Category Archives: Democrat

Answers may finally be coming over the cause of an apparent voting discrepancy in a state House of Representatives election last November in Windham which grabbed national exposure and even caught the attention of former President Donald Trump.

Gov. Chris Sununu this week signed Senate Bill 43 into law, which authorizes a forensic audit of the Rockingham County District 7 race in Windham.

The saga began on Election Day last November when Democrat Kristi St. Laurent, a candidate for one of four seats to represent Rockingham District 7 in the state House, was just 24 votes shy of winning. The narrow margin automatically triggered a recount of the ballots.

Then things really got interesting.

The recount discovered that four long-serving AccuVote optical scanning machines that were used on Election Day shorted the four GOP candidates in the contest between 297 and 303 votes. Three other Democratic candidates were shorted 18 to 28 votes, but the recount showed St. Laurent was credited with 99 more votes than were cast for her.

The result of the recount which was witnessed by dozens of officials and observers was, to say the least, puzzling.

With state law only allowing for a single recount in political races, New Hampshires Ballot Law Commission accepted the recounts results. But Republicans asked the state Attorney Generals Office to investigate the matter.

A bill calling for the forensic audit sailed through both the state House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support and landed on Sununus desk at the beginning of the week.

New Hampshire elections are safe, secure and reliable, Sununu said in a statement after signing the bill. Out of the hundreds of thousands of ballots cast this last year, we saw only very minor, isolated issues which is proof our system works. This bill will help us audit an isolated incident in Windham and keep the integrity of our system intact.

The audit will take place later this spring in Concord.

So how did Trump hear about the controversy?

Give credit there to Howie Carr, the well-known nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host and strong supporter and ally of the former president.

Carr briefly chatted with Trump in early February while dining at Mar-A-Lago, the former presidents residence and resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Carr said he told Trump about the vote discrepancy in Windham, which he said piqued the former presidents interest.

After Trump narrowly lost New Hampshire in the 2016 general election to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he charged without providing any proof that there was massive voter fraud in the state.

And Trump continues to refuse to concede the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden. He promoted unfounded claims that last years election was rigged and stolen from him as he unsuccessfully tried to reverse his loss to Biden.

As the first special election legislative election in New Hampshire this year, the showdown in Merrimack for the state House of Representatives seat left vacant by the December death of House Speaker Dick Hinch grabbed tons of attention in recent weeks, both in the Granite State and even nationally.

Merrimack town councilor Bill Boyd succeeded in his mission to keep the seat in Republican hands, defeating Democratic candidate and former state Rep. Wendy Thomas by a roughly 53%-45% margin.

Both parties spent a good amount of time and resources on the race.

Two potential 2024 GOP presidential contenders, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, each headlined virtual New Hampshire GOP fundraisers to help raise money for Boyd.

And state Democrats, looking to rebound from losing the majorities in the both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature as well as the Executive Council in the November elections, raised more than $32,000 and contacted over 10,000 voters on behalf of Thomas.

Special elections tend to draw outsized attention, and both sides were spotlighting the potential political ramifications of the contest.

First Congressional District 2020 Republican nominee Matt Mowers, who helped the NHGOP organize the Pompeo and Cotton fundraisers for Boyd, characterized Merrimack as a swing town.

You saw a lot of ticket splitting last year, he said.

He argued that Boyds win spells a lot of problems for Democrats in the midterms and its certainly encouraging for those of us who want to see more common sense, whether thats in Concord or down in Washington.

Longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley rejected the notion.

Merrimack is a traditionally Republican town, and the fact that Wendy Thomas came so close to victory shows just how strong our Democratic values are in red areas across the state, he said.

Buckley said the special election results were another step in the continued journey to turn Merrimack blue.

The participation by Pompeo and Cotton to help raise money for a special state legislative election should come as no surprise. This is New Hampshire, which for a century has held the first in the nation presidential primary.

With the early pre-season moves in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race already underway in New Hampshire as well as Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada, the other three early voting states in the primary and caucus calendar along the road to the White House, its never too early to make friends that could pay dividends down the road.

After Boyds victory, he received congratulatory calls from Pompeo, Cotton, as well as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2016 presidential candidate whos mulling another stab at the White House in 2024.

Later this month, on April 28, Christie will make a remote appearance before a virtual meeting of the Right of Centergroup of leading Granite State conservative activists and leaders thats co-chaired by NHGOP chair Steve Stepanek and former state House Speaker Bill Obrien.

Christie will become the second potential GOP White House hopeful this year following Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair to headline the groups regular meetings.

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On the Trail: Unravelling how Democrats in one NH race wound up getting extra votes - Concord Monitor

Everybody agrees the polls missed the mark in 2020, as they had four years earlier. But nobodys certain why.

In search of answers, five competing Democratic polling firms have decided to put their heads (and their data) together, forming a group that will undertake a major effort to figure out what went wrong in 2020 and how the polling industry can adjust.

The team released a memo today announcing the project and offering some preliminary findings that seek to address why polls again underestimated support for Donald Trump. But over all, the message was one of openness and uncertainty. The big takeaway: Things need to change, including the very nature of how polls are conducted.

The authors wrote that their analysis thus far had pushed them toward thinking that pollsters must take a boldly innovative approach when mapping out the road ahead.

We know we have to explore all possibilities, Fred Yang of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, one of the five firms involved in the study, said in an interview today.

That will probably mean embracing some tools that had been considered too untested for mainstream public polling: Officially, the survey-research community still considers live-interview phone calls to be the gold standard, but there is growing evidence that innovative methods, like sending respondents text messages that prompt them to respond to a survey online, could become essential.

And it could also mean going back to some methods that have become less common in recent decades, including conducting polls via door-to-door interviews, or paying respondents to participate.

We are going to put every solution, no matter how difficult, on the table, the memo read.

The consortium of Democratic firms plans to release a fuller report this year; so will a number of traditional survey-research institutions. The American Association for Public Opinion Research, which undertook a widely discussed post-mortem analysis in 2016, is already at work on another. AAPOR is a bastion of polling traditionalism, but if the Democratic groups preliminary report is any indication, even the associations coming analysis might acknowledge that the industry should embrace more experimental approaches to data collection.

In a separate analysis released late last month, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight found that traditional, live-interview phone polls werent meaningfully more accurate than others. In fact, out of dozens of polling firms analyzed, none of those with the lowest average error had exclusively used live-interview phone calls (and some hadnt used them at all). Two of the three most accurate firms were Republican-aligned companies that are held in suspicion by most leaders in the social-science world, partly because they use methods that have long been considered suspect including robo-calling, as well as newer techniques like contacting respondents via text message.

The Democratic firms memo said polls had slightly missed the mark when determining the makeup of the electorate last year. This means they misunderstood, to some degree, who was likely to vote and who wasnt: a crucial X factor in pre-election polling.

Among so-called low-propensity voters that is, the ones pollsters consider the least likely to turn out Republicans proved four times as likely as Democrats to actually end up casting a ballot in November. This can be taken as another indication of how effective Donald Trump was at expanding the Republican electorate, and pollsters difficulties accounting for that, particularly among white voters without college degrees and those in rural areas.

Tellingly, the researchers found that voters who considered Trump presidential were underrepresented in polls.

But a greater source of concern was so-called measurement error. Thats a fancy way of saying polls have had trouble figuring out what percentage of people in certain demographic groups plan to vote for one candidate over the other.

The report proposed some explanations for why there was significant measurement error in 2020 pre-election polling, and it landed on two big potential culprits. One was the higher prevalence of anti-institutional views (sometimes referred to as social distrust) among Trump supporters, meaning those voters would be less willing to respond to official surveys. The second explanation was the lower incidence of pandemic-related fears among Trump voters, meaning they were more likely than Biden voters to be willing to turn out to vote.

What we have settled on is the idea there is something systematically different about the people we reached, and the people we did not, the reports authors wrote. This problem appears to have been amplified when Trump was on the ballot, and it is these particular voters who Trump activated that did not participate in polls.

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Why do election fraud allegations live on, even after theyve been debunked? In our new audio series with Serial Productions, we went to one rural county to try to find out. Listen to the first episode now.

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Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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Can These Democratic Pollsters Figure Out What Went Wrong? - The New York Times

Half of Americans approve of Democratic congressional leaders' performance compared to only about a third who said the same of their GOP counterparts, according to a new Pew Research Poll out Friday.

The poll found that 50 percent of respondents overall approved of Democratic leaders in Congress and 47 percent disapproved.

Sixty-four percent of respondents disapproved of Republican congressional leaders, while 32 percent approved.

The support for Democratic leaders in Congress has jumped 9 points since the spring of 2019 in a time of divided government, when Democrats controlled the House and Republicans still held the Senate.

Pew attributed the increase in approval to higher approval ratings among Democratic voters.

Democrats were also found to be more supportive of their party's congressional leaders compared to Republicans.

The poll found 84 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents approved of their party's leaders in Congress, while only 55 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents approved of their party's leaders.

By contrast, 69 percent of Democrats approved of their party's leaders in 2019.

Aside from the support for Democratic leaders in Congress, the poll found that a majority of Americans approve of President BidenJoe BidenFour members of Sikh community among victims in Indianapolis shooting Overnight Health: NIH reverses Trump's ban on fetal tissue research | Biden investing .7B to fight virus variants | CDC panel to meet again Friday on J&J On The Money: Moderates' 0B infrastructure bill is a tough sell with Democrats | Justice Dept. sues Trump ally Roger Stone for unpaid taxes MORE's job performance.

A total of 59 percent of respondents approve of how Biden is handling his job as president, while 39 percent disapproved.

The number marks an increase of 5 points since March, when 54 percent said they approved of Biden's job performance.

Biden has spent his first few months in office focusing on legislative priorities that are broadly popular with the public, including pandemic relief and infrastructure.

The poll showed that the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief measure he signed into law in March, for example, was approved by 67 percent of respondents.

Other polls have indicated that the provision authorizing another round of stimulus checks, this time of up to $1,400 for individuals, proved to be particularly popular.

Pew's poll also found that 72 percent believe the Biden administration has done an excellent or good job in handling the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The views differed by party, but overall a majority approved: 88 percent of Democrats approve, compared to 55 percent of Republicans.

The poll was conducted April 5 to 11, with a 2.1 percentage point margin of error.

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Pew poll: 50 percent approve of Democrats in Congress | TheHill - The Hill

What theyve been very forthright about is protecting the institution against pressures from their own party. I know what thats like, McConnell said, referring to former President Donald Trumps demands that he kill the filibuster. Every time I said no. And its nice that there are Democrats left who respect the institution and dont want to destroy the very essence of the Senate.

Its a surprising turn for McConnell and his party, who tried unsuccessfully to defeat both centrist politicians in the 2018 election and only occasionally tried to woo the pair while they held the majority. But in a 50-50 Senate where Democrats are eager to sidestep Republicans, Sinema and Manchin are the GOPs most important allies under the dome. The more that duo resists liberal entreaties to gut the filibuster and fall in line, the more reassured Republicans are that the upper chamber can remain a check on their partys most left-leaning impulses while Democrats control Washington.

McConnells top lieutenant, John Thune of South Dakota, chats up both Democrats frequently on the floor and sometimes hangs out with them outside the Senate. He spoke of Manchin and Sinema in almost reverential terms on Wednesday.

For me right now, theyre almost guardians of democracy because theyre trying to protect us from the loss of the legislative filibuster and everything that would come with that. Theyre good people, Thune said in an interview. They want to do the right thing.

Manchin didnt quite return the compliments when asked about Republicans praise. Sure, hes sincere about working with them, but at some point he hopes the GOP budges a bit on its unrelenting criticism of President Joe Bidens domestic agenda.

I just hope they help me a little bit in bipartisanship, Manchin said of Republicans. Thats all."

Though moderation and deep relationships with the GOP unite them, Sinema and Manchin have yin-and-yang personalities. Sinema zips into votes quietly and rarely utters a word to the plethora of media stationed around the Capitol. Manchin is a gregarious backslapper who revels in a hallway gaggle or Sunday show appearance, an old-school retail politician who cant resist jumping into a bipartisan gang to try to make a deal.

And the two are dominating the otherwise barren fields of bipartisanship in todays Senate. Republicans are under the impression that both are sincere about pursuing a bipartisan infrastructure deal, not another party-line proposal.

Sinema is talking to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) about infrastructure, working with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on minimum wage legislation and trying to write a bill addressing the migration surge at the border with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). A spokesman for Sinema said she believes the best way to achieve lasting results for Arizona is through bipartisan negotiations.

And Manchin is the only Democrat not supporting the massive voting rights measure passed by the House, trying to force a bipartisan negotiation on infrastructure and digging in against the White House's initial offer on corporate tax hikes. He said he believes Republicans arent all talk and no give, that "they really want to work.

But what makes Manchin and Sinema particularly valuable to Republicans is their defense of the filibuster, which gives the GOP's 50-vote minority significant sway over the agenda. Both have recently dug into their defense of the 60-vote requirement to pass most bills, an indication that Democrats may simply lack the votes to squash the minority party's legislative power during this Congress.

Cornyn compared Sinema to former Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), beloved in his party, after she urged senators to change their habits instead of messing with the Senate rules. I thought that was a pretty profound statement on her part," the Texan said.

Theyve both taken strong stands against the filibuster, and [Republicans are] very much committed to that, said Capito, Manchin's junior senator and friendly with Sinema since their days in the House.

Manchin and Sinema's frequent defense of the filibuster, Capito added, helps "reinforce how valuable that is to the institution but also, obviously, to us as Republicans.

Romney said he speaks to both of them every day, describing the two prominent filibuster backers as proxies for a larger group of Democrats who more quietly voice their own concerns about killing the 60-vote threshold.

There are a number of Democrats that are appreciative of the fact that Manchin and Sinema are standing tall [and] taking the slings and arrows, Romney said.

Whats more, Republicans acknowledge the duo are the Hill's most effective advocates for moderation as Democrats eye a go-it-alone approach on huge spending bills. When they can't drive compromise directly through legislation that's passed through budget reconciliation, GOP senators can influence the process by keeping close ties to Sinema and Manchin.

Notably, Manchins personal relationship with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) ended up forcing Democrats into a last-minute paring back of unemployment benefits during debate on Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid bill. No Republicans supported that legislation, but they were able to make their mark through Manchin.

If Democrats do pursue infrastructure legislation along party lines, Republicans will once again look to their two buddies across the aisle to exert a centrist pull -- whether or not progressives howl in protest.

Manchin and Sinema's influence has "been very helpful, said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). Now, I dont want to overstate that. I dont think either one of them have fundamentally changed the direction of important Democratic legislation just yet. But theyve certainly slowed down a lot of the more radical ideas.

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Mitch McConnell wants his conference to say nice things about these 2 Democrats - POLITICO

BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. A lawsuit has been filed to prevent a number of Saratoga County Democrats seeking elective office in November from getting the Working Families Party ballot line.

The filing on behalf of Thomas J. Sartin, Jennyfer L. Gleason, Julia L. Spratt, Robert J. Decelle, Jeremy B. Fifield, Stefanie E. Music, Michael J. Music Jr. and Jeffrey D. Cleary was submitted April 7 in Saratoga County State Supreme Court. The lawsuit was filed by the plaintiffs attorney former Congressman John Sweeney.

The filing requests that the Working Families designating petitions naming the Democrats and the respective offices they seek be declared insufficient, defective, invalid, and null and void to designate or authorize them as candidates for the partys June 22 primary.

It also requests the court direct and compel the Saratoga County Board of Elections not certify, print, or place the names of the candidates on the Working Families primary election ballot.

Upon receiving the lawsuit Judge Dianne Freestone ordered representatives for the opposing parties to show cause before a special term of the court at 3 p.m. Wednesday April 14 at the Saratoga County Courthouse in Ballston Spa.

The defendants in the case are candidates Jerome Holland, Melissa L. Boxer, Jennifer P. Jeram, Alexander CD Patterson, Michael J. Williams, Cynthia C. Young, John T. Fealy, Christopher Scarincio, Erin H. Trombley, Tara N. Gaston, John E. Bishop and Barbara K. Turpin. Included also as a defendant is the Saratoga County Board of Elections.

Jeram is running for Clifton Park Town Judge trying to oust longtime Judge James Hughes, a Republican. Boxer is challenging incumbent Clifton Park Supervisor Philip Barrett, also a Republican, while Patterson is running against three Republican incumbents for a seat on the Clifton Park Town Board.

Young is running to retain her seat on the Malta Town Board. Fealy is running to join Young on the town board and Williams is running for town supervisor.

Holland is running for Saratoga County Sheriff, Scarincio for Moreau Superintendent of Highways, Trombley for a seat on the Moreau Town Board and Gaston is running to retain her seat as one of two Saratoga Springs County Supervisors. Bishop and Turpin are running for council seats in the Town of Waterford.

The filing states that the plaintiffs are challenging the Democrats designating petitions for the Working Families ballot line because they are photocopies of the signed petitions and signatures rather than the hard copy petitions themselves. As such, the filing states, they do not comply with election law.

The lawsuit claims those Democratic candidates who are not enrolled members of the Working Family Party took a shortcut in the petitioning process by using the photocopies rather than getting them signed by the presiding officer and secretary of the Working Family Party.

There is no basis in law or in equity for a court to waive the strict statutory language and requirement of a duly executed Certificate to allow a non-enrolled candidate to carry the banner and name of a political party in which they chose not to enroll, the filing states.

Though the Saratoga County Board of Elections had not ruled on the petitions validity as of the filing, the lawsuit asks the court to make sure the board adheres to the plaintiffs version of the law and rule the Working Families Party authorization of the petitions to be invalid.

In an email about the filing Jeram said as a newcomer to the intricacies involved in running for elective office she is troubled by the filing in general and in particular with her race because it is her belief that the lawsuit has no merit whatsoever.

The statute they relied on in their filing does not apply to judicial candidates, she said.

Additionally, Jeram feels the lawsuit may get tossed because an Executive Order by Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2020 states that due to the public health emergency posed by the COVID-19 virus, notary publics are authorized to officiate documents remotely and can use audio-video technology to witness a document being signed and then notarize it.

Jeram said she has retained counsel and believes the county Board of Elections has also.

Im still excited to be running for town office but it is frustrating that the Republican Party does not seem to want voters to actually have a vote, she said.

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Lawsuit seeks to disqualify Democrats from Working Families Party support - The Saratogian

Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek

Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek

Super Bowl flyovers, TV commercials celebrating veterans, yellow-ribbon bumper stickers: Its long been reflexive for Americans of all political persuasions to support our troops. Following Sept. 11 and the deployment of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, pride in the U.S. military and gratitude for troops service ran high, even among people opposed to those conflicts. In the years since 2000, multiple surveys have shown the public trusts the U.S. military more than any other public institutionmore than organized religion and the Supreme Court, and vastly more than Congress.

But the increasing politicization of the military, a string of sexual assault scandals, the role of dozens of enlisted troops and veterans in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, and other factors have shaken that trust. According to a Reagan Institute survey conducted in February, confidence in the military has fallen by 14 percentage points since 2018from 70% to 56%. The drop was significant regardless of age, gender, or party affiliation, and is in line with trends other researchers have observed.

Share with a great deal of trust and confidence in U.S. institutions

Data: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute

Criticism of the military on Capitol Hill has intensified. Democrats say the Pentagon must do more to stamp out extremist ideology in the ranks following Jan. 6. The news is full of examples of service members who have extremist beliefs, Representative Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Committee, said at a March 24 hearing on the issue. It is also obvious that our military leaders are untrained in the symbols and language of these hate groups.

Conservatives are lambasting military policies they regard as woke. Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month called maternity flight suits for women troops a mockery and a distraction from combating China and other threats. When military leaders rebuked Carlson, Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, took his side, claiming that the officers were stifling public dissent. He asked for a meeting with the commandant of the Marine Corps over the issue.

Jim Golby, who studies civil-military relations at the Center for a New American Security, says he cant remember a time when perceptions of the military have been so polarized. Different parts of the public are looking at the military and creating narratives that they dont like, he says.

Share with a great deal of trust and confidence in U.S. institutions

Data: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute

Former President Donald Trump had a large role in driving this politicization. At the beginning of his presidency, Trump with great fanfare named retired generals to leading positions, including former Marines Jim Mattis as defense secretary and John Kelly as White House chief of staff. Almost as quickly as he claimed them as my generals, he turned on them. Trump also drew the military deeper into the culture wars, banning transgender people from serving (a policy undone by President Joe Biden) and opposing the Pentagon when it began a process to remove the names of Confederate leaders from military bases.

Last June, during a summer of nationwide protests against police violence, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, marched across Washington, D.C.s Lafayette Square with Trump for a photo op outside St. Johns Church. Law enforcement officers used chemical irritants to clear the park of peaceful protesters just prior to the event. Critics including prominent Democrats and former high-ranking officers said Milleys presence lent the militarys imprimatur to a political event that undercut freedom of speech and assembly. Milley, who wore battle fatigues that day, later apologized for his role.

President Trumps rhetoric, particularly against senior officers toward the end of his term, probably helped open some of the gates to distrust of the military among Republicans, says Golby. The response to Lafayette Square helped open the floodgates on the Democratic side.

Criticism over Lafayette Square may have contributed to the National Guards slow mobilization to help the U.S. Capitol Police on Jan. 6. The commanding officer of the D.C. National Guard said a senior Army officer expressed concern about the optics of sending troops.

Meanwhile, reports of sexual assault in the ranks have been rising. The killing of 20-year-old Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood in Texas last year sparked outrage. Guillens family said she was harassed before being murdered (a soldier suspected in her death killed himself). The Army went on to fire or suspend 14 base leaders over a culture that it said fostered harassment and sexual assault.

With the racial issues, with the sex assault issues, with the misogyny issues, the average American is saying, Maybe the military isnt the leader in all these areas, says Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, a group that works to end sexual violence in the military.

The Pentagons inability to curb rape in the ranks has led lawmakers to push for legislation that would move handling of sexual assault cases outside the chain of command, something the department has resisted. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered a review of all the actions that have been taken on the issue to date. And on April 9, after a mandated period for all units to discuss the problem of extremism, the Pentagon announced plans to crack down on it with new regulations, screening, and training.

The military is still the most trusted institution in America, and we take that trust and confidence very seriously, Pentagon spokesman JohnKirby said in a statement. While hyper-partisanship today is certainly a concern, the men and women of the Department of Defense are focused on doing their job of protecting and defending the United States, and always earning and deserving the trust of the American people.

The military still enjoys more support than most institutions in American life. In polls, clear majorities of respondents consistently say they have confidence in the military, a rarity for any public institution, according to Jeff Jones at Gallup. But opinion has been so high for so long that even a slight change is cause for concern among people who follow the issue closely. Its possible, Golby worries, that the military could become like the Supreme Court, with Republicans and Democrats alike viewing some high-ranking officers as theirs and others as political opponents.

If the military becomes politicized, it becomes more and more likely that the military could intervene in politics, says Elliot Ackerman, an author and former Marine who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. And a military intervention in politics concerns me the most, whatever shape it would take. With Travis Tritten

(Updated with a statement from the Pentagon in 13th paragraph. )

BOTTOM LINE - Rising politicization of the military, a sexual assault crisis on bases, and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack have lowered public trust in the institution, a trend that worries experts.

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Trust in US Military Is Falling Among Democrats and Republicans - Bloomberg

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) More than a dozen Senate Democrats sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday complaining of a woeful environmental track record by his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, and urging him to condition any support for Amazon preservation on significant progress reducing deforestation.

The letter was signed by senators including Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Bob Menendez, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. It comes just days before Biden is expected to meet with Bolsonaro and other foreign leaders at a U.S.-organized climate summit that was a major plank of his campaign pledge to more aggressively fight climate change.

The letter seems aimed at curtailing a fledgling bid by Bolsonaro, a far-right climate skeptic who was a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, to refashion himself as a willing partner of Biden on the environment in the hopes of securing billions of dollars in foreign aid to promote sustainable development in the Amazon.

The senators warn that failure to slow deforestation will also affect their willingness to support Brazils bid to join the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development a long-sought goal of Bolsonaro.

The 15 senators, who also include former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, said they support cooperation on the Amazon between the U.S. and Brazilian governments, but questioned Bolsonaros credibility.

President Bolsonaros rhetoric and policies have effectively given a green light to the dangerous criminals operating in the Amazon, allowing them to dramatically expand their activities, the senators wrote in the letter obtained by The Associated Press, citing recent reporting on abuses by Human Rights Watch.

A U.S.-Brazil partnership can only be possible if the Bolsonaro administration begins to take Brazils climate commitments seriously and only if it protects, supports, and engages meaningfully with the many Brazilians who can help the country fulfill them, the lawmakers add.

Bolsonaro has sided with powerful agribusiness interests, cast aspersions on environmental activists and snarled at European leaders who decried deforestation in the Amazon as destruction of the worlds largest rainforest has surged toward its worst level since 2008.

On the campaign trail, Biden proposed countries provide Brazil with $20 billion to fight deforestation and said the country should face repercussions if it fails. At the time, Bolsonaro labeled Bidens comments as regrettable and disastrous.

Bilateral talks on the environment with Brazil began on Feb. 17, led by Bidens special climate envoy, John Kerry, The two sides have held regular technical meetings in the run-up to the April 22-23 climate summit, which is taking place online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Brazil is striving to show its shift in rhetoric amounts to more than empty talk.

In a seven-page letter addressed to Biden on April 14, Bolsonaro recognized that his government needs to boost its performance curtailing illegal logging. He also said he supports sustainable development with economic alternatives for the regions impoverished residents and that he is committed to eliminating illegal deforestation by 2030.

To accomplish those goals, he said Brazil will require outside resources, adding that aid from the U.S. government would be very welcome.

Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to the U.S., said it remains to be seen whether the tone of Bolsonaros letter will match his speech at the summit.

Brazils Environment Minister Ricardo Salles recently told reporters he is seeking $1 billion in foreign assistance to support efforts to reduce deforestation by 30% to 40% in 12 months and that, without that sum, he would be unable to set a target. Brazilian spending to protect the environment has been sliding for years, and under Bolsonaro the ministrys budget outlook plunged another 25% this year, the lowest level in two decades.

The ministry didnt respond to an AP request for comment about its proposals.

The U.S. senators argue Biden must see success before writing a check. They argue Bolsonaro has derided the environmental regulator and sabotaged its enforcement capabilities, sought to weaken protections for Indigenous territories, exhibited contempt for environmentalists and been reluctant to curb lawlessness that fuels destruction and violence.

Any U.S. assistance to Brazil related to the Amazon should be conditioned on the Brazilian government making significant and sustained progress in two critical areas: reducing deforestation and ending impunity for environmental crimes and acts of intimidation and violence against forest defenders, the senators wrote.

Climatologists have warned that continued deforestation will push the Amazon beyond a tipping point, and its subsequent decomposition would release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide, making the Paris Agreements climate goals even harder to achieve.

However, Brazil has shown itself capable of driving down Amazon deforestation in the past, having reached all-time low in 2012. That started ticking upwards in the years thereafter, then exploded in the first year of Bolsonaros administration and rose again last year.

Amid outcry from European governments and threats of divestment by institutional investors, Bolsonaro in 2019 placed the army in charge of tamping down deforestation, despite experts criticism that soldiers are both costly and untrained for such missions.

Preliminary data indicates deforestation has started declining from its record level, though it remains well above the average of the preceding decade. Vice President Hamilton Mouro, a general who leads the program, announced earlier that the army-led program will end at the end of April, returning enforcement duties to environmental agencies.

Brazilian officials have been scrambling to present Bolsonaro as a committed ally of the Biden administration on climate issues, said Daniel Wilkinson, who runs Human Rights Watchs environmental program. His new climate-friendly rhetoric simply cannot and should not be taken seriously in the absence of actual results.

The senators rebuke comes amid a flurry of domestic efforts in Brazil to cast Bolsonaros administration as a bad-faith negotiator.

More than 200 nongovernment organizations and networks signed a letter that said climate negotiations with the U.S. and other foreign governments are taking place out of the public view and that no Amazon solutions can be expected from closed-door meetings. They said talks shouldnt advance until Brazil has cut deforestation rates.

A video produced by the Association of Brazils Indigenous Peoples also warned Biden not to trust Bolsonaro to negotiate the Amazons future.

Barbosa, who was Brazils ambassador to the U.S. for both center-right and leftist governments from 1999 to 2004, said Bolsonaro will face difficulty overcoming the credibility gap created by his newfound discourse about fighting deforestation and the negative results of the last few years.

Those two things must be reconciled, he said. Until then, no one will enter into serious negotiations with Brazil to transfer resources.

___

Goodman reported from Miami.

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Senate Democrats urge Biden to condition aid to Brazil - The Associated Press

On Friday's edition of "Hannity," Fox News host Sean Hannity slammed the Democrats for their push to "cement their power" with legislation to pack the Supreme Court, plan for D.C. statehood, COVID relief and more. Hannity commenting that the American people will soon see if President Biden is indeed in charge of his party.

HANNITY: This week, while we focused on the growing tensions in America's major cities, theDemocratic Party has been very busy. Just as we predicted on the campaign trail, the left is now plotting to cement their power in perpetuity with a series of illicit moves.

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Were watching what are statist, authoritarian measures that are insane.That would forever change this country in ways most people cant even imagine. By the way, last year, candidate Joe Biden flatly told we the American people that he supported "none" of these proposals. Maybe he forgot.

...

In the coming weeks we're going to see if Joe Biden is even actually in charge. Because he seems to be led by the most radical elements of his party. The radical socialists, the squad seems to be in control of pretty much everything. So is he going to stand by his decades-long convictions? Or will he change his position at the drop of a hat because he is governed by the radical socialists?

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Hannity: Democrats seeking to 'cement their power in perpetuity' with illicit moves - Fox News

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President Joe Biden unveiled a $2.25 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan last monthand has promised to seek input from Republican lawmakers on its ultimate design. That courtship begins Monday when Biden and Vice President Harris meet with a bipartisan group of House and Senate members to discuss the proposal. But his administration has already signaled its willingness to push a bill through Congress withonly Democraticvotes, a route subject to the byzantine rules of the budget reconciliation process that could muck up Bidens agenda.

Behind closed doors, Democrats in Congress are considering a drastic move to make their push around those rules easier: Fire the director of the Congressional Budget Office, the scorekeeping agency that measures the federal budget impact of pending legislation. The interest stems from some Democrats disappointment over the CBOs recent scores of the partys top priorities. Such a move would make the ostensibly nonpartisan office a wonky pawn in the three-dimension chess game Democrats hope to play to push Bidens agenda through Congress.

The move is being deliberated among Senate Democratic staff, according to several senior Democratic sources, with some outreach to progressive House members. Staffers for the Senate Committee on the Budget, which is chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have already provided Senate Democratic leadership with a list of potential replacements for the role.

Removing the CBO director isjust one aspect of a larger plan Democrats are hatching to pass Bidens agenda in a narrowly divided Congress, where the party holdsthe majority by just one vote. In addition to usingreconciliationto get much of it over the finish line, the Senate parliamentarian recently signed off on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers (D-N.Y.) request to revise budget bills to include pieces of Bidens jobs planessentially opening the door for Democrats to pass bills with a simple majority at least three more times between now and the 2022 midterms.

The CBOs purpose is to provide Congress with analyses of bills fiscal considerations as well as projections of broader economic trends. Itscurrent director is Phillip Swagel, who was appointed to a four-year term in June 2019. Prior to his job at the CBO, Swagel had worked in the conservative world of economists, having served as an assistant Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush, where he oversaw policies relating to the financial crisis, and held various roles on Bushs Council of Economic Advisors. He has also held roles at the American Enterprise and Milken Institutes, two conservative think tanks. Swagels CBO nomination was spearheaded by then-Senate budget committee Chair Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) through an informal arrangement in which the House and Senate Budget chairs alternate leading the selection processthough Swagel also earned praise from the Houses budget chair, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.).

The CBO drew some Democrats ire during the first weeks of the Biden administration when it determined that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would increase the federal deficit by $54 billion and lead to 1.4 million job losses over 10 years. Sanderswas especially vehement in excoriating the report, finding it hard to understand how the CBO reached such a conclusion about the deficit and job losses. He cited analyses from the University of California Berkeley and the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute that determined the opposite. (The Senate parliamentarian ultimately deemed the $15 minimum wage proposal ineligible for consideration under reconciliation.)

Some Democrats have taken the minimum wage report as a sign of how Swagels office will evaluate other liberal proposals and are mulling whether a left-leaning economist would look more favorably on the partys agenda. Theres particular worry over whether the CBO will give Bidens American Jobs Plan, which aims to invest $2.25 trillion over eight years, enough credit for raising revenues and contributing to economic growth, which might boot some of their top priorities from being eligible for reconciliation. The CBO is also likely to continue to raise concerns about rising interest rates and crowding out private investments if Congress doesnt act to tamp down the deficiteven though that hasnt happened as a result of the trillions in deficit spending Congress has authorized over the course of a pandemic. The concerns speak to a broader tension thats emerged in Washington economics in the first months of the Biden administration: Democrats embrace of big government and deficit spending defies the conventional wisdom of balanced budgets and highly targeted social programs, wisdom to which both parties had previously subscribed.

Firing the CBO director might not have any meaningful impact on how the office scores bills. The directors backgrounds often reflect the preferences of the party that nominates them, but directors maintain they suspend any partisanship while serving in the role.The CBOs mission is strictly nonpartisan, and it produces objective, impartial analysis, according to the offices website, and theagencyhires its employees solely on the basis of professional competence without regard to political affiliation, and they conduct the brunt of the offices analysis work. (When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the CBO pointed to sections of its website describing the agencys methodology and how it maintains impartiality in its work.)

While the CBO never makes policy recommendations and has stressed its scores are just one factor to consider in evaluating a bills potential,its reports carry extraordinary weight on Capitol Hill. And though economics strives to paint itself as a science, its not, governed more by a consensus view rather than foolproof predictions of the future. The CBO attempts to reflect the mainstream positions in economics and policy analysis, and I think its done a good job of doing that, says Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who worked at the CBO during the 1980s and 90s. But those mainstream positions have irritated some Democrats, who think its processes dont sufficiently account for policys potential long-term savings. The CBO does not, for example, take into account the cost savings associated with preventive health initiatives, nor the potential benefits of reduced carbon emissions when evaluating climate-related legislation. Thats one reason the Congressional Progressive Caucus negotiated with House leadership to exempt any climate-related bills from the paygo provision that requires any legislation that would increase the deficit to be offset by commensurate spending cuts.

Blaming the CBO for reaching politically inconvenient conclusions has been a rich bipartisan tradition. Republicans called for the office to be abolished in 2017 when one of its reports found the GOPs attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act would cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars. In response, all of the CBOs former directors fired back with a letter to express their strong objection to recent attacks on the integrity and professionalism of the agency. At the time, House budget Chair Yarmuth defended it against the GOPs attacks. In this world where things have become increasingly partisan, its not perfect, but I think its the closest we have to a neutral arbiter, CBPPs Van de Water says. Its important to maintain that and avoid making it look partisan when its actually trying to do its job.

Swagels term isnt set to end until 2023, and removing a directorrequires either the House or Senate to pass a resolution. Given Democrats narrow majority in the Senate, that responsibility wouldlikely fall on the House, and Yarmuth would lead the selection of Swagels replacement. Since Democrats control both chambers of Congress, the two budget chairs would be free to choose whoever theyd like without GOP buy-in.

But whispers among Senate staff may be where this effort stops. Chairman Yarmuth supports Director Swagel, a spokesperson for Yarmuth wrote in an email. We have not discussed and are not considering a replacement.

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Democrats' Next Plan to Get Biden's Agenda Over the Finish Line: Fire the Scorekeeper Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state are betting that the era of big government is back. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state are betting that the era of big government is back.

After years of avoiding words such as redistribution and labels such as socialist, the core of the Democratic Party is embracing big government.

The coronavirus pandemic, a changing party makeup and a softening approach to debt and deficit have combined to give Democrats the space to embrace expensive policies and federal government expansion that would have been unheard of a few years ago. President Biden is leading the charge, and many Democrats, not just progressives, are eagerly jumping on board.

In less than 100 days, Biden and congressional Democrats have passed the second-largest stimulus bill in U.S. history and launched an infrastructure plan that would spend trillions to remake the economy over the next decade. Polls show significant public support, even as Republicans in Congress have uniformly opposed the president's plans.

It's a dynamic Biden is facing without apology.

"I haven't been able to unite the Congress," Biden told reporters at the White House. "But I've been able to unite the country, based on the polling data."

Democrats are betting that a majority of voters, including many Republicans, actually want the federal government to step in and help heal the social and economic wounds caused by the pandemic.

Republicans argue that voters may like checks and support today, but the policies Biden is advocating, particularly changes to oil and gas production and an expanded focus on climate change, are far too progressive for average Americans.

Republicans called Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package a Trojan horse for left-wing policies as they voted against it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has repeatedly referred to Biden's plans, particularly on infrastructure, as a liberal wish list.

"Joe Biden may have won the nomination," McConnell told reporters in his home state of Kentucky. "But I think Bernie Sanders won the war over what the Democratic Party is these days."

So far, the majority of Democratic leaders are ignoring that message.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has explicitly embraced the term big government. He said the crisis caused by the coronavirus made clear that people want help and they want it to be more than just a one-time check from the federal government.

"We need big, bold change, and the federal government has to be a big part of it," Schumer told reporters last month in the Capitol. "I believe the American people want it and are ready for it."

It is a dramatic shift for a party that spent millions of dollars during the 2018 and 2020 campaigns carefully avoiding talk of big structural change and warding off the word "socialist."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of Democratic leadership and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Democrats are simply addressing persistent problems that the coronavirus exacerbated.

"You just look at so many women in the workforce today who have quietly stressed every single day about how they were going to get their kids to school and get to their job, and were they being paid enough? And did they have health care? And oh, gosh, is the child care provider going to show up? Or is there a place for my kid, you just stress through it," Murray said in an interview. "And now they realize that on their own, they can't deal with that; we need a country that helps us together solve these problems."

Democrats are responding to those questions with long-standing policy ideas that couldn't previously get traction. Murray said people are ready for the policies now and they like them.

"They're not saying, 'Leave us alone. Don't worry. We'll take care of this,' " she said. "I think some of the bigger impacts are just people seeing some of the stress taken off their individual life that has just kept them under for so long."

The shift in approach has been driven by more than the immediate needs of a public health crisis. Much has changed for Democrats in recent years, including the central philosophy of the people elected from the party.

Traditionally big spending, such as $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 relief and the idea of more than $2 trillion for infrastructure, would set off alarm bells about the deficit. That's what happened in 2009 when then-President Barack Obama passed a fraction of the spending Democrats are discussing now.

Phil Schiliro, a Democratic strategist and Obama's legislative director in 2009, said a number of Democrats in Congress truly viewed themselves as deficit hawks. The party as a whole worked to avoid being branded as big spenders.

Schiliro said Democrats have also shifted away from worrying about the deficit as they watched Republicans do the same.

"The first thing the Republican majority did with Donald Trump was pass the $2 trillion tax cuts, and the deficits exploded again," Schiliro said. "I think most Democrats have figured out this isn't on the level, that there's a double standard: one rule for Democratic presidents, and a different rule for Republican presidents."

With deficits on the back burner old Democratic ideas about big government had room to grow. Plus, many of the deficit-driven Democrats retired or lost reelection in the last decade.

"In the beginning of 2009, there were 58 Democrats, 14 of them, at least 14 came from Republican states," he said. "So putting aside any pressures from Republicans, there had to be a real effort to find common ground among Democrats."

Now, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is one of the only Democrats representing a state that former President Donald Trump won in 2020. And Manchin has made it clear he doesn't like partisan tactics, such as using budget reconciliation or ending the filibuster to pass all of this spending with a simple majority of Democrats in the Senate.

But there's still support for Biden's plans among many other moderate Democrats. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., represents a district Trump won twice. She said people there aren't complaining about spending or socialism or Senate tactics.

"They want us to figure out how we're going to get the job done. I don't hear anybody bring up to me reconciliation," Bustos said in an interview. "I'm not getting asked about the filibuster. I'm being asked to get the job done."

The main risk for Democrats, Bustos said, is that voters need the party to follow through on the promise of jobs and growth, with or without bipartisanship or GOP buy-in.

"I hope that we'll be able to come together," she said. "But if the other side of the aisle is not willing to do that, we're still going to get the job done."

Another risk is that the more progressive wing of the party is already warning that Biden's plans are too small. In an interview with NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said this of Biden's infrastructure plan: "It's disappointing. The size of it is disappointing. It's not enough."

Ocasio-Cortez wants something closer to $10 trillion, meaning Democrats may still have to revisit their past woes of finding agreement among themselves.

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Democrats Used To Run From Big Government Label; They're Now Embracing It - NPR