Politics

(WASHINGTON) — A year into Russia’s invasion, President Joe Biden has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to Ukraine.

He’s sent more than $31 billion in aid and weapons, made a surprise last-minute visit to the war zone, rallied NATO allies to stand firm in their commitments despite threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin and has promised continued support for President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of an expected new Russian offensive.

On Monday, Biden made clear his bond with Zelenskyy was unbreakable by going to Kyiv, a historic trip by a sitting president visiting a war zone where no U.S. troops had control, saying he wanted to show the world that America’s support for Ukraine is steadfast.

“You remind us that freedom is priceless,” Biden said at Mariinsky Palace. “It’s worth fighting for for as long as it takes. And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.”

The setting for those remarks was a sight unimaginable a year ago when Putin’s forces began their invasion. Expectations were that Russia would soon overtake Ukraine’s capital, possibly the entire country, and the war would quickly come to an end. However, in the 12 months that have gone by, Ukrainian forces have displayed a heroic effort on the battlefield, retaining much of their territory and revealing weaknesses in the Russian military.

Throughout the past year, President Biden has had to carefully calibrate his warnings to Russia, navigate backing Ukraine financially and militarily without direct U.S. involvement in the fighting and manage the war’s impact on the U.S. economy while garnering Americans’ support.

‘Minor incursion’

Before the invasion fully began, Biden seemed to throw into question how the U.S. and NATO would respond if Russia did take action against Ukraine — in the case of what he called a “minor incursion.”

A day later, the president made it “absolutely clear” that any Russian move into Ukraine would be seen as an “invasion.”

“I’ve been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any, any, assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. But — and it will be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I’ve discussed in detail with our allies, as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin,” he said on Jan. 20, 2022.

Sanctions

After Putin ordered Russian troops into two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine in February, Biden said Moscow’s latest moves amounted to “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” announcing new sanctions and saying he would send additional U.S. troops to the region.

He called the Russian moves “a flagrant violation of international law” and one that demanded “a firm response from the international community.”

“That means we’ve cut off Russia’s government from western financing. It can no longer raise money from the West and can not trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either,” he said.

Sanctions restricted Moscow’s ability to raise key funds, and were placed on Russia’s biggest banks, the country’s elites and their families.

‘Genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’

On April 12, President Biden used the term genocide to describe Putin’s actions in Ukraine following his forces retreating from Bucha and the atrocities carried out left for the world to see.

“Yes, I called it genocide. Because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian. And the evidence is mounting,” Biden said.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris said recently that the U.S. had determined Russia committed crimes against humanity — in Ukraine.

“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity. The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity,” she said at the Munich Security Conference.

It’s not clear what impact, if any, such a declaration would have.

According to a U.S. official, “the primary purpose” of the State Department’s determination “is to recognize the egregiousness of Russia’s atrocities, namely that members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials have committed crimes as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population of Ukraine.”

Security assistance

The Biden administration has provided more than $32 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded.

The latest package announced on the war’s anniversary Friday, which included more missiles for the HIMARS system, 155mm artillery ammunition, Switchblade drones, and other equipment.

On top of U.S. support, American allies and partners have committed more than $20 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, including tanks, armored vehicles, air-defense systems, artillery systems, and other crucial capabilities, according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The U.S. has worked hand-in-hand with the Ukrainians to provide them with key weapons, but Zelenskyy has been vocal that more is needed, including F-16 fighter jets.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has said F-16s are “not the key capability needed for now,” but that Biden and Zelenskyy discussed the request during his visit to Kyiv.

“F-16s are a question for the long-term defense of Ukraine and that’s a conversation that President Biden and President Zelenskyy had,” he said during a CNN Town Hall Thursday.

High gas prices

While the war in Ukraine has been fought thousands of miles away, Americans felt the impact at home in the form of alarmingly high prices at the gas pump.

“Putin’s price hike” was the term he used to deflect political criticism that the Biden administration was driving up costs for angry consumers.

As oil companies made staggering profits, Biden accused them of “war profiteering,” threatening them with higher taxes and other restrictions if they didn’t boost production and refinery capacity to help lower prices.

The sanctions imposed on Russia following the invasion and its effect on Russian oil sent crude prices skyrocketing, even though U.S. imports from Russia only account for 8% of all oil imports, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Starting in March, the president withdrew 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, leaving it at a level not seen since the 1980s. The administration has since started to purchase oil to replenish the SPR.

In June, AAA reported that the average price for a gallon of regular gas was a record-setting $5.

Challenges ahead

“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia – never,” Biden proclaimed during an energetic speech from Poland on Tuesday, highlighting the solidarity of the alliance opposing Putin’s invasion, while also setting the stage for the fight still to come.

Though Biden’s remarks felt like a victory speech — he cautioned that “we have to be honest and clear-eyed” about the current status of the battlefield.

“The defense of freedom is not the work of a day or of a year,” he said. “It’s always difficult. It’s always important. As Ukraine continue to defend itself against the Russian onslaught and launch counter offensive of its own, there will continue to be hard and very bitter days. Victories and tragedies. But Ukraine is steeled for the fight ahead.”

Public support at home for continuing to provide billions in aid to Ukraine is also declining, putting pressure on the president to persuade Americans that funding the war should continue, an argument he might find more difficult if, as expected, he runs for reelection.

A February AP-NORC poll showed only 48% of Americans favor the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine, compared to 60% of U.S. adults who supported the assistance in May 2022.

And a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found 33% of Americans think the U.S. is doing too much for Ukraine, up from 14% last spring.

Biden will also have to navigate a divided Republican Party with mixed views on how long the U.S. should be sending aid.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has voiced his support for Ukraine, but not a “blank check,” and he’s facing increasing pressure from his fellow House Republicans to scale back aid as they look to rein in spending overall.

On Friday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said his party was committed to backing Ukraine, saying in a statement, “… it is not an act of charity for the United States and our NATO allies to help supply the Ukrainian people’s self-defense. It is a direct investment in our own core national interests. If Putin were given a green light to destabilize Europe, invading and killing at will, the long-term cost to the United States in both dollars and security risks would be astronomically higher than the miniscule fraction of our GDP that we have invested in Ukraine’s defense thus far.”

And the White House has already begun warning that China could soon assist Russia with military support — a step that could dramatically shift the war in Russia’s favor.

“We have information that gives us concern that they are considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News.

Blinken has not explained where this heightened alert is stemming from. The State Department has been clear that they “have not yet seen the PRC [China] provide Russia with lethal aid, but we don’t believe they’ve taken it off the table either.”

China’s President Xi Jinping plans to visit Russia this spring, but no meeting between the two leaders has been announced.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — As Democrats set their sights on the 2024 presidential cycle, several prominent party figures remain at odds over which blue city should host the next Democratic National Convention. The final choice — which has narrowed to Atlanta, Chicago or New York City — would reflect, in part, what Democrats see as their political path to the White House in the coming year.

A DNC official confirms to ABC News that Houston is no longer in consideration, though it was.

Democrats expect the party’s final decision will come sometime in the spring, following a similar timeline established in 2019, when Milwaukee was chosen as the 2020 DNC host city. Plans to host tens of thousands of attendees in the midwestern city were later upended by COVID-19 restrictions and transformed the gathering into a virtual broadcast presentation incorporating other elements from across the country.

Although the 2024 city preference broadly rests with President Joe Biden, the lead-up to the party’s decision is full of intraparty jockeying. Democrats from various corners of the U.S. have been touting regional politics, historic ties to policies and voter demographics in hopes of bolstering their case for hosting privileges, which also traditionally serve to symbolize the party’s platform and future aspirations.

Southern Democrats argue their electorate has been a catalyst for the party’s political success in recent elections, given that Georgia voters contributed to Biden’s 2020 victory while also helping Democrats claim and then retain a majority in the Senate. In a recent letter addressed to Biden, a group of more than 65 Southern Democratic lawmakers and political leaders cited these electoral gains, as well as the South’s legacy in the civil rights movement, as reasons for backing Atlanta as the top choice for the 2024 national convention.

“Everything we have accomplished as a party since January of 2021 can be traced back to Georgia, and specifically, to the metro Atlanta area which swung the state in our favor,” the letter said.

The Southern Democrats also argued that choosing Atlanta would “inspire Democrats in other competitive Southern states to run, to organize, to fundraise, and to volunteer in what is now truly fertile Democratic territory.”

According to former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, who helped organize the letter, the South is poised for a groundswell of Democratic support.

“It is the message I think that Democrats want to show — that we see the potential in the South, we understand how elections have been going there, but we see the potential of the South. We appreciate that. And second of all, the strongest base of the Democratic Party is the African American vote, and Atlanta and Georgia are the heart of the civil rights movement, [given ties to] Dr. [Martin Luther] King, John Lewis, I mean, it just makes perfect sense,” Jones told ABC News.

Farther north, Midwestern Democrats are coalescing around Chicago’s pro-labor history and proximity to perennial battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin in their case for the nation’s third-largest city.

Similarly to the South, proponents of hosting the convention in the Midwest say the host city’s significance could affect support in surrounding political landscapes at a time when Democrats are facing hurdles with support from blue-collar workers who have historically been a key voting bloc for the party base.

“The Midwest makes or breaks presidential campaigns. Wisconsin has been the tipping-point state [that decided] both of the last two presidential elections. We are right next door to Chicago. Michigan’s not far, Minnesota is a key protector [of the battleground map]. Iowa is an aspirational state to flip. This is ground zero for the states that will take things one way or the other,” said Ben Wikler who serves as the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair.

Chicago-area labor groups are also voicing concerns about the potential for implied mixed messaging regarding the party’s policy platform if the convention were held in Georgia, a “right-to-work” state, which forbids union membership as a condition of employment — but, its critics say, also weakens the power of unions to negotiate with employers.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter told ABC News that the possible scenario of a convention in Georgia would make it difficult for Democratic delegates who are also part of labor groups to attend in a spirited way.

“It’ll be one of those things where, you know, folks will fly in and out to attend the convention but [regarding] the engagement around it, there’ll be a lot of hand wringing [about] even sitting in Atlanta … it’s not going to be something that’ll necessarily inspire anybody to get fired up and go, at least from our side of the fence,” Reiter said in an interview.

His concern leans on the president’s own expressed priority of pro-union labor, which also has battleground symbolism. After reiterating his belief in building a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America” during this year’s State of the Union address, Biden traveled to a union training center in Wisconsin the following day.

Although New York City is not historically a competitive presidential battleground, advocates for the nation’s biggest city, including Mayor Eric Adams, are also casting its vast labor force as a major facet of its convention bid.

“The Democratic Party is the party of labor and there’s no greater union town than NYC,” Adams tweeted this week while also calling out a joint effort with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, a local union, to promote New York City as a top DNC pick in a recently produced television ad.

“We’re a union town, labor strong and worker proud. Like New York, like the Democratic Party, we are diverse but not divided,” the ad boasts.

Despite efforts by two of the three cities in consideration to put a spotlight on labor, in defense of Atlanta, Jones said the goal is not to “pit labor against labor by any stretch.”

“You go where you want to promote your presence, and the Democratic Party will always promote organized labor and we can promote it in Georgia just like we can anywhere else,” the former senator said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Like other Republican governors, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is making school choice a high-profile political issue, declaring education reform her “top priority” and first big legislative play since taking office in January.

It’s facing pushback from public school educators and some parents — but Sanders is relishing the fight.

Thirteen days after painting her plan with broad strokes in the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, Sanders unveiled the text of her much-touted omnibus education reform bill this week. While supporters applaud Republican lawmakers for quickly taking it up, critics are concerned the bill — carrying massive implications on the state’s education system — is being “ramrodded” through the legislature, despite students’ best interests.

“This will be the biggest overhaul in education, I think, anywhere in the country — certainly in my home state of Arkansas — and we look forward to setting the standard on how this can be done right and being a blueprint for other states across the country to follow,” Sanders said in an interview Tuesday on Fox News, dismissing opposition as “the left mad that they’re losing control of the system.”

Two Republican state lawmakers on Monday filed the text of a 144-page bill, Arkansas LEARNS, just before close of business. By Wednesday, it had passed out of a Senate Education Committee, despite public opposition and bipartisan support for amendments, and by Thursday, the full Senate.

“I do probably like 60 to 70% of it,” said State Sen. Greg Leding, Democratic minority leader, in Wednesday’s hearing. “But as I’ve told a lot of people, if the last 30% of the cheeseburger is poison, it’s still a pretty lousy cheeseburger.”

More red states expand school choice

The bill lumps together dozens of policy changes, such as lifting teachers’ starting salaries from the lowest to among the highest in the nation, banning teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity before fifth grade, as well as Critical Race Theory at all levels, and includes an ambitious proposal to install a universal school voucher program in Arkansas within three years — a move advocates hail and critics warn against.

If the legislation is passed and signed, Arkansas could be the fifth state — following Arizona, West Virginia, Iowa and Utah — to enact universal school choice, as more Republican-led legislatures prioritize taking up school choice policies.

School choice — or the distribution of school vouchers or scholarships — essentially reallocates state funding to individual families that sign up, allowing their children to leave the public school system for any reason and use the money budgeted for them on private or home school instead. That will be around $7,500 in an “Education Freedom Account” for each Arkansas student, according to the proposed legislation and current funding.

“Arkansas, in passing this, would be the latest state to join the universal school choice revolution,” said Corey DeAngelis, a prominent school choice advocate and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children. “The dominoes are falling and there’s nothing the government school monopoly can do about it.”

But more than a dozen Arkansans with ties to public education told ABC News they were concerned about the changes and the speed with which they’re happening.

“With a bill of this size that fundamentally changes the entire public school system in Arkansas, to give less than 48 hours for the public to review it before brought to the Senate Education Committee for testimony is not fair to the taxpayers of this state,” said Veronica Paulson, a parent of two public school children in Little Rock.

Stacey McAdoo, the state’s “Teacher of the Year” in 2019, questioned whether Arkansas teachers were involved in writing the legislation.

“People need time to digest it. I’m still processing everything, ” McAdoo told ABC News. “I don’t think that I’ve had adequate time to be as prepared and comfortable with what exactly this is and what it means.”

Asked about the two-day turnaround from filing to committee approval, Sanders’ office dismissed the concerns raised by ABC News that there wasn’t ample time to read the text.

“Arkansas LEARNS is something the Governor spoke about enacting for two years while she was campaigning,” said spokesperson Alexa Henning. “The details of this legislation, which have been developed in collaboration with elected legislators for months, are not secret and have been available since the Governor announced the legislation on February 8. We welcome the conversation about how Arkansas LEARNS will give every child access to a quality education and set them on a path to success.”

Paulson, who did not vote for Sanders, was among a dozen protesters who gathered outside the governor’s mansion in Little Rock on Sunday night — anticipating the bill’s release — with signs reading “public $ for public schools” and “teacher over vouchers.”

“I’m very concerned about taxpayer dollars going to private schools that can discriminate against children,” Paulson told ABC News. “Saying the money should follow the student makes children compete for an education, which should never be the case.”

“I personally feel like this bill is an attack on public education,” said Latoya Morgan, a librarian at Carver Elementary School in Little Rock. “I understand everybody wants what’s best for their kids, right? But what if that’s taking away from somebody else’s child?”

Morgan argued vouchers would help families already paying for private school and hurt public school students in Arkansas, particularly those in rural areas who don’t have many alternative options available to them.

Private schools aren’t required to meet the same accountability standards as public schools, Morgan added, like providing transportation to all students or accepting those with behavioral issues. And vouchers don’t always cover the full tuition of a private school, making the switch unattainable for some low-income families, forced to stay in a school with now-diminishing resources.

“Because if I’m in rural Arkansas, what other option do I have? What private choices do I have?” Morgan said. “And then if I have a behavior issue, because private schools can be selective about who they allow in, how will those kids be serviced by this system? Why are we not prioritizing a plan to invest in building a public education system that we can all be proud of in the state of Arkansas?”

Supporters of vouchers say they encourage competition among schools and allow parents the power to decide which schools work for their kids — to “fund students, not systems.”

“Maybe government schools would do a better job if they operated more like businesses and had incentives to cater to the needs of their customers,” DeAngelis said.

State Rep. Tippi McCullough, a Democrat and former private school educator in Little Rock, told ABC News late Thursday she hopes there will be time for amendments in the House before the bill heads to Sanders’ desk for signing.

“This complex bill has been rushed, but after only two days of bipartisan questioning that pointed out serious problems, sponsors promise they are open to amendments,” she said. “Even though Democrats and educators haven’t been included in the process up to this point, in the spirit of the collaboration that the sponsors continue to tout, it is our hope that there will be a robust process to accept our clarifying and substantive amendments.”

‘This will devastate Arkansas’

An hour’s drive away from Little Rock, in Rosebud, a town with a population of less than 500, Steve Grappe, chair of the Rural Caucus of Arkansas, organized an emergency Zoom meeting Sunday night, where he and 40 other participants crafted a “mobilization plan” to defeat the bill.

“We’re trying to get in front of as many people as we can to let them know the dangers of what’s happening,” Grappe told ABC News. “What we think is going to happen is they’re going to drop this bill and ramrod it through as fast as they can – and not give the people of Arkansas even a chance to digest what is in this and make a decision. So what we’re trying to do is get people organized right now.”

Grappe, a Democrat, shared the same concerns about how vouchers would impact rural areas which dominate the state’s landscape.

“In many of our small towns, the school is the lifeblood of the town. It’s the only thing keeping the town together,” Grappe said. “Because rural Arkansas has been leaking population over the last two decades, this will devastate it. Try to get people to move into a town that doesn’t even have a school, and you got to send your kids 30 miles to school. We’re never going to recruit new business and new people and these talents are going to dry up.”

Grappe said Sanders isn’t necessarily thinking about what’s best for Arkansas but what’s best for her resume. (Sanders’ office said, “The only people talking about ‘national ambitions’ is the media,” when asked about the criticism.)

“School choice is a national Republican ambition, and I think that Sarah Huckabee Sanders has higher ambitions than a governor. She’s trying to prove that Arkansas is the most conservative MAGA state in the country. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the welfare of our citizens,” he said.

He called efforts to slow or stop the legislation a “long shot” but “our only shot — because this is going to devastate the state of Arkansas.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Leading Republicans like former President Donald Trump, and at least two possible 2024 White House contenders, are increasingly focused on battles around LGBTQ issues and education — a dynamic that political operatives say is likely only to intensify in the lead up to next year’s election.

“We are in a cultural, cold civil war right now,” Robert Blizzard, a GOP pollster, told ABC News.

“I think that Republicans, just as Democrats on their side, are looking for the strongest warrior to lead their cause into ’24,” Blizzard said. “And I think that that’s part of the reason why you’re seeing Republican candidates or presumptive Republican candidates for president start to lay down some policies and some positions to establish their credibility in that battle”

While Republican strategists have preached the idea that GOP voters want a revival of Trump’s presidential policies without his bombast and baggage, other operatives say the voters have different preferences, which are set to dominate the party’s 2024 primary.

That appetite is seemingly being manifested in new policies and legislative pushes by Trump himself as well as governors weighing White House aspirations and others, all not long after a midterm in which expected Republican gains were sharply curtailed over a perceived excess on social issues and focus on the 2020 election, strategists said.

Exit polling backs up this view: Surveys showed midterm voters cared strongly about abortion access while disapproving of Trump-brand election denialism, as younger people and independents broke for Democrats despite widespread disapproval of President Joe Biden and concern about the economy and high inflation, according to an analysis for ABC News.

Among the GOP grassroots, though, the mood is different, some in the party told ABC News — which could be crucial in deciding who is nominated in the next general election.

“They want more … You talk to activists at committee meetings and stuff like that, that’s their focus,” said one former official in Trump’s administration, who asked not to be identified given the sensitivities of their current political work.

The contours of this are already coming into view on several issues, with proposals stretching the bounds of previous battlefields.

On education, Trump has called for school principals to be elected while cutting federal dollars for any school or program that teaches “critical race theory,” which historically refers to a higher-education concept not taught in K-12 classes but which is now linked by some conservatives to curriculum related to racial differences and oppression.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, thought to be Trump’s biggest rival in the 2024 primary — though he has pushed back on questions about his future — has waged a high-profile fight to get the Advanced Placement course on African American studies revised in his state.

And South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who hasn’t ruled out a 2024 bid, has ordered her state’s education department to review materials for “divisive concepts.”

On COVID-19, DeSantis has cited his record of rolling back what he called unnecessary restrictions early in the pandemic, while Noem cast herself as the leader of the “freest state” in the country for the lack of some restrictions to begin with, which she said were government overreach.

“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” DeSantis said in a statement last month as he backed a permanent ban on COVID-19 mandates.

Perhaps the issue that’s gotten the most attention among the prospective primary field is transgender rights.

In recent years, Trump and other Republicans have highlighted instances of transgender athletes competing in college sports, which they say is unfair, though trans athletes and advocates say that is an oversimplification of the underlying health and science – and competing against another gender is its own problem. New policies go significantly further than what Trump discussed as president and as a 2016 and 2020 candidate, when he described himself as friendly to some in the LGBTQ community.

In a sprawling and strict plan released last month, Trump urged punishing doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors and passing a law banning such procedures for minors in all 50 states. In a video statement then, he called it “left-wing gender insanity.”

DeSantis has also pushed for state rules restricting minors’ access to gender-affirming care though he, too, has expanded beyond minors, requesting 12 state universities provide data on the number of students and others who received gender-affirming treatment over the last five years.

Noem signed legislation in South Dakota to ban gender-affirming care for minors, arguing at the time that “South Dakota’s kids are our future. With this legislation, we are protecting kids.” And former Vice President Mike Pence’s advocacy group Advancing American Freedom is set to rally conservatives against transgender-affirming policies in schools with a public relations blitz. (Pence indicated to ABC News’ David Muir last year that he’s weighing whether to make 2024 presidential bid.)

Trump’s plan included a proposed executive order that would direct all federal agencies to “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age” — restrictions that, if enacted, would help prevent transgender people from existing in public life, advocates say.

“Self-interested candidates are going after transgender people to score political points. It’s normal to not understand what it means to be transgender at first, and extremist politicians are exploiting that for their own gain,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the political arm of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement.

“Last year’s midterms elections are proof that while this may gain votes from the most fringe voters in the primaries, it’s backfires in the general elections. Most Americans agree that there are higher priorities, like the rising cost of living, than attacking transgender people,” Heng-Lehtinen said.

Republicans who spoke to ABC News said they are still divided over how far to take the fight over transgender rights. Others, however, said there is indeed a desire among conservatives for even stricter measures.

“I think we’re in the majority, people that think that it should be limited to an individual at a certain age. I don’t think the parent has a right to make that decision for a child, because that child is not an adult,” said Moye Graham, the chair the Clarendon County GOP in South Carolina, an early primary state.

In a nominating contest though, Republicans interviewed nearly all agreed: There’s little downside to stretching the boundary of the political discussion on transgender rights and other culture issues.

“When it comes to some of the public education stuff, the [critical race theory] stuff, the transgender stuff, especially with kids, I don’t think there’s a primary electorate risk for going too far whatsoever,” said a longtime Trump aide close to his 2024 team, who asked not to be quoted by name.

The general election next year, may be a different story, strategists and local officials acknowledged.

Republicans are still sifting through the aftermath of the 2022 midterms, when the GOP only narrowly took the House and lost a Senate seat despite historic tailwinds based on disapproval of President Biden.

That has even some conservatives warning against focusing too much on social issues — or going too far on them.

“I think people … want to have a community that they’re comfortable living in and don’t want things, particularly in schools, pushed down on their kids that they don’t believe in. But the bigger issues end up being the economic ones. What’s happening in terms of inflation, where are we going to have growth in the economy so we can continue to prosper?” said Club for Growth President David McIntosh.

“I’ve seen tendencies of candidates who pick up, maybe, a trend that they think’s happening in the base of the Republican Party and then in order to jump out in front of the parade, come up with ideas that are just terrible ideas,” McIntosh said.

Not every would-be 2024 candidate is culture warrior. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who said on ABC’s “This Week” in February that he’s considering a run, has largely endorsed his state’s “live and let die” mantra; and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors — which the state legislature overrode.

“The Republican Party that I grew up with believed in a restrained government that did not jump in the middle of every issue. And in this case, it is a very sensitive matter that involves parents, and it involves physicians. And we ought to yield to that decision-making, unless there’s a compelling state reason,” Hutchinson said in 2021.

Potential Republican contenders like South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan have also not sought to advance the same kind of transgender-related legislation as DeSantis, Noem and Trump.

Still, operatives said they are anticipating a cycle of escalation as the 2024 primary takes center stage.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw people try to one up each other, maybe going a little bit further on some of these issues,” said Sam DeMarco, the Allegheny County GOP chair in Pennsylvania, a battleground state. “And I think the American people will judge what they believe is prudent or not.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Republican-led Mississippi state House of Representatives passed a bill on Feb. 7 that would form a court system of unelected judges and prosecutors to preside over part of the capital city of Jackson and expand the Capitol Police force, a move that is drawing the ire of civil rights groups.

Several elected officials, including state Rep. Robert L. Johnson III, the Mississippi House Minority Leader, have sounded off against the bill, contending that it would remove the voice of city residents, the majority of whom are Black.

Johnson spoke with ABC News Live Wednesday about the bill and his concerns.

ABC NEWS LIVE: So I want to start by reading part of your joint statement about these bills. You say HB 1020 and SB 2889 are “an insult and a distraction, taking power away from the citizens of our capital city while we waste critical hours sitting around and letting hospitals close and our people die.” You go on to say, “These bills are what modern-day Jim Crow looks like.” Explain to us how this bill even got this far along in the process to begin with.

REP. ROBERT L. JOHNSON III: Well, we have a supermajority-led House and Senate and a Republican governor. And as I described them, from time to time, they are kind of new to this process and they don’t have any respect for the rules, procedure or tradition of the legislature. There aren’t even opportunities to debate some of these issues. They’ve just decided that they’re just going to run roughshod over the whole process and have what they want.

ABC NEWS LIVE: All right. So just break it down for us in layman’s terms. If this were to pass, what would this mean for the Black residents?

JOHNSON: Well, they would essentially have judges who will be appointed by a supreme court justice who was appointed by this very governor that is engineering this effort. They wouldn’t have any say-so in that judgeship, those multiple judgeships. And so those people would answer to no one who lives in Hinds County. Not only would that judge not be elected, [but also] that judge could come from anywhere in the state. And so the constitution says all of our judges… shall be elected. And so this takes that right to vote, their right to exercise their constitutional power [away] from the people in the city of Jackson.

So all the cases that anybody brings against the state of Mississippi, and we bring them all the time. I’m a lawyer, if you sue the state of Mississippi, they have to come through the circuit or chancery court in Hinds County. There was a time when we were fighting for more money for public education. And one of the things that they wanted to challenge was the constitutionality of the referendum proposal. One of the white Republican legislators told his constituents, ‘If we pass this referendum, then you will have to answer to a Black judge in Hinds County.’ There are these little phrases, these invites…that they have that always point to race.

JOHNSON: There is a chance the bill would die in the Senate. Thankfully, because of the uproar, because of the push that many of us have had — from lawyers to community activists, the legislators and the national pressure from people like just the exposure from networks and people like you, they are feeling the pressure. This looks does look like Jim Crow, like post-Reconstruction. This looks like everything that some of us who are old enough remember growing up through the civil rights movement, the things that we fought to reverse.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Representative, I know your intention is to stop it, but let’s just play devil’s advocate here. Are you concerned that if this bill does become law, would it create a new template for a Republican fight for the years to come similar to what’s happened with critical race theory law, for example?

JOHNSON: Well, yes. Look, we tell people, we’ve been telling people all over the state: This is not a Jackson problem; this is a Mississippi problem. If they’re going to do it to Jackson, they’ll do it to Greenville, Greenwood, anywhere they want to go. They want to create a city within a city that just serves a particular segment of the population. This capital city complex has a disproportionate white population. [It] doesn’t represent the actual per capita demographic in the city of Jackson. This is a template for what they will do in any city that has Black or African American leadership. And so, yes, the danger is that this is the route Republicans will continue to do in places where they lose political power.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Bureau of Prisons “has not been able to identify the prevalence and scope of inmate-on-staff sexual harassment,” a new report released by the Justice Department’s inspector general found, adding that the problem is “widespread” and affects female officers.

But the Bureau of Prisons does not keep accurate data of these incidents, according to the IG.

“Despite the inadequacy of BOP data on inmate-on-staff sexual harassment, we were able to determine that inmate-on-staff sexual harassment occurs across BOP institutions and that BOP staff believe that it particularly affects women,” the report said. “Additionally, inmate-on-staff sexual harassment has negative effects on both the BOP and its staff that can lead to unsafe work environments and can cause staff emotional and physical stress.”

The problem, according to the IG, is “widespread” and has an acute impact on female employees.

“Despite the incompleteness of BOP data regarding inmate-on-staff sexual harassment, we were able to determine that inmate-on-staff sexual harassment occurs across BOP institutions and that BOP staff believe that it particularly affects female employees,” the IG report said.

A survey of BOP staff done by the inspector general found that 47% of female officers had an inmate expose themselves to that officer and 34% of female officers reported inmates stalking them. Comparatively, only 1.8% of male officers reported inmates stalking them.

Between 2015 and 2021, the IG found that there were at least 12,127 offenses related to sexual acts between inmates and staff victims.

“We found that high security facilities had a substantially higher average number of sanctioned incidents each month compared to administrative security facilities, low security facilities, and the component-wide averages for the most severe prohibited act codes,” the IG report said.

In turn, these instances negatively affect the Bureau of Prisons, specifically the morale of officers, the IG said.

“Throughout this evaluation, we found that when inmate-on-staff sexual harassment is not appropriately and consistently addressed and mitigated it could harm the reputation and credibility of the BOP and that BOP staff believe that it also compromises the safety and security of BOP staff and reduces staff morale,” the report said.

The Bureau of Prisons told ABC News in a statement its mission is to “operate facilities that are safe, secure, and humane. We take seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody, as well as maintain the safety of correctional staff and the community.

“The BOP has zero-tolerance for all forms of sexual activity, including sexual abuse and sexual harassment within our facilities,” its BOP said. “The protection and safety of all staff is a top priority of our agency. BOP has a robust collection of resources for managing inmate sexual misconduct toward staff.”

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(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Hundreds of students across Florida walked out Thursday in protest against Gov. Ron DeSantis and his policies concerning higher education.

Students walked out of their classrooms at the University of South Florida, University of Florida, Florida State University, and more in opposition of his efforts. Some high school students also joined in on the statewide walkout.

DeSantis recently announced plans to ban colleges and universities from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as critical race theory.

Critical race theory is a discipline that seeks to understand how racism has shaped U.S. laws and how those laws have continued to impact the lives of non-white people.

DeSantis also signed the so-called “Stop WOKE” Act into law in 2022, which restricts race-related curriculum and conversation in workplaces, schools and colleges. However, it has been temporarily blocked from being implemented in colleges and universities. The law is still being battled out in court.

“I think people want to see true academics and they want to get rid of some of the political window dressing that seems to accompany all this,” DeSantis said at a January news conference about the effort.

Students protesting DeSantis say they value their academic freedom and liken the efforts of his administration to censorship.

“We want to take these classes and for the state to come in and say, ‘Well, we might not want to allow you to have that’ … At what point are college students going to be considered adults by the state of Florida?” Jonathon Chavez, president of College Democrats at USF, told ABC News.

He continued, “We want to make our own decisions and our education, how we want to better ourselves. We think it’s quite silly that the state would try to restrict that.”

DeSantis’ office did not respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.

Dream Defenders, a group of Black and brown anti-racism activists, are hosting “Black History teach-ins” amid the walkouts to combat the plethora of efforts from DeSantis to restrict race-related education.

“Ron DeSantis has been on a rampage. He’s banning books and flags in classrooms everywhere. He’s making sure our history isn’t getting taught. He’s getting rid of teachers, professors and faculty that look like us and support us,” said Nailah Summers, the co-executive director of the Dream Defenders, who publicly called for a statewide day of action, along with the newly formed Stand for Freedom, a coalition of student organizations spanning Florida’s college campuses. “He’s made it harder to protest, harder to vote, and harder to live in Florida.”

DeSantis’ administration is also under fire by demonstrators for reportedly requiring state schools to provide information about gender-affirming care they’ve provided for students.

“At our schools, we found that transgender students [had stopped] receiving those services”, said Chavez. “They don’t know what that is going to be used for. They’re scared that it might be used to restrict them further. And that’s a very real and tangible outcome for a very simple request.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Making semiconductors in the U.S. is critical for national security, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters on Wednesday, ahead of a speech she’ll give on supporting domestic manufacturing.

Raimondo’s remarks at Georgetown University on Thursday will focus on the importance of semiconductors after Congress passed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act last year. The Commerce Department is responsible for implementing the bipartisan legislation, in what Raimondo said Wednesday was an effort to bring back more of the semiconductor industry to the U.S., where it began.

“Over the past few decades, we as a country have taken our eye off the ball and let chip manufacturing [go] overseas,” she said.

In 2001, the U.S. had more than 300,000 semiconductor jobs but has lost one third of those in the past 20 years, Raimondo explained. She cited lower labor costs in other countries and a lack of private investments in manufacturing.

Semiconductors are essential computer chips for numerous everyday items, such as refrigerators, dishwashers, cars, smartphones and more. They are primarily made internationally right now, largely in Taiwan.

But the CHIPS and Science Act gives the U.S. an opportunity to make investments that are “consequential for America’s future,” Raimondo said. The legislation directs tens of billions to spur research in and development of the domestic semiconductor industry.

Raimondo linked the need for the chips to the shortage of them seen during the supply chain crunch in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think that when people needed product, whether it was chips or anything else that we couldn’t get during the pandemic, and then realized how utterly reliant we are — in the case of chips, on a single company in Taiwan; or in the case of other things, China — we realized that’s just not good for our security and stability,” Raimondo said. “And so we’ve decided we had to make some changes.”

The semiconductor shortage had broader economic effects in the U.S., hurting other kinds of manufacturing, Raimondo said.

“Last year, because Ford didn’t have access to enough chips, even for simple things like windshield wipers, their workers in places like Michigan and Indiana only worked a full week three times in the year,” she said.

But by 2030, the secretary wants to make America the largest producer of semiconductors in the world, and she said she intends to help do that by increasing production capabilities and increasing research and innovation.

Raimondo, echoing other administration officials, said that the CHIPS Act has moved into a key phase of being implemented well so the law is effective.

“What we’re out to do here is to ensure that at the end of implementation, the United States of America is the only country in the world where every company capable of producing leading-edge chips will have a significant research and development and high-volume manufacturing presence in our country,” she said.

Next week, the Commerce Department will roll out the application process for companies to apply for federal funds allocated in the CHIPS and Science Act.

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(WASHINGTON) — In the face of some harsh blowback, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Georgia Republican, has tripled down on her proposal for a “national divorce”– splitting the country according to political ideology into “red” Republican states and “blue” Democratic states.

After the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled it is unconstitutional for a state to secede, which would make it impossible for her plan to be implemented.

But Greene, who has been touting the idea since 2021 when she wanted to halt “brainwashed” Californians from moving to states like Florida, is gaining new attention for the concept, now that she has become a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

“We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” Greene wrote in a separate tweet on Presidents Day.

“Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

She’s been invited to explain how she claims it would work on Fox News’ “Hannity” program as well as on other conservative outlets.

“The last thing I ever want to see in America is a civil war,” she told Sean Hannity. “No one wants that — at least everyone I know would never want that — but it’s going that direction, and we have to do something about it.”

On conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s show on Tuesday, Greene laid out another part of her proposal: allowing red states to block Democrats from voting if they came from a blue state.

“Red states can choose in how they allow people to vote in their states,” Greene said. “What I think would be something that some red states could propose is: well, okay, if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate the living conditions, they don’t want their children taught these horrible things, and they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support, well once they move to a red state, guess what, maybe you don’t get to vote for five years.”

Her proposition was promptly dismissed by current and former GOP lawmakers, including Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney, who told the Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday, “I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity …”We’re not going to divide the country. It’s united we stand and divided we fall.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., lambasted Greene on Monday, highlighting the unconstitutionality of Greene’s proposal.

“Our country is governed by the Constitution,” Cheney tweeted. “You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional. No member of Congress should advocate secession, Marjorie.”

Another former Republican member of Congress, moderate Adam Kinzinger, who, like Cheney, was a member of the Jan. 6 committee and left Congress just over a month ago, asked his party:

“Every Republican elected official needs to be asked and must give an answer: do you support a “national divorce” aka a civil war? One word answer, no misdirect, not ‘this is what the media always does.’

“Do you agree with the leader of the party, MTG?”

McCarthy has not commented publicly on Greene’s proposal.

But the Georgia Republican has remained steadfast, lashing back at some of her most vocal critics.

“People agree with me and not the RINO governor of Utah,” MTG tweeted alongside a news story outlining remarks from Utah’s GOP Gov. Spencer Cox calling Greene’s rhetoric “evil.”

She also argued her “national divorce” idea was not equivalent to a “civil war.”

“People saying national divorce is a bad idea because the left will never stop trying to control us literally make the case for national divorce,” she said in a tweet on Wednesday.

“We don’t want a civil war. We’re not surrendering. We’re tired of complaining with no change and want to protect our way of life,” she said.

In recent years, there have been several succession efforts at the state level, including reorganizing state lines to accommodate outlier counties.

The Idaho House passed a bill in 2022 that would allow a conservative portion of eastern Oregon to join Idaho. Later, some Republican lawmakers in Maryland proposed three of the state’s three counties break off and join West Virginia.

In both those cases, proponents claimed the rural, conservative counties they said desired to secede felt disconnected to their states’ liberal leadership.

But the idea of succession has also been floated around by national leaders in the past.

In California, after Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown discussed furthering the state’s own foreign policy initiatives. During the days of the fiscally conservative “tea party” movement, similar ideas were floated by national figures.

“We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it,” Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry said in 2009, before adding, “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?”

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(WASHINGTON) — A divide in Congress over the debt ceiling threatens to plunge the U.S. economy into disarray, drawing attention to a looming question: How has the nation’s debt ballooned to $31.4 trillion and what can be done to shrink it?

In fact, economists expect the U.S. debt to grow significantly. In a report last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the federal debt will grow nearly $20 trillion by the end of 2033.

A group of Republican lawmakers has indicated it would not raise the debt limit unless Democrats agree to significant spending cuts; the Biden administration, however, has said it will not take part in policy negotiations conditioned upon the periodic borrowing hike.

​​Since yearly spending by the federal government exceeds tax revenue, the U.S. has accrued tens of trillions of dollars in debt, almost all of it in the last two decades under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

In order to reverse that trend and achieve an annual surplus, the U.S. would need to either impose a dramatic tax increase or spending cut, or a combination of the two, amounting to a monumental shift in U.S. fiscal policy, experts told ABC News.

Short of that, the U.S. could still make significant but less transformative policy changes in an effort to achieve annual fiscal balance, in which the costs incurred by the government equal the amount of money it raises, allowing the country to stop adding to its debt, they added.

“The car is going off the cliff,” Kent Smetters, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business who formerly worked at the Congressional Budget Office, told ABC News. “There are pretty big changes needed going forward.”

To be sure, experts differ over the risks posed by the nation’s growing debt. Some economists dismiss concerns about the rising debt as overblown, while others acknowledge that the debt threatens U.S. fiscal health but say the problem should not concern policymakers during lean economic periods.

The last budget surplus for the federal government occurred in 2001. Every year since then, the U.S. has spent more money than it has brought in, deepening the nation’s financial hole. Last fiscal year, interest payments on the nation’s debt amounted to $395.5 billion, or 6.8% of federal spending, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The trend has resulted from a combination of tax cuts and spending increases overseen by both major parties, experts said.

In the wake of fiscal crises such as the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak, the federal government spent trillions to stimulate economic growth and support people who had lost their jobs or faced other financial setbacks. Meanwhile the War on Terror, including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will ultimately cost the federal government more than $8 trillion, according to a study released by researchers at Brown University in 2021.

Rather than raise taxes to pay for those expenses, the U.S. imposed tax cuts, including two measures signed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 and later made permanent in partial form by President Barack Obama. Between 2001 and 2018, those tax cuts added roughly $5.6 trillion to the federal debt, the liberal think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found.

The ballooning debt is “absolutely bipartisan,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in Washington, told ABC News. “There is a lot of finger pointing but they may as well all point the fingers at themselves.”

Achieving annual surpluses, in which the U.S. spends less money than it brings in through taxes and other means, would demand “one of the most dramatic policy shifts that we’ve ever had,” MacGuineas said.

In all, the federal government would need savings of between $10 billion and $20 billion over the next decade to start delivering annual surpluses, MacGuineas said. “We haven’t seen savings of that magnitude in decades, perhaps ever,” she added.

Pursuing a more modest goal, the U.S. could aim to achieve fiscal balance, reaching a point at which its annual expenses equal the amount that it brings in, experts said.

To reach balance within a decade, all spending would need to be slashed by about one-quarter and the necessary cuts would grow to 85% if defense, veterans, Social Security and Medicare spending were considered off limits, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in Washington said.

A budget model at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that achieving fiscal balance would require the federal government to hike tax revenues by over 40% or cut expenditures by 30%, or some combination of the two.

Smetters, of the Wharton School, said fiscal balance is akin to a credit card holder who succeeds in meeting his or her monthly payments, even if the level of debt remains unchanged.

“Without balance, the government at some point will fail to be able to make its full interest payments on the debt,” Smetters said. “It doesn’t get us down to zero debt. It just gets us to a level of balance where everything is sustainable.”

The debt will likely grow before Congress addresses it, McGuineas said, citing what she described as a gridlocked political environment in Washington, D.C.

“Long-term compromise and tradeoffs have been cast aside in this dangerously polarized moment,” she said. “It’s precarious in this country right now.”

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