Politics

(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she is confident in the bipartisan select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, despite House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulling his recommendations for the panel.

“Maybe the Republicans can’t handle the truth, but we have a responsibility to seek it, to find it and in a way that maintains the confidence of the American people,” she told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Despite McCarthy, R-Calif., slamming Pelosi last week for conducting “a sham process” after she rejected two of the five Republican members he recommended for the select committee, Pelosi said she plans to appoint more Republicans to the panel.

McCarthy had threatened that Republicans “will not participate” if Pelosi did not accept all five of his recommendations, but Sunday afternoon Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois announced he’d accepted Pelosi’s invitation to participate in the commission.

Only one Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — who was named to the committee by Pelosi and not on McCarthy’s list — had initially accepted an invitation to join the committee. Cheney, a strong critic of McCarthy and former President Donald Trump, was described by Pelosi on Sunday as a “very courageous member of Congress.”

Like Cheney, Kinzinger is among the few Republicans to vote to impeach Trump over the insurrection.

“This moment requires a serious, clear-eyed, non-partisan approach.,” Kinzinger said in a statement. “We are duty-bound to conduct a full investigation on the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814 and to make sure it can never happen again.”

Asked on “This Week” about the possibility that she will name Kinzinger to the committee, Pelosi said, “That would be my plan.”

Pressed by Stephanopoulos on when she might announce Kinzinger’s appointment, Pelosi said, “perhaps after I speak to Adam Kinzinger.”

“But I’m not going to announce it right this minute,” Pelosi said. “But you could say that that is the direction that I would be going.”

Pelosi and House Democrats were also considering asking a former GOP congressman to serve on committee staff amid the standoff with House GOP leaders over their picks for the panel, sources familiar with the deliberations told ABC News.

“He and other Republicans have expressed an interest to serve on the select committee and I wanted to appoint three of the members that Leader McCarthy suggested but he withdrew their names,” she continued.

The select committee, chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is scheduled to hold hearings this week.

McCarthy withdrew his list after Pelosi rejected Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio — two prominent conservative leaders and allies of the former president.

Pelosi said she rejected Banks and Jordan, who both voted to overturn the presidential election, over the negative comments they have made about the select committee.

“Are you confident that the committee’s work can be seen as credible if most Republicans won’t participate?” Stephanopoulos pressed Pelosi on the subject.

Pelosi responded, “My confidence is high. I do believe that the work of this committee, in order to retain the confidence of the American people, must act in a way that has no partisanship. It’s all about patriotism, not partisanship.”

“We have to again ignore the antics of those who do not want to find the truth,” Pelosi told Stephanopoulos.

Pelosi also scoffed at a letter the conservative House Freedom Caucus, for which Jordan is a member, sent to McCarthy on Friday asking him to try to remove Pelosi from her powerful position, writing, “Speaker Pelosi’s tenure is destroying the House of Representatives and our ability to faithfully represent the people we are here to serve.”

Pelosi responded on Sunday, “I’m not concerned about any threat from the Freedom Caucus. I get those every day of the week.”

Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi if she is worried that her rejection of two of McCarthy’s picks for the select committee would prompt Republicans to take similar action if they take back control of the House, she said, “no.”

“Look, we have had an unprecedented action, an assault, an insurrection against our government, an assault on the Capitol Building, which is an assault on the Congress, on a day that the Constitution required us, by the Constitution, to validate the work of the Electoral College,” Pelosi said. “So, this was not just any day of the week. This was a constitutionally required day of action for Congress. The Republicans will say what they will say. Our select committee will seek the truth. It’s our patriotic duty to do so.”

ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds off voting on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until a larger bill is passed through reconciliation by the Senate, the Democrats could end up with nothing, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said Sunday.

Pelosi, in a separate interview earlier on ABC’s “This Week,” said that she plans to stick with her decision to hold any vote on the bipartisan deal until after the Senate passes a larger infrastructure package through reconciliation.

“I won’t put it on the floor until we have the rest of the initiative,” Pelosi said.

“I’m not happy with what she said,” Portman told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “It’s inconsistent with the agreement that we have on a bipartisan basis.”

Portman’s optimism on Sunday indicated that negotiations have improved since late last week.

Democrats were making a behind-the-scenes push to move some funding away from highways to increase federal funding for transit. The senator was so frustrated with the state of negotiations on Thursday that he told reporters they might just drop highway funding from the bill entirely.

“We have one issue outstanding and we’re not getting much response from the Democrats on it — it’s about mass transit,” Portman said Sunday.

Negotiators told ABC News the bipartisan infrastructure package could be ready to vote on again as early as Monday. Portman emphasized the popularity of the bill.

“Eighty-seven percent of the American people think we should do a bipartisan infrastructure package. It’s the right thing to do. Every president in modern times has talked about it,” Portman said.

Portman also rejected criticism that the negotiations on the bill are not truly bipartisan.

“The Wall Street Journal weighed in against the deal yesterday on their editorial page — It says, taking the “bi” out of bipartisan. And they write: What’s striking about the deal so far, however, is that by all appearances, this will be the most one-sided bipartisan deal in decades,” Stephanopoulos said.

“Every single one of the issues has been bipartisan in the sense there have been Republican views and Democrat views and we found a way to find common ground, which is exactly what ought to happen,” Portman responded.

Stephanopoulos also pressed Portman on why the Republicans have yet to vote on raising the debt ceiling when they did so three times under former President Donald Trump.

“Under every president there is a discussion of how you actually — if you’re going to raise the debt ceiling, how — how to use something to affect the debt, particularly the long-term debt of this country,” Portman responded. “And I think we ought to have that discussion.”

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(SALT LAKE CITY) — As President Joe Biden completed 100 days in office, the country was optimistic about the coming year, but now, just after hitting the six-month mark, Americans’ optimism about the direction of the country has plummeted nearly 20 points, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

A majority — 55% — of the public say they are pessimistic about the direction of the country, a marked change from the roughly one-third (36%) that said the same in an ABC News/Ipsos poll published May 2. In the early May survey, Americans were more optimistic than pessimistic by a 28-percentage point margin. Optimism is now under water by 10 points. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, fewer than half — 45% — now report feeling optimistic about the way things are going, a significant drop from about two-thirds (64%) in the May poll.

The decline in optimism has occurred across the board among Democrats, Republicans and independents. Optimism is down about 20 points among Democrats and Republicans and down 26 points among independents. Among Democrats, about 7 in 10 (71%) now say they are optimistic about the direction of the country over the next 12 months. That’s much lower than the near universal (93%) approval from Democrats on Biden’s handling of the pandemic. In politics today, partisans usually are more unified in their support or opposition to particular issues or people.

The optimism-pessimism flip comes as Americans give Biden his lowest approval rating for his handling of the pandemic yet in ABC News/Ipsos polling. A little over 6 in 10 (63%) approve of the president’s response to the coronavirus, according to the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.

Although still a majority, it’s a nine-point drop from late March — the high for Biden. It likely reflects the growing concern that lockdowns could be reinstated and already vaccinated Americans could need a booster shot as the highly contagious delta variant now is estimated to account for 83% of all new coronavirus cases in the United States. As of Friday, according to Health and Human Services data obtained by ABC News, the United States’ daily case average was up 47% compared to the prior week, and on Wednesday, the nation recorded its highest single-day new case total since April.

Worry about a resurgence of the virus is also apparent when looking at how concerned the public is about contracting the virus.

According to this ABC News/Ipsos poll, about 6 in 10 Americans are concerned — 20% very and 42% somewhat — that they or someone they know will become infected with the coronavirus; about 4 in 10 (39%) are not concerned about this.

That’s the lowest level of concern in polling by ABC News/Ipsos going back to March 2020, but there is a significant gap since this question was last asked in early March of this year, when less than 20% of the U.S. population was at least partially vaccinated. Since then, every American 12 years and older has become eligible to receive a vaccine. In this ABC News/Ipsos poll, about three-quarters (74%) of U.S. adults say they have had at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, which, similar to other recent surveys, slightly overstates the number of Americans who have been vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most recent CDC report, which could lag actual vaccinations by a few days, shows that 68.8% of the adult population had received at least one dose.

Concern about infection, according to this poll, is higher among those who are at least partially vaccinated than those who are not, 67% compared to 46%. But while a majority of unvaccinated U.S. adults say they are not concerned that they or someone they know will be infected with the virus, public health experts, including the CDC director, have warned that this is becoming a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

While ABC News/Ipsos did not poll on the level of concern for contracting the virus over the last four to five months, other polls have, and the public’s concern appears to be rising again.

In a Monmouth University poll conducted in mid-June, about a quarter (23%) of Americans said they were very concerned they or someone in their family would become seriously ill from COVID, and about 2 in 10 (19%) said they were somewhat concerned about this — both record lows in Monmouth’s polling. About a quarter (24%) said they were not so concerned about this, and over 3 in 10 (32%) said they were not at all concerned — both record highs in Monmouth’s polling.

Additionally, the level of approval for the president’s handling of the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic has also dropped by seven points since late March, when 6 in 10 approved, according to ABC News/Ipsos polling. Although jobless claims were expected to hit a new pandemic-era low Thursday, instead, they increased to a level last seen in mid-June, though it’s too soon to know if that will become a trend.

The overwhelming majority (88%) of Democrats approve of the president’s handling of the economic recovery, but only about half (49%) of independents do and less than 2 in 10 (16%) Republicans do.

On other issues, Biden’s approval is underwater, and lackluster even among his own party.

Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans approve of the president’s handling of immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, crime and gun violence. Republicans have hounded Biden and Democrats over all three, as border crossings and violent crime rates, especially in Democrat-run U.S. cities nationwide, surge. That’s reflected in Republicans’ high level of disapproval — ranging between 86% and 92% — of the president’s handling of the three issues, according to this poll.

Among all Americans, the disapproval figures for crime and gun violence track closely with each other — both around 6 in 10 each — and disapproval of Biden’s handling of gun violence has ticked up slightly since late March among the public, from 57% to 61%.

An exception to these low ratings on issue- or policy-based performance is the president’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, for which a majority (55%) of Americans approve.

Asked how well Biden’s delivered on his campaign promises, Americans are divided: 52% say he has done an excellent or good job keeping those promises, while 47% say he’s done a not so good or poor job.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® July 23-24, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 527 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 5.0 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 31-24-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.

ABC News’ Dan Merkle, Ken Goldstein and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.
 

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(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Senate committee has approved legislation that would, if enacted, require young women to register for Selective Service alongside men, and in the rare event of a war or other national emergency, be drafted for the first time in the nation’s history.

During the Vietnam War — between 1964 and 1973 — nearly 2 million men were drafted in the U.S., according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Just afterward, in 1973, facing a tide of opposition to the controversial draft, President Richard Nixon officially ended military conscription, and the U.S. established an all-volunteer force.

But even though the draft is no more, most young men, including immigrants, are required to register with the Military Selective Service in case conscription becomes necessary once again. Federal law requires registration when a man turns 18 years of age, and immigrants are required to register within 30 days of arriving in the country.

The new legislation, authored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., would remove any reference to “male” in current law, leaving women on an equal playing field.

But not everyone is on board.

Committee member Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced his opposition to the measure, tweeting Friday, “American women have heroically served in and alongside our fighting forces since our nation’s founding – It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives. Missourians feel strongly that compelling women to fight our wars is wrong and so do I.”

Women have been serving at all levels of the military since 2013 when the Pentagon opened up front-line, ground combat positions to them, and supporters of the Reed legislation say it’s high time that women sign up, particularly since the service has changed dramatically since the Vietnam era.

“This isn’t our grandfather’s military,” a Senate aide close to the matter told ABC News in an interview, noting that should a draft be instituted, the greater need nowadays would be for more educated conscripts in the specialty branches, like those with an expertise in cyber, technology and STEM, as well as doctors and lawyers.

“So, while a draft is highly unlikely in many of our lifetimes, none of that raises the same arguments about physicality — all of the things that were used to argue for a male-only draft,” the aide said. “It’s a different world.”

When asked if President Joe Biden supports the change, a White House aide pointed to a September 2020 Military Officers Association of America candidate forum in which then-candidate Biden said, “The United States does not need a larger military, and we don’t need a draft at this time…I would, however, ensure that women are also eligible to register for the Selective Service System so that men and women are treated equally in the event of future conflicts.”

In a Supreme Court case earlier this year, the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of an all-male draft legislation, but the acting solicitor general pointed to likely action from Congress in arguing that the high court hold off making a judgement, which it eventually acceded to.

The Reed legislation is part of a massive defense policy measure known as the National Defense Authorization Act, a highly popular piece of legislation giving raises to U.S. troops, funding many new military systems, weapons upgrades and more. It is considered must-pass legislation, and it is expected that the new selective service requirement for women will remain in place, according to the aide.

The Senate nearly passed the legislation back in 2017, but instead a national commission was created to study the issue, along with a wider mandate to look at national public service in general.

That National Commission on Military, National, & Public Service last year came out in favor of the Reed position, and the senator took his current legislation directly from the commission findings.

“In reviewing the question of whether Selective Service registration should include women, the Commission seriously considered a wide range of deeply felt moral, legal, and practical arguments and explored the available empirical evidence,” the panel’s report read.

“The Commission concluded that the time is right to extend Selective Service System registration to include men and women, between the ages of 18 and 26. This is a necessary and fair step, making it possible to draw on the talent of a unified Nation in a time of national emergency,” the report concluded.

Taken together, the Senate aide said, the sentiment was, “If we’re going to have a draft – a selective service system – then women have to be involved.”

“The recognition is that we’re probably not going to have a military draft, but if we do, then we recognize that you can’t fight with one hand tied behind your back,” the aide added.

Plus, the aide noted, back in 2016 when the initial idea was being seriously considered, all four service chiefs testified in favor of adding women.

Congress for years has shot down the idea of mandatory registration for women, but times are changing. The NDAA — with the requirement in it — passed the Senate Armed Services Committee 23-2 this week.

If the legislation survives, the measure would go into effect one year after enactment of the new law.

ABC New’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats are demanding answers after the FBI revealed just recently that it received more than 4,500 tips about Brett Kavanaugh when he was a Supreme Court nominee in 2018 and that only ones the agency deemed most “relevant” were referred to then-President Donald Trump’s White House.

The Democrats want to know how the information from the supplemental background check was handled and whether any of it was investigated, details they say were never passed on to the senators considering Kavanaugh’s nomination.

They asked the FBI to hand over by Aug. 31 “all records and communications” related to the first-of-its kind tip line the FBI set up that produced both “telephone calls and electronic submissions” and to explain how the tips were evaluated and categorized as “relevant.”

“If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all,” they said in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray.

It’s been nearly three years since Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation onto the nation’s highest court following allegations by California professor Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her at a party in Maryland when they were both in high school in the early 1980s. Local police did not investigate in 2018 and weren’t asked to look into her allegations around the time she says the incident happened.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse released a letter from the FBI Thursday, dated June 30, that was written in response to a two-year-old request from Sens. Whitehouse and Chris Coons asking about how an expanded FBI review of Kavanaugh — done in response to Ford’s allegation — was pursued and how involved the Trump White House was in the probe.

In the letter, Jill C. Tyson, an FBI assistant director said the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips received in the probe were passed to the Office of White House Counsel under Trump, but no further, as a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding between the Justice Department and White House requires. The fate and subsequent actions based off those tips remain a mystery.

The letter stated that the agency was conducting a background check rather than a criminal investigation. “The authorities, policies and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,” Tyson said.

In light of Ford’s accusations, other allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh ensued, all of which he denied. Don McGahn was White House counsel at the time.

The allegations led to bitter divide among lawmakers over Trump’s nomination of the judge and saw Ford and Kavanaugh endure a heated daylong hearing in September 2018 where they were grilled by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh was eventually sworn into the Supreme Court in October that year.

The FBI response has only sparked outrage among Democrats. Whitehouse along with six other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee — Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Coons — replied to the FBI’s letter Wednesday asking for additional details on the agreement with the White House over the inquiry and the handling of the incoming tips.

“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to . . . allegations’ of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored,” the senators wrote in response.

ABC News has reached out to the FBI for comment.

In the probe into Kavanaugh’s past, 10 witnesses were interviewed by the FBI, according to the letter, but Ford and Kavanaugh were not. It’s unclear whether those 10 were discovered through the tip line.

Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, the lawyers who represented Ford, said in a statement that the FBI’s investigations into her allegations about Kavanaugh’s alleged misconduct “was a sham and a major institutional failure.”

The lawyers said the FBI “handed the information over to the White House, allowing those who supported Kavanaugh to falsely claim that the FBI found no wrongdoing,” adding, “our nation deserved better.”

ABC News’ Trish Turner and Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., was among 10 demonstrators arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Thursday in an orchestrated act of civil disobedience outside the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.

Johnson and voting rights advocates participating in Black Voters Matter Fund’s “Brothers Day of Action,” a protest led by Black men to advocate for voting rights, called on Congress to end the filibuster and pass the For the People Act.

The demonstration was a follow-up to the Black women-led protest on July 15, which ended in nine arrests, including the arrest of Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Joyce Beatty.

While the voting rights debate remains largely partisan in Congress, the majority of Americans believe that people who are legally qualified to vote should be able to, according to a survey from Pew Research Center. Data released on Thursday revealed that 57% of Americans view voting more as “a fundamental right” for all eligible U.S. citizens and “should not be restricted in any way.” Less than 42% believe “voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited if adult U.S. citizens don’t meet some requirements,” according to the survey.

The push from Democrats to pass federal voting rights legislation continues to grow as at least 16 Republican-led states have passed laws that restrict voting rights, including measures that tighten rules for absentee and mail-in voting, and impose new voter ID and signature requirements.

Experts say the GOP measures, which have been pushed in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, disproportionately impact voter access among minorities groups.

Although Republican state and federal lawmakers maintain that voting restrictions were imposed to make elections secure, President Joe Biden blasted the efforts in a speech on July 13, calling GOP attempts to limit ballot access a “21st century Jim Crow assault.”

While Biden has used his presidential influence to embolden Democrats’ push to pass federal voting rights legislation, he has yet to endorse ending the filibuster. The president has openly supported reforming the rule.

Progressive House Democrats, including Johnson and Reps. Jamal Bowman, D-N.Y., Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and Al Green, D-Texas, who stood with demonstrators during Thursday’s rally, said that Biden’s speech was not enough.

Bowman urged Biden to take further action to help end the filibuster rule in the Senate, a change he said is needed to pass progressive bills on the Democratic agenda. Ending the filibuster would effectively allow bills to be passed with a simple majority, instead of the 60 needed with it in place.

“These bills, they sit in the Senate, not moving at all. Why? Because of the racist Jim Crow relic called the filibuster,” Bowman said.

“It’s not just about the president giving a speech on racial equity, or writing a press release saying he’s for racial equity. It’s about your policies, it’s about your advocacy, it’s about your budget. So we are calling on the president to be a leader for racial justice and equity — so that the S. 1 bill passes in the Senate, so that the S. 4 bill passes the Senate, so that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passes the Senate, and so that we can really evolve into the multiracial democracy that we are,” Bowman continued.

Jackson Lee praised voting rights protesters and vowed that she and other Congressional Black Caucus members will continue demonstrating until federal voting rights legislation passes in Congress.

“We committed that the agitation is not going to stop. We will show up, day after day after day, because we embody the Constitution,” Jackson Lee said.

“Whatever it takes, we’ll be there as nonviolent perpetrators,” she continued. “Civil disobedient persons we are. I leave you in the name of the late John Lewis who said, ‘Carry on.'”

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(WASHINGTON) — The state of Mississippi formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday to uphold its ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that gave women the unfettered right to end a pregnancy before a fetus is viable outside the womb.

“Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion,” the state says bluntly in its opening brief in a blockbuster case that will dominate the court’s next term.

The cascade of arguments Mississippi lays out constitute the most direct and aggressive attack on abortion rights in years before the high court.

Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch, leading the case, declares outright that the time has come for the justices to discard long-standing precedent because Roe and Casey, a 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion access for women, are “egregiously wrong.”

“Roe and Casey are unprincipled decisions that have damaged the democratic process, poisoned our national discourse, plagued the law — and, in doing so, harmed this Court,” the brief says.

Mississippi argues that states have compelling interests in protecting the lives of the unborn — interests that have been neglected, it claims, by decades of flawed legal analyses by the court’s majority.

“Scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability. States should be able to act on those developments. But Roe and Casey shackle States to a view of the facts that is decades out of date.”

Abortion rights advocates were quick to respond Thursday, calling Mississippi’s legal case “stunning” and “extreme.”

“Their goal is for the Supreme Court to take away our right to control our own bodies and our own futures — not just in Mississippi, but everywhere,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the law, in a statement.

“Let’s be clear; any ruling in favor of Mississippi in this case overturns the core holding of Roe — the right to make a decision about whether to continue a pregnancy before viability,” she continued. “The Court has held that the Constitution guarantees this right. If Roe falls, half the states in the country are poised to ban abortion entirely. “

The Supreme Court has not yet scheduled the case for oral argument in the term set to begin in October. A decision is expected by June 2022.

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(IOWA) — Democrat Abby Finkenauer, a one-term congresswoman who represented Iowa’s 1st Congressional District until she was unseated by a Republican in 2020, announced Thursday she’s running for Senate.

In her announcement video, Finkenauer, who is also a former state representative, shares the news with an intimate group of Iowans, calling out longtime fixtures of the Senate for how “obsessed” they are with maintaining power, citing their response to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“The politicians who’ve been there for decades … [t]hey think they own democracy, and they were silent when it was attacked. You see it’s politicians like Senator Grassley and Mitch McConnell, who should know better, but are so obsessed with power that they oppose anything that moves us forward. Since the Capitol was attacked, they’ve turned their backs on democracy, and on us,” she says. “They made their choice, and I’m making mine. I’m running for the United States Senate.”

The seat Finkenauer is seeking has been held by Republican Chuck Grassley for 40 years. First elected in 1980 when Republican Ronald Reagan ascended to the White House and defeating incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter, Grassley is the longest serving senator to ever represent the Hawkeye State.

The 87-year-old has been fundraising, earning nearly $2 million in contributions so far this cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission filing for his campaign committee submitted a week ago. But Grassley has not made his reelection bid official yet, despite the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s chairman persistently “bugging” the senator to make an announcement.

However, Sen. Rick Scott, the NRSC’s chairman, indicated in a podcast interview Tuesday he feels good about Grassley seeking another term, citing a fundraiser he recently held for him in Florida.

“If he flies all the way from Iowa down to Naples, Florida, I think he’s gonna run,” Scott said.

The Republican Party of Iowa was quick to blast Finkenauer after her announcement.

“Let me be as clear as possible – Abby Finkenauer will never represent the state of Iowa in the U.S. Senate,” Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement. “Iowans know Finkenauer and her disastrous record, it’s why they rejected her last November. No matter how she tries to reinvent herself, Iowans will see that her values and priorities are just the same as AOC’s and Chuck Schumer’s. Finkenauer will fall in line with Democrat leadership every chance she gets in hopes to gain media notoriety. … I look forward to seeing even more Iowans reject Finkenauer once again.”

When Finkenauer won in 2018, she became one of the youngest members of Congress along with New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. At only 32 years old, Grassley was already serving his second Senate term when she was born.

After flipping her district from red to blue in the 2018 blue wave, the Democrat narrowly lost reelection in 2020 to Republican Ashley Hinson. Hinson won about 10,700 more votes than Finkenauer, giving her a 2.6-point lead over Finkenauer. Across the country in 2020, Republicans picked up 14 seats, not including Republican-turned independent Justin Amash’s district, giving Democrats the slimmest House majority since the early 2000s.

Based on the 2020 election, Democrats are facing an uphill battle to win statewide in Iowa. The Republican in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, also won her election, flipping an open seat from blue to red as well. Republican Joni Ernst fended off a challenge from Democrat Theresa Greenfield, winning reelection by a 6.6-point margin. Former President Donald Trump’s margin against President Joe Biden was even bigger, 8.2 points.

But if Grassley chooses to forgo a bid, an open race could be much more competitive.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot back at House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday and said the Jan. 6 select committee is “deadly serious” after McCarthy accused Pelosi of an “egregious abuse of power.”

“It’s my responsibility as speaker of the House, to make sure we get to the truth on this, and we will not let their antics stand in the way of that,” she said at her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.

The boiling tensions between the two come after Pelosi rejected two of McCarthy’s nominees for the committee — Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Indiana Rep. Jim Banks — citing concerns with “statements made and actions taken by these members” that might compromise the integrity of the investigation. Jordan and Banks are vocal allies of former President Donald Trump and supported his efforts to overturn the election.

“It’s bipartisan, and we have a quorum. Staff is being hired to do the job,” Pelosi continued. “We’re there to get the truth, not to get Trump.”

While Pelosi accepted McCarthy’s other three picks — Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong and Texas Rep. Troy Nehls — McCarthy threatened Wednesday to pull all of his members.

“Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts,” McCarthy said at a press conference on the Hill.

Pelosi acknowledged at her press conference that Nehls had also voted against certifying election results for President Joe Biden, but said the two members she rejected, Jordan and Banks, had taken the big lie to another level.

“The other two made statements and took actions that just made it ridiculous to put them on such a committee seeking the truth,” she said.

She said some counseled her to allow Jordan and Banks on the committee “and then when they act up you can take them off,” she disclosed. “I said, ‘why should we waste time on something so predictable?'”

“I’m not going to spend any more time talking about them,” she added later.

Back in May, Senate Republicans killed a proposal for an independent, bipartisan commission that would have given Republicans equal representation to investigate the Capitol attack. Under the House select committee proposal, which was approved by the House mostly along party lines with GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger or Illinois joining Democrats, Pelosi gets seven appointments and McCarthy has five.

Pelosi also maintained the power to reject McCarthy’s appointments, which she exercised Wednesday.

The House Select Committee was expected to hold its first hearing on Tuesday. Capitol police officers are among the first witnesses.

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(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats are considering inviting former House Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman to serve as an adviser to the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the Capitol assault, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.

Riggleman, a former intelligence officer who lost his primary last year, has been a forceful critic of other Republicans over election-related disinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories.

Rep. Liz Cheney, picked by Pelosi to serve on the committee, has been pushing the idea even before Pelosi rejected two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s choices on Wednesday.

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