different levels — putting the two chambers on a collision course and raising the possibility of a potential shutdown.
Wray to testify before House panel
FBI Director Christopher Wray is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, putting him face-to-face with some of his fiercest Republican opponents — a number of whom have floated impeaching the director.
The hearing, set to begin at 10 a.m., will cover “the politicization of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency under the direction” of Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, according to the panel. Both men have been top GOP targets this Congress.
The House GOP majority this Congress has consistently criticized the Justice Department — especially the FBI — arguing that federal law enforcement has been politicized and is biased against Republicans.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced articles of impeachment against Wray in May, accusing him of “facilitating the development of a Federal police force to intimidate, harass, and entrap American citizens that are deemed enemies of the Biden regime.”
Two Republicans who sit on the Judiciary Committee — Reps. Barry Moore (Ala.) and Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) — are co-sponsors of the impeachment resolution.
The hearings come on the heels of a heated showdown between Wray and the House Oversight Committee. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the panel, threatened to hold Wray in contempt over the FBI’s refusal to share a document detailing unverified allegations that then-Vice President Biden accepted a bribe, which the White House denies. On the eve of the vote, however, the FBI agreed to grant committee members access, leading Comer to cancel the vote.
PGA Tour officials to testify following merger with LIV Golf
The controversy surrounding the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger will make its way up to Capitol Hill this week with, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations set to hold a hearing on the deal, which will feature testimony from two top PGA Tour officials.
The hearing — scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. — is titled “The PGA-LIV Deal: Implications for the Future of Golf and Saudi Arabia’s Influence in the United States.” PGA Tour CEO Ron Price and board member Jimmy Dunne are slated to testify.
In a statement last week, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee, said the hearing would examine the PGA Tour-LIV Golf agreement and “the future of the PGA Tour and professional golf in the United States.”
The event comes just more than a month after the announcement of the merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, a deal that will create a new entity that has not yet been named, which will include the two golf businesses in addition to DP World Tour. The agreement also put an end to the pending antitrust litigation that existed between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
The deal, however, has sparked criticism from athletes and lawmakers alike, who are voicing concerns over the American PGA Tour teaming up with LIV Golf, which is based in Saudi Arabia, a country that has well-documented human rights abuses.
“While few details about the agreement are known, PIF’s role as an arm of the Saudi government and PGA Tour’s sudden and drastic reversal of position concerning LV Golf raises serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the agreement,” Blumenthal wrote to the PGA Tour commissioner and LIV Golf CEO last month.
Senate to received classified AI briefing, eyes SCOTUS reform markup
The Senate is scheduled to receive a classified briefing on artificial intelligence Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced over the weekend, as the top Democrat prioritizes AI in the current Congress.
The Defense Department and Intelligence Community will brief senators “to learn how we’re using and investing in AI to protect our national security and learn what our adversaries are doing in AI,” Schumer said in a letter to colleagues on Sunday.
Schumer said the briefing will be the first-ever classified all-senators briefing on national security and AI. It comes after the New York Democrat last month outlined his approach for crafting AI policy, which he dubbed the SAFE Innovation Framework for Artificial Intelligence.
In Sunday’s letter, Schumer also outlined the Senate’s agenda for July: legislation to lower the cost of insulin, prescription drug reform and measures to address Supreme Court ethics.
Some action on the latter issue, dealing with the bench, is expected this week: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has said his panel will mark up Supreme Court ethics reform legislation when the chamber returns after the July Fourth recess. Last week, he said an announcement on the timing of a vote would be made early this week.
Appropriations is the top priority
The top priority for Congress heading into the three-week July sprint is government funding, as lawmakers race to pass all 12 appropriations bills ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline — a task that is appearing more and more difficult as complicating dynamics emerge.
In the House, conservatives are pushing for aggressive cuts when it comes to the appropriations process — they want spending to move back to 2022 levels — which is below the levels that were set in the debt limit deal President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) cut last month. The hard-line stance comes after conservatives voiced strong criticism of that very debt limit deal, arguing that it did not do enough to bring down the deficit.
In a show of good faith to those conservatives, the House began marking up appropriations bills at 2022 levels, but the right-wing Republicans are skeptical, accusing leadership of using budgetary gimmicks known as recessions to make it look like they are spending less than they are.
Complicating the matter even more, the Senate is marking up appropriations bills at the levels set in the debt limit deal, setting the stage for a chamber vs. chamber clash that could bring the government to the brink of a shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is planning a big change for the body this fall: actual legislative work. Until now, his focus primarily has been on confirming President Joe Biden’s nominees. When the Senate returns from celebrating Independence Day over the next three weeks, the focus will shift to legislative business—not just the must-pass spending bills to keep government open and other necessities, but some bipartisan legislation that should put Democrats on better footing for a tough 2024 battle ahead.
The election map next year is not favorable to Democrats. Schumer’s calculation in setting an ambitious agenda ahead of it seems two-fold: create an opportunity for a Democratic-majority Senate to bank key accomplishments to run on, and force Republicans to decide whether they should block other Republicans’ pet legislation. The strategy has another upside: showcasing just how much the Republican-led House is mired in carrying out Donald Trump’s revenge agenda of impeachment—and impeachment-expunging—nonsense.
Schumer told Politico that there are a “bunch of Republicans” who want to work with Democrats to get their stuff through. “Legislating in the Senate with the rules we have is not easy, right? But if you push ahead, we’re going to get some good things done.” That’s Schumer setting the challenge for Republicans on the filibuster. Either they can give their Republican colleagues actual achievements to run on, even though it also helps Democrats, or they can be like the House Freedom Caucus and shut everything down.
Regulating artificial intelligence is just one example of legislation Schumer is working on with Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young and Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota. Another is a bipartisan effort from the two Montanans, Democrat Jon Tester and Republican Steve Daines. It would open up financial institutions to marijuana-based businesses in states where it’s been legalized. That’s a great one for Schumer to push. Tester is up for reelection in 2024 in red Montana and his colleague Daines is in charge of Republican Senate campaigns for the cycle. That puts Daines in a tricky position.
Republicans are already arguing among themselves over another bill Schumer will bring up, a rail safety effort that Ohio Sens. Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Sherrod Brown have jointly worked on for the upcoming session. Brown is also up for reelection this cycle. The two teamed up after the catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The legislation is drawing criticism from other Republicans, including Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, part of Mitch McConnell’s leadership team. He says it’s too heavy on regulation.
Those bills are in addition to the legislation that will take up a good chunk of July and September, including the spending bills that absolutely must pass by the end of September to keep the government open. Expect the House/Senate divide to be dialed up to 10 by then. On top of that, the Senate must pass a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, where there’s a partisan fight over how many hours pilots must train, and a farm bill to reauthorize Department of Agriculture programs for another five years. That’s going to create another intra-Republican fight as the House tries to severely cut food assistance programs and the Senate Republicans try to get one of their top priority packages through the quagmire.
Getting all these major bills done may or may not happen more easily with a charm offensive to certain Republican senators from Schumer. They’re going to have to weigh a lot of factors: do they give Democrats accomplishments if it helps them, too? Do they allow a bunch of ambitious bipartisan bills to pass, knowing that it will make the House Republicans look even worse when they fail to act? Will they work on winning over non-extremist Republicans in that body to actually pass legislation? We’ll find out soon enough if those so-called moderate Republicans even exist in the first place.
Ultimately, Schumer’s ambitious bipartisan agenda will likely put Senate Republicans in the position of either embracing House Republicans and their revenge agenda or splintering away to pass legislation. The gridlock could also put the filibuster in the spotlight again if Republicans block their own bills. That could help make the case for filibuster reform in 2025 if Democrats keep the majority.
Republican senators are leaning on Chief Justice John Roberts to do something about the Supreme Court's appearance problem in the wake of reports that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted luxury vacations from conservative donors.
While Republicans don’t support Supreme Court ethics reform legislation sponsored by Democrats, they think the reports that Thomas and Alito accepted expensive vacations funded by wealthy donors has created a real public relations problem for the court.
These lawmakers want Roberts to take the issue of legislation out of Congress’s hands by issuing a judicial code of ethics or some other updated statement of principles for he and his fellow justices.
“I think it would be helpful for the court to up its game. I don’t want Congress to start micromanaging the court but I think confidence-building would be had if they were more clear on some of this stuff,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
ProPublica this week reported that Alito flew on a private plane owned by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer to a luxury fishing lodge in Alaska in 2008.
Alito later decided not to recuse himself from a 2014 case that pitted the Republic of Argentina against American creditors, including Singer. Singer’s hedge fund ultimately gained a $2.4 billion payout after the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in its favor.
Alito explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he did not include the private flight to the King Salmon fishing lodge on his financial disclosure reports because he viewed it as personal hospitality exempt from disclosure requirements.
Graham had previously called on Roberts to address criticism of the Supreme Court’s ethics policies after ProPublica reported earlier this year that Thomas had accepted luxury trips and other perks from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow over the course of two decades — none of which Thomas had included in financial disclosures.
ProPublica reported that Crow paid the tuition for Thomas’s grand-nephew at a private boarding school and that one of Crow’s companies bought a house in which Thomas had a one-third financial interest.
Graham told The Hill in April that the court should adopt new ethical guidelines.
“A lot of us are really leery of micromanaging the other branch, but I think that’s where the court is headed. At least that’s where I hope they are,” he said at the time.
“The reason we have these [ethics] rules on our side [of government] is to make sure people feel confident, and I think that’s where the court is headed.”
It’s unclear if Roberts could get his fellow justices to agree on any new course of action. But it’s clearly becoming a growing concern for some Republicans.
“I think that the nine justices need to get on the same page,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee. “I believe the Article III branch should address concerns amongst themselves without congressional intervention.
“I think it’s a process that the justices should go through and get consensus,” he added. “The chief justice can’t do it on his own.”
Asked if he thinks the Supreme Court has a public perception problem, Tillis said, “I do.”
“I think it’s time to show progress,” he said.
Roberts told an audience at the American Law Institute on May 23 that he and his fellow justices are working to reassure the public that it adheres to “the highest standards of conduct.”
“We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment. And I am confident that there are ways to do that consistent with our status as an independent branch of government and the Constitution’s separations of powers,” he said.
Yet a month later, the court hasn’t made any new announcement about its ethical rules or procedures.
Tillis thinks Roberts is having trouble getting all nine members of the high court to agree on how to address concerns about its conduct and adherence to ethical guidelines.
“If you had nine justices saying, 'We need to address this,' then they would be doing something. So logic tells me maybe there’s not consensus,” he said. “They need to sort it out. It’s their institution; they should preserve the integrity.”
Asked about Alito’s fishing trip, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), another Judiciary Committee member, said, "All of us need to be concerned about the public confidence in the courts, but this is not something that Congress has the authority over.”
“This is something that the court itself needs to come to grips with. I hope that John Roberts will do that,” he said. “I understand they’re still working on a review of their ethics policy.”
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), a key subcommittee chairman, announced Wednesday that they will mark up Supreme Court ethics legislation after the July 4 recess, but so far only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), has sponsored a Supreme Court ethics reform bill.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told reporters Wednesday that Congress needs to “stay out” of the court’s business.
Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a progressive advocacy group that favors Supreme Court reform, said the reports of Alito and Thomas accepting lavish gifts from wealthy donors has put GOP senators in a tough spot.
“These Republicans are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they don’t want to have to cooperate with Democrats on ethics legislation, because it sort of accepts the premise that the Republican justices are behaving corruptly and there’s a need to rein them in,” he said.
“The second thing is this constant drip, drip, drip of scandals emanating out of the court that is causing the courts to be highly salient politically with the public is making the Republicans’ resistance to ethics legislation look even worse,” Fallon added.
“The Republican lawmakers are sort of being dragged down with the court, because by running interference for the court on any of these ethics bills, they are attaching themselves to them and they are putting themselves in the position of having to defend every new scandal that comes out about trips that were taken by Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito,” he added. “The obvious solution in their minds is: ‘Roberts, this hot potato belongs in your lap, if you would just self-administer some improved ethics guidelines, then it would take some of the oomph out of these stories.’"
Carrie Campbell Severino, the president of JCN, a conservative advocacy group that favors “the Founders’ vision of a nation of limited government,” disputed the view that the Supreme Court has an image problem.
“The only image problem after ProPublica’s recent reporting is ProPublica’s own image attempting to cast completely legal and ethical behavior as somehow wrong,” she said. “Their reporting was absolutely shoddy.”
Severino said the notion that “Justice Alito’s fishing trip … would have triggered recusal obligations is absurd.”
“It’s even more absurd that the cases they’re talking about were decided by overwhelming majorities,” she said. “The Argentina case was not even close.”
ProPublica reported that Severino and JCN filed an amicus brief supporting Singer’s interest in the case, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said she agrees with GOP colleagues who want the court to address the growing criticism of its ethical standards.
“I certainly believe it’s in the Supreme Court’s and John Roberts’s not only perusal but best interests to address this issue to the satisfaction of the public and use the standards that should apply to anyone in the executive or legislative branch with regard to ethics,” she said.
While Supreme Court justices are subject to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which requires justices to file annual financial disclosure reports, they are not covered by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which covers all federal district and appellate courts.
Roberts included a statement of principles in an April 25 letter to Durbin, noting that Supreme Court justices agreed in 1991 to “follow the substance” of the Judicial Conference Regulations but cautioned they “are broadly worded principles” and “not themselves rules.”
The Judicial Conference revised its financial disclosure rules in March to specify that judges must disclose nonbusiness stays at resorts, the use of private jets and when gifts of hospitality are reimbursed by a third party.
Murkowski has co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) that would require the Supreme Court to establish its own ethics code and appoint an official to review potential conflicts and public complaints.
But so far, King, the lead sponsor, hasn’t found any other Republicans to sign on to the legislation.
King told The Hill that he was somewhat surprised that the proposal didn’t muster more bipartisan support since it didn’t prescribe any specific ethical rules for the court.
