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(ATLANTA, GA) — As Georgians gather for Thanksgiving, food and celebration won’t be the only things on their mind. Conversations about politics could also swirl around the dinner table as the Thanksgiving holiday arrives in the middle of a heated runoff election cycle.
“Well, I was trying to not have to interrupt your Thanksgiving with politics. We got real close. Very close. But we’ve got to go a little bit further. Are y’all ready to bring this home? Let’s get it done,” Sen. Warnock said Tuesday.
Georgia is no stranger to politics during the holidays. In 2020, when the state experienced two Senate runoff races, the cycle was nine weeks long and cut into Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
However, even with this year’s runoff cycle limited to four weeks, voters are still being asked to go to the polls during the holiday season, which has brought a lot of mixed reactions from the voting public.
Cameron Stargell and Peyton Jones are both sophomore college students studying out-of-state. But both are back in home Atlanta for the Thanksgiving holiday and plan to vote in person before they head back to school after the festivities.
“It’s really difficult, but I feel like it’s really worth it to like have to vote again because I really do want Warnock to win. So I think it’s beneficial for us in the long run to do so,” said Stargell.
Both said they’re open to the political conversations that might arise while home.
“I feel like you have to talk about it now because the issues that are being voted on are not things you can ignore, so I feel like it’s important to have those conversations,” said Jones.
Early voting starts statewide on Monday, Nov. 28; however, counties could choose to hold more early voting days if they were able to.
Douglas County opened polls on Tuesday and voters said they were grateful for voting options ahead of the holiday.
“I won’t be in town, so I came before I left,” Alfredia Brennon said. “I’m ready for it to be over. So I’m gonna make my vote count because I’m tired of seeing all the the news, the commercials, all that. I’m over it.”
“I hope this is the last time,” said Samuel Wyatt. “Not that I mind because when I found out today that we could vote early … I said that’s great.”
Wyatt, however, said his family would likely not be discussing politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
“It’s over. We voted. Folks ask me ‘who you vote for?’ I say ‘I voted.'” Wyatt said with a laugh.
Both Senate candidates cautioned voters not to totally tune out politics for the holidays.
“If you eat on Thursday and shop on Friday, certainly you can vote on Saturday or on Sunday,” Sen. Warnock said.
“There’s a reason now Thanksgiving is not the Thanksgiving you used to have. Now, you’re looking for what are you going to do for Thanksgiving. You’re gonna either have a turkey or chicken. I don’t mind if you have chicken ‘cuz I sell chicken, so buy a lot of chicken,” Walker said.
Polls will be closed on Thanksgiving and the day after but, following a judge’s ruling that Saturday voting is allowed in the state ahead of the runoff, a slate of counties announced they would offer early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26 and Sunday, Nov. 27.
(WASHINGTON) — ABC News reports that Alaska’s incumbent senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, is projected to win reelection against another Republican opponent, Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka, and that Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola, the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, is projected to win reelection to her at-large House seat against Republican challenger Sarah Palin.
The projections come after the Alaska Division of Elections on Wednesday night revealed the results of the state’s new ranked-choice voting system and are some of the last outstanding races of the 2022 midterm elections.
Even with the Murkowski projection, power in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate remains at 50-49 since the last remaining Senate candidates in Alaska were both Republicans. The final outcome of the seat count in the Senate will be determined by a Dec. 6 runoff election in Georgia between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker.
With Peltola’s projected win, Democrats have 213 seats in a Republican-controlled House.
The unusually tight contests featured Murkowski, a moderate Republican who supports abortion rights and who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, and Tshibaka, a staunch Trump supporter who previously served as a commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration.
Peltola, reelected as the first Democrat to occupy the seat since the early 1970s, faced a rematch with former Republican vice president nominee Palin — and all the races were determined through a lengthy ranked-choice voting process because none of the candidates in the Alaska Senate or House races received 50% of the vote on Nov. 8.
According to the new election system, approved by Alaskans in 2020, contests where neither candidate reached the majority mark eliminated the individual who finished with the lowest number of votes. If a voter had chosen that last-place candidate, their vote then goes to their second choice. If a voter’s first choice was not eliminated, their vote stays with that candidate. The votes are then counted again.
Murkowski, an ardent ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has served in the Senate for 20 years after her father resigned to become the governor of Alaska and appointed her to take his place. Murkowski is the only Republican senator on the ballot this year who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial– a political target of the former president, who has said she is “one of the worst senators even imaginable.” Murkowski also opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tshibaka, however, was ahead of the incumbent Murkowski until Friday. When the race went to a second round, Tshibaka had 44% of 71% of the expected vote reporting, followed by Murkowski with 43%, Democratic candidate Patricia Chesbro with 10% and Republican candidate Buzz Kelley with 3%.
Upon the news that she squeaked ahead, Murkowski’s campaign tweeted a GIF mocking her Republican challenger. Following Democrat Mary Peltola’s victory in a special election for Alaska’s House seat earlier this year, Republicans heavily criticized Alaska’s ranked-choice voting.
“And just like that … Kelly’s claim that she only lost because of Ranked Choice was gone,” text accompanying the GIF states.
The Murkowski campaign said Monday they were not concerned about chances that the incumbent may not be victorious, stating that any outstanding votes would “break favorably for Lisa Murkowski.”
Peltola also did not cross the 50% threshold on Nov. 8, but handily won the House seat in August during a special election when a similar ranked-choice scenario played out to fill the place of Rep. Don Young, a Republican who died in March after representing the state in the House for nearly half a century.
ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
(TALLAHASSEE, FL) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appears to be eying a run for the presidency in 2024, cruised to reelection this month with the backing of a Rolodex of wealthy GOP donors — topped by an aerospace mogul who says that UFOs are real and that space aliens are here on Earth, “right under people’s noses.”
Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas hotel executive who went on to found Bigelow Aerospace with the goal of building the first commercial space station, donated a record $10 million to a political action committee supporting DeSantis’ reelection campaign in what was the state’s single largest political donation ever made by an individual, according to campaign filings.
The donation, which was Bigelow’s first major contribution to a Florida candidate, made him DeSantis’ single biggest individual benefactor over the last two years.
After making relatively modest political donations in prior years, Bigelow ramped up his donations in 2022, writing six- to seven-figure checks to a variety of Republican causes across the country, including donating a combined $8 million to a super PAC supporting Nevada Republicans running for Congress, and giving $2 million to the GOP-aligned super PAC Club for Growth Action.
Although he made no contributions during the last election cycle to former President Donald Trump or Trump’s other fundraising vehicles, Bigelow gave contributions to a super PAC supporting Trump-endorsed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, and a PAC connected to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
Bigelow, who has been a vocal advocate in the search for extraterrestrial life, told CBS’ 60 Minutes in 2017 that he is “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that “there has been, and is, an existing presence” of UFOs.
“I spent millions and millions and millions — I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject,” Bigelow told 60 Minutes. His company was part of a multimillion-dollar Pentagon program that investigated UFO sightings, according to The New York Times, which said the program reported no conclusions about the origin of unidentified objects.
His record contribution to DeSantis puts Bigelow on a long list of wealthy supporters who could support the Florida governor if he and Trump face off in the 2024 presidential primary. GOP megadonors who have already endorsed DeSantis for 2024 include billionaire financier Ken Griffin, who after Election Day this month told Politico, “I think it’s time to move on to the next generation.”
Griffin, who was the GOP’s biggest donor at the federal level during the 2022 election cycle, previously gave $100,000 to Trump’s 2016 inaugural committee and has continued to donate to the Republican National Committee, which been closely aligned with Trump.
But Griffin was the second largest individual donor, after Bigelow, to a pro-DeSantis PAC, donating $5 million early in the election cycle. He later gave another $5 million to the Republican Party of Florida, which was a major supporter of DeSantis’ campaign.
Other big-name Trump supporters who became major DeSantis supporters this past cycle include financier Walter Buckley Jr., who donated $1.3 million to DeSantis’ PAC; Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus, who donated $500,000; and shipping executive Richard Uihlein, who, together with his wife, donated a combined $1 million, according to filings.
The longtime conservative PAC Club for Growth also contributed $2 million to DeSantis’ PAC this past cycle.
Of note, Florida supermarket heiress Julie Fancelli — a major Trump donor who reportedly helped fund the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse — also supported DeSantis in recent years, giving a total of roughly $59,000 to his PAC in 2018 and 2019.
Buoyed by support like this, allies of DeSantis last week registered a new super PAC dubbed “Ron to the Rescue” to back his potential presidential run. The organization has already launched its first round of digital ad campaigns and this week is launching its first television ads in Iowa, only a week after Trump announced last Tuesday that he was running again in 2024.
“Right after last Tuesday, my phone was exploding with supporters urging us to move forward again and get the governor’s back,” said California-based GOP operative John Thomas, who had been working on and off to organize the super PAC over the last year.
“The only way we saw Gov. DeSantis having a meaningful path against Trump or to the nomination was if the Republicans didn’t win the majorities in the midterms and Trump-backed candidates dramatically underperformed,” Thomas said. “Not only is that exactly what ended up happening, but on the flip side, Gov. DeSantis not only got reelected but he created his own self-made red tsunami in Florida, turning it from a swing state to a red state.”
Thomas said backers of the new super PAC include “some former Donald Trump donors” as well as “traditional DeSantis supporters.” He said a “prominent law enforcement union” is also “financially supporting” the super PAC and endorsing DeSantis.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is spending Thanksgiving with his family in Nantucket, Massachusetts, as is their tradition, but the talk around the dinner table this year could turn to his political future.
Biden told reporters after the midterm elections he’d be conferring with his family over the holidays, and that while it’s his intention to run again in 2024, he has yet to make a final decision.
“I’m a great respecter of fate,” he said. “And this is, ultimately, a family decision. I think everybody wants me to run, but … we’re going to have discussions about it.”
“I hope Jill and I get a little time to actually sneak away for a week around — between Christmas and Thanksgiving,” he continued. “And my guess is it would be early next year when we make that judgment.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was tight-lipped Tuesday when pressed during a briefing whether the Biden family Thanksgiving would include discussions about 2024.
“He’s going to have a private conversation with his family. I am certainly not going to lay out what that conversation could look like or potentially be,” she said.
The Bidens will be in Nantucket until Sunday, continuing their Thanksgiving tradition that dates back to 1975.
In 2020 Biden’s family decided together about his run, with his eldest granddaughter Naomi calling a family meeting to urge him to challenge then-President Donald Trump.
Biden’s predecessor has already announced that he is running for the Republican nomination. An ABC News/Washington Post poll from September found Biden and Trump to be essentially tied in a hypothetical rematch, with 48% of Americans backing Biden and 46% backing Trump.
Biden’s been boosted after a better-than-expected performance by Democrats in the midterm elections. The party avoided a complete Republican takeover of Congress, managing to keep control of the Senate and limit their losses in the House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said after the midterms showing that she believed Biden should seek a second term.
“He has been a great president and he has a great record to run on,” she told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on This Week on Nov. 13.
Vice President Kamala Harris, asked about 2024 plans while visiting the Philippines, said Tuesday that if Biden runs again, “I will be running with him.”
“And I have no doubt about the strength that we have done over these past two years,” Harris said.
But questions are also mounting about his age. Biden recently celebrated his 80th birthday, making him the first octogenarian to serve as commander-in-chief in the nation’s history. If he were to seek reelection, and win, he would be 86 by the end of his second term.
As Biden considers his next move, Pelosi and other long-reigning Democratic leaders have announced they are stepping down from their roles. In her farewell speech on the House floor, Pelosi, 82, nodded to passing the torch to rising Democratic stars.
“For me, the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect,” Pelosi said. “And I am grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility.”
Before departing for Nantucket, the Bidens rang in some of the holiday cheer in Washington with the annual pardoning of Thanksgiving turkeys and the arrival of the official White House Christmas tree.
President Biden and Jill Biden also shared a Thanksgiving meal with military members and their families at Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point in North Carolina.
“You are literally, not figuratively, the greatest fighting force, the best fighting force in the history of the world,” Biden told service members. “That’s not hyperbole — in the history of the world. It’s not a joke. And you really are an incredible group of women and men. And again, I want to thank the spouses as well, because they put up with an awful lot because of your service.”
(WASHINGTON) — A Washington, D.C., jury began deliberations Tuesday in the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four other associates in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Rhodes and his alleged co-conspirators are charged with disrupting the peaceful transfer of power by conspiring to oppose by force the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, among multiple other felonies.
Rhodes himself did not enter the U.S. Capitol that day and maintains that his group only intended to provide security and medical aid to those attending multiple pro-Trump demonstrations around the city.
Prosecutors have spent months putting on their case, documenting what they said were the conversations, messages and actions of the defendants leading up to their involvement with the events of Jan. 6, and alleged efforts to cover up their criminal activity afterward.
Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate who founded the Oath Keepers militia in 2009, sent increasingly frantic messages to members of the group, following the 2020 election, about their need to be prepared to prevent Biden from taking office, the government said.
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” Rhodes said in a Nov. 5 message shown by prosecutors.
Rhodes took the rare step of testifying on his own behalf during the trial, and told the court he continues to believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate, citing an unfounded theory that pandemic safety measures unconstitutionally affected voting.
Relying on testimony from the FBI, prosecutors allege that Rhodes worked between the election and Jan. 6 to rally his troops — many of them former law enforcement and military service members — and spent thousands of dollars on weapons and equipment as he traveled across the country toward Washington.
“It will be a bloody and desperate fight,” Rhodes wrote in a Dec. 11 message to other Oath Keepers, prosecutors said. “We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”
The charges: seditious conspiracy, obstructing government, aiding and abetting
Over dozens of hours in the D.C. federal courthouse, prosecutors have worked to reach the high bar of proving to the jury that the five defendants, Rhodes, Thomas Caldwell, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Kelly Meggs, all engaged in a conspiracy to forcibly oppose the execution of laws governing the transfer of presidential power.
The government attempted to preempt innocent explanations for the defendant’s actions with evidence they said shows Rhodes and his associates would continue plans to disrupt government operations following Jan. 6.
“We aren’t quitting,” alleged co-conspirator Meggs wrote the night of Jan. 6 in a message presented by the government. “We’re reloading.”
Rhodes continued posting about a violent revolution and spent thousands on firearms and related equipment in the days after Jan. 6, records presented by the government showed.
If convicted on the seditious conspiracy charge, they could face a maximum of 20 years in prison, though all five members face a range of other felonies that could carry hefty prison sentences as well.
Alleged Oath Keeper co-conspirator Jessica Watkins said in testimony last week she accepted responsibility and regretted some of her actions inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, despite claiming credit for storming the building and calling it a “patriot movement” on social media after the fact.
After making her way through the crowd at the grand double doors on the Capitol building’s eastern side — which she described as similar to being at a Black Friday sale — Watkins found herself in the middle of a mob, crammed into a hallway leading further into the Capitol building. Metropolitan Police Department officer Christopher Owens, who testified earlier in the trial, was at the other end of the hallway with fellow officers physically keeping the mob from advancing.
Watkins admitted to yelling “push!” and testified that she now regrets it and didn’t realize what was happening at the front of the group.
“I take full responsibility for what happened in this hallway,” Watkins said. “I know it opens me up to criminal liability. I’m going to get charged for it — I get it.”
The officers ultimately held the line, but Watkins and others remained inside the Capitol building before she left to help carry out someone who had been hit in the face with pepper spray.
Watkins described being “excited” upon entering the capitol. Even after the incident in the hallway, she can be seen on Capitol security camera footage smoking some sort of pen-sized item. She later told the FBI that she had smoked marijuana inside the building.
“It felt like a historic moment,” Watkins said. “We were making history and I wasn’t absorbing the fact that we are not only trespassing but we’re trespassing in one of the most secure buildings in the world.”
But prosecutors circled back to the political nature of Watkins’ views, especially as they concerned the 2020 election, suggesting Biden’s victory may have been threatening to her and her alleged co-conspirators.
“The election itself wasn’t a threat,” Watkins said, adding that she was more concerned about what might happen “after the inauguration.”
Watkins said she maintained a “steady diet of InfoWars and Alex Jones” in the months before Jan. 6, watching the conspiracy theorist’s rants and interviews several hours a day, which she testified informed her world view and concerns about the government.
Watkins became concerned about a variety of conspiracy theories promoted in far-right circles around the time of the 2020 election. She testified that she became worried about the United Nations deploying to Washington, D.C., to ensure Joe Biden took office, then forcibly taking guns from Americans, mandating COVID-19 vaccinations and allowing a possible Chinese invasion from Canada.
“In hindsight I feel like I was gullible,” Watkins told the court.
Defendants contend they were there to provide security
Defense attorneys have sought to dispute the government’s arguments that the group ever engaged in plans to disrupt the Electoral college certification — arguing prosecutors are selectively quoting their messages and conversations to cast their intentions as seditious in nature.
They have also vigorously disputed the government’s narrative about the so-called “Quick Reaction Force” of heavily armed Oath Keepers members stationed at a hotel just outside the city on Jan. 6, which prosecutors have argued were in place as part of the plan to potentially use force to prevent Donald Trump’s removal from office.
Defense attorneys note that at no point has the government alleged that any of the firearms at the hotel were brought into D.C. on Jan. 6 or afterward, and that Rhodes never called them to come to the Capitol in the midst of the riot. In his own testimony, Rhodes denied having any knowledge about the specifics of the so-called Virginia QRF, even though he did acknowledge recommending members who decided to bring their firearms to keep them out of Washington.
Rhodes, in particular, has leaned heavily into his defense that he was never calling for anything unlawful in his public and private pleadings to have Trump mobilize the militia by invoking the Insurrection Act.
Attorneys for the defendants attempted to break the line prosecutors drew between the election and the Capitol siege, regardless of their clients’ far-right political views.
“Yes, things were said,” Stewart Rhodes’ attorney, James Bright, said. “It was heated rhetoric. Horribly heated rhetoric. Bombast. Inappropriate.”
But Bright contended none of this talk amounted to any sort of Jan. 6 plan to stop official government proceedings.
Kelly Meggs attorney, Stanley Woodward, similarly sought to undermine the idea that a coordinated effort took place between the defendants on Jan. 6 while arguing that any coordination that was done involved providing security to VIPs who were speaking at events that day.
“We don’t take lightly the events of Jan. 6, but we do take issue with the government’s characterization of what happened that day,” Woodward said.
Both Bright and Woodward condemned the violence and destruction that happened in and around the Capitol on Jan. 6, while maintaining it was not at the fault of their clients.
Woodward showed security camera footage from inside the Capitol of Meggs and other Oath Keepers entering double doors on the eastern side of the building after they had been forced open by rioters. Video from outside shows the Oath Keepers advancing through the crowd, but not making it all the way to the front before entering the building.
During his closing arguments, Harrelson defense attorney Brad Geyer focused on the government’s video evidence where rioters on the Capitol’s eastern steps were singing the national anthem while officers were being attacked with chemical spray and the defendants were further behind, walking up the steps through the massive crowd.
“If the video doesn’t fit you must acquit,” Geyer said repeatedly during closing arguments, channeling a famous refrain from the O.J.Simpson murder trial.
Geyer drew the jury’s attention to part of the crowd that was in front of the Oath Keepers and the rioters who broke open the doors before Harrelson and the others made it up to that level. Upon entering, Harrelson spent about 20 minutes in the building before leaving.
“They want you to turn this man’s life upside down for 17 minutes,” Geyer said. “The absurdity boggles the mind.”
What is seditious conspiracy?
Prosecutors provided a specific roadmap for the jury to reach its judgments, breaking down the meaning of seditious conspiracy in plain terms: an agreement to oppose the government by force. There does not need to be a specific start or end date and all the defendants did not need to join the conspiracy at the same time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said last week.
The rarely-used seditious conspiracy statute was signed into law following the Civil War with the aim of prosecuting Southerners who might still have wanted to fight against the government.
The Justice Department hasn’t brought seditious conspiracy charges since 2010, when prosecutors indicted several Michigan residents and members of the Hutaree militia with conspiring to oppose by force the authority of the U.S. government. But the defendants were all acquitted after a judge determined that prosecutors had hinged too much of their case on statements that were First Amendment protected speech.
The last successful seditious conspiracy conviction was in 1995, when a jury found an Egyptian cleric and his followers guilty in a plot to bomb the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and a building housing an FBI office.
The Oath Keepers now on trial are not charged with seeking to overthrow the U.S. government — instead prosecutors argue their conduct falls within the portion of the seditious conspiracy statute related to conspiring to oppose the government’s authority and forcibly blocking the execution of laws.
(WASHINGTON) — As the winter holidays draw near, Dr. Anthony Fauci stood at the White House briefing podium one last time on Tuesday to give Americans health advice as he prepares to leave government after 50 years.
Get boosted, Fauci said, and if you’re not vaccinated yet, get vaccinated. That was his message as he appeared with White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.
It’s advice he’s given hundreds of times, from that same podium and other forums, as the pandemic stretches on. Fauci plans to step away from his role at the National Institute of Health and as White House chief medical advisor at the end of the year.
But as the country faces its third Thanksgiving with COVID-19, Fauci said the country was inching closer to an “equilibrium” with the pandemic.
“The message that Dr. Jha and I are getting to you today is we can make that happen much sooner by vaccinating and by keeping updated on your booster. It’s just really as simple as that,” Fauci said.
For the holidays, Fauci said there’s “multiple actions” people can take to protect themselves — including masking and testing beforehand.
A younger person may choose to wear a mask if they have an immunocompromised or elderly relative at the table, Fauci said. He also said not to underestimate testing, and that it “makes sense that you might want to get a test that day before” any gatherings.
“Now, we’re not talking about requirements or mandating,” he said. “We’re talking about if you are in a situation and each individual person evaluates their own risk and that in the risk of their family member.”
Jha went so far as to suggest that if everyone followed the recommended vaccine and treatment course, they could “prevent nearly every death in America from COVID.”
“If folks get their updated vaccines and they get treated if they have a breakthrough infection, we can prevent essentially every COVID death in America,” he said. “That is a remarkable fact.”
Jha detailed a six-week long campaign to drive up booster awareness and hopefully increase vaccination coverage, particularly among seniors. The White House will invest nearly half a billion dollars in efforts to expand vaccination efforts at community health centers as well as organizations that work with older people and people with disabilities.
Americans can also expect to see more outreach, as the administration launches a media campaign targeting people over 50 with ads called “Can’t Wait.”
Though Jha had been urging Americans to get their updated booster shots by Halloween in order to get strong protection going into Thanksgiving and Christmas, he said that there was still plenty of benefit in getting the shot now.
The campaign comes as booster uptake has been slow — only about 11% of people aged 5 and older have received a bivalent booster, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and though rates have slightly ticked up as the weather has gotten colder, the rollout has not.
“It’s certainly not too late, if you think about the holidays that are coming,” Jha said. Though if takes about two weeks to get the maximum effect of the booster shot, Jha also said that some protection kicked in “relatively quickly.”
“People who get vaccinated this week, they will have a lot of protection during December, January, February, onwards, the time that we socialize the most.” Jha said.
ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied former President Donald Trump’s request to block an appeals court order that he surrender his tax returns and other financial records to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The court offered no explanation for the decision. There was no noted dissent or vote breakdown. It marks the fourth time Trump has lost a high court appeal related to requests for his taxes.
The move appears to be the end of the road for Trump in the years-long saga of congressional subpoenas for his tax records in the stated interest of drafting oversight legislation.
“The Treasury Department will comply with the Court of Appeals’ decision,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said in a statement in response to Tuesday’s high court action. The agency, which includes the Internal Revenue Service in possession of Trump’s confidential tax returns, declined to say when exactly it would provide the records to the Committee.
The Democratic-controlled committee has argued that — by the Supreme Court’s own guidelines laid out in a 2020 ruling in the same ongoing dispute — judges must defer to the legitimate legislative purpose behind a request for information. They said that standard was plainly met in this case.
“We knew the strength of our case, we stayed the course, followed the advice of counsel, and finally, our case has been affirmed by the highest court in the land,” chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said in a statement reacting Tuesday. “Since the Magna Carta, the principle of oversight has been upheld, and today is no different. This rises above politics, and the Committee will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”
Neal will surrender chairmanship of the committee to a Republican in January after the GOP won majority control of the House in the midterm elections.
While Trump has claimed the subpoena is a politically motivated fishing expedition, the committee said the documents are critical for drafting “legislation on equitable tax administration, including legislation on the President’s tax compliance.”
On Nov. 1, Chief Justice John Roberts granted a temporary administrative stay of a lower court order regarding Trump’s tax returns and other financial records. Today, Roberts officially lifted that stay.
The committee had requested six years’ worth of Trump’s returns as part of an investigation into IRS audit practices of presidents and vice presidents.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Trump accused the committee of seeking his taxes under false pretenses.
“The Committee’s purpose in requesting President Trump’s tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public,” the petition said.
A federal appeals court ruled unanimously in August that tax returns should be handed over to the House committee. The committee first sought the returns in 2019.
While Trump’s team claimed the House panel’s bid to obtain the tax returns is purely political, the committee insists the documents are valuable to assess how the Internal Revenue Service performs presidential audits.
At the heart of the dispute is a federal tax law mandating that the Treasury Department “shall furnish” tax information requested by the Ways and Means Committee, a law Trump’s lawyers suggest is unconstitutional.
Democrats have been clamoring to get a glimpse of Trump’s tax returns since 2015 when he launched his bid for president and broke decades of precedent by not releasing the documents.
Besides having his personal tax returns sought after, Trump is also facing pressure by criminal probes into his personal business, possession of government documents after leaving office and efforts to block the certification of the 2020 election results.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller, Katherine Faulders and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration will extend the pause on student loan payments once again, President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, as the program to cancel millions of peoples’ student loans remains tied up in the courts.
The extension is intended to give the Supreme Court time to rule on the lawsuits brought against Biden’s student loan program during its upcoming term. The pause on payments will lift either 60 days after the Supreme Court issues a decision on the program, or 60 days after June 30, depending on which date comes first, the Department of Education said.
“It isn’t fair to ask tens of millions of borrowers eligible for relief to resume their student debt payments while the courts consider the lawsuits. For that reason, the Secretary of Education is extending the pause on student loan payments while we seek relief from the court,” Biden said in a video posted by the White House on Tuesday afternoon.
Biden’s plan aimed to cancel $20,000 of debt for people who received Pell Grants in college and $10,000 for all other borrowers, so long as they earn less than $125,000, or $250,000 as a married couple. In recent weeks, the plan was blocked by Republican-led lawsuits in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Northern District of Texas. Last week, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn the recent ruling in the Eighth Circuit that halted the relief program, or to consider hearing the case before the court during its upcoming term.
“I’m completely confident my plan is legal,” Biden said in the video. “I’m never going to apologize for helping working class and middle class families recover from the economic crisis created by the pandemic. And I’ll continue working to make government work to deliver for all Americans for all Americans.”
In a statement, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said officials also considered the “tremendous financial uncertainty” that lifting the moratorium would cause ahead of the holidays.
“Callous efforts to block student debt relief in the courts have caused tremendous financial uncertainty for millions of borrowers who cannot set their family budgets or even plan for the holidays without a clear picture of their student debt obligations, and it’s just plain wrong,” said Cardona.
“We’re extending the payment pause because it would be deeply unfair to ask borrowers to pay a debt that they wouldn’t have to pay, were it not for the baseless lawsuits brought by Republican officials and special interests,” he added.
Student debt advocacy groups, many of which had been pressuring the administration, commended the extension.
“This extension means that struggling borrowers will be able to keep food on their tables during the holiday season — and the coming months — as the Administration does everything it can to beat back the baseless and backward attacks on working families with student debt. Win or lose, borrowers can depend on President Biden to keep his promise and deliver student debt relief,” said Mike Pierce, executive director for the Student Borrower Protection Center.
The moratorium on student loan payments, which has been in place for about two years, was scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, with payments resuming on Jan. 1. It was put in place under former President Donald Trump in March 2020 and extended twice before Biden took office. Biden has since extended it six times.
But the Biden administration has argued that the moratorium could only lift in conjunction with Biden’s debt relief program going into effect, easing the transition for people who haven’t had to pay their loans down for years. Extending the moratorium also avoids the messy situation where borrowers restart paying their loans while the relief program is on hold, and then get them canceled, but want refunds on the money they’d begun paying.
Conservative groups have brought lawsuits arguing that Biden’s plan exceeds his administration’s power, that the program unfairly excludes Americans who won’t receive debt relief and that certain loan servicers will lose revenue.
The Biden administration has pushed back on arguments about who qualifies, defending their decision to only give relief to people making below a certain income, and said that the court cases don’t have standing because no one is being harmed by the debt relief program. The administration has also argued that Cardona is completely within his authority to cancel debt because of a law called the HEROES Act, which gives the power to cancel loans during a national state of emergency like the pandemic.
“On the merits, the plan falls squarely within the plain text of the Secretary’s statutory authority,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the recent Supreme Court filing.
“Indeed, the entire purpose of the HEROES Act is to authorize the Secretary to grant student-loan-related relief to at-risk borrowers because of a national emergency — precisely what the Secretary did here,” Prelogar wrote.
It is the secretary’s job “to ensure that borrowers affected by a national emergency are not worse off in relation to their student loans,” Prelogar argued, and if the Department of Education didn’t act, there could be a “spike” in loan defaults when the pause on student loan payments lifts in January.
Officials rolled the program out in late August with the pledge that anyone who applied before mid-November could have their loans canceled by the time payments resumed. The application, a simple form on the Department of Education’s website, shut down in mid-November after a ruling from the Texas court.
But the Department of Education said 26 million applications had already been received, and 16 million had already been approved for relief, ready for when the department is legally able to discharge it.
(EL PASO, Texas) — House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign over the administration’s immigration policies and raised the possibility of an impeachment inquiry if he doesn’t.
Speaking at the border in El Paso, Texas, McCarthy said Mayorkas “cannot and must not remain in that position.” He said if Mayorkas were in charge of any company, he would “have been fired by now.”
If Mayorkas does not resign, McCarthy said, “when we take power” the incoming Republican-led House will investigate whether to launch an impeachment inquiry against him, McCarthy said.
“House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure will determine whether we can begin an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy added.
McCarthy said he had spoken to GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and James Comer, the respective incoming chairs of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, about launching investigations into Mayorkas’ handling of the border.
“They have my complete support to investigate the collapse of our border and the shutdown of ICE enforcement nationwide,” McCarthy said.
Jordan said in a statement that Republicans will hold Mayorkas accountable “for his failure to enforce immigration law and secure the border through all means necessary.”
McCarthy was at the border with six other Republican members of Congress to receive “operational briefings,” his office said, and to express gratitude to border officers serving ahead of Thanksgiving.
The White House attacked McCarthy for his visit and claims about Mayorkas, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre calling the trip a “stunt.”
“The question that we have for Kevin McCarthy, who’s soon to be — who’s soon to be Speaker McCarthy, you know, what is — what is his plan?” Jean-Pierre said when asked about McCarthy during her daily briefing for reporters. “What is he doing to help the situation that we’re seeing? What is his plan? He goes down there and he does a political stunt, like many Republicans do, that we have seen them do, but he actually is not putting forth a plan.”
“I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News in an interview published Oct. 19. “If anyone ever rises to that occasion, you have to, but I think the country wants to heal and … start to see the system that actually works.”
Mayorkas told a Senate panel when asked if he was going to resign said he has no plans to do so nor has he spoken to President Joe Biden about it.
The move to threaten to impeach Mayorkas was expected, according to a Biden administration official. A Mayorkas impeachment by the GOP-led House would likely fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate because of a two-thirds vote needed for removal.
The DHS secretary has drawn the ire of Republicans on Capitol Hill as the number of migrants that crossed the border in the fiscal year 2021 was the highest on record, according to statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
Tuesday’s announcement from McCarthy comes as more conservative Republicans say they won’t vote for him for speaker.
McCarthy will need the backing of the majority of the House to be elected speaker on Jan. 3. Nearly all Republican members, given the slim majority, would have to vote for him.
He won the House GOP’s nomination to be speaker last week in a 188-31 vote. But so far, five House Republicans are threatening to vote against McCarthy in January when the entire House votes. GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Matt Rosendale, Bob Good and Ralph Norman all now have publicly said they will not support him.
Biggs said McCarthy does not have 218 votes and refuses to “assist” McCarthy in his effort to get the votes. Biggs tried to challenge McCarthy during GOP leadership elections.
“Time to make a change at the top of the House of Representatives. I cannot vote for the gentleman from California, Mr. McCarthy,” Biggs said in a statement last week.
-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders, Luke Barr and Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Early voting in Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff kicked off Tuesday in at least one of the state’s 159 counties as Democrat-led efforts to expand the election’s early vote options have continued.
General election vote certification on Monday by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger allowed some voters to cast their ballots for Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock or Republican candidate Herschel Walker a few days ahead of schedule.
Early voting in the runoff election could not start until the results for the Nov. 8 general election were certified, and the decision to allow early in-person voting happens at the county level. So far, only Douglas County in the greater Atlanta region was set to open polling locations Tuesday and Wednesday. Nearby DeKalb County will open up one polling location on Wednesday. Early voting must begin statewide on Nov. 28 and end on Dec. 2, though counties now have the option of offering some additional days this week.
The vote certification and the launch of the runoff election comes after Georgia shattered all past early voting turnout numbers earlier this month. Warnock and Walker’s battle for the Senate seat was sent to a runoff when neither candidate received 50% of the state’s total vote.
“Our 2022 General Election was a tremendous success,” said Raffensperger after he certified the Nov. 8 votes. “Early certification reflects that success. Georgia has struck the balance between accessibility and security, and Georgia’s election administrators worked tirelessly to get the job done. We are so thankful for their work.”
Warnock won his seat in 2021 during a runoff election against former Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, during which time the balance of power in the Senate rested on his shoulders and those of his now-Democratic Senate colleague, then-Rep. Jon Ossoff, who was also fighting in overtime for his seat against former GOP Sen. David Perdue.
comparable to general election numbers. Warnock declared victory after securing the majority of 4,484,954 votes in the runoff election in 2021, while 4,914,361 ballots cast during the general election of 2020.
Georgia secretary of state spokesperson Robert Sinners told ABC News in a statement Tuesday that the office also anticipates “strong turnout” this election.
The faceoff between Warnock and Walker will not determine who controls the U.S. Senate, but Democrats have been holding their breath for a favorable outcome because a 51-seat majority would make wielding power much easier. Republicans have also put political pressure on winning the contest, pointing to successes they’ve been able to achieve in an evenly split Senate.
“When Herschel wins, we’re gonna have a 50/50 Senate. Alright? Now it’d be better if we were at 51, 52, 53 but by him winning, we will be able to block some bad legislation because it takes 51 plus to get this stuff done,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., while stumping for Walker last week in Augusta.
The beginning of early voting comes amid widespread confusion about the process of Georgia early runoff voting.
A Georgia appeals court on Monday left in place a lower court order allowing counties to offer voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving for the upcoming runoff election, which was brought up by Warnock’s campaign and other Democrats. On Tuesday, national and statewide Republicans filed an emergency petition in the Georgia Supreme Court to block Saturday voting.
For his part, Walker has made comments in recent weeks that he was unsure early voting was even permitted during runoff elections, noting that the process should be kept on the shorter side.
“They have one day? Two days? One week! A week? We ought to cut it down from a week. Well, if they give you a week, take that week and do that. You’ve got to get out and vote,” he said during a recent campaign event when told that there will be voting before the runoff.
Ongoing legal challenges to early voting on Nov. 26
Earlier this month, Raffensperger told county election officials that early voting could not continue on the Saturday after Thanksgiving because state law says it is illegal on a Saturday if there is a holiday on the Thursday or Friday preceding it.
Warnock’s campaign, the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, sued the State of Georgia earlier this month, arguing that Raffensperger “misreads” and “cherry-picks” the state’s election law and that the state ban on opening election sites after a holiday applies to general elections and primaries, not runoffs.
On Monday, a Georgia appeals court declined a request by the state to stay a lower court’s ruling that said state law allows early voting that day.
Then, on Tuesday, the Georgia Republican Party, the Republican National Senatorial Committee, and the Republican National Committee filed an emergency petition in the Georgia Supreme Court to block that day’s voting.
The appeal comes as a growing list of counties have started to offer that date for voters — over 18 have announced they will offer early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26.
Georgia’s Senate runoff has attracted high-profile surrogates moving into the last stretch
As voting has now commenced for the contest, so too has national starpower started to schedule campaign events for their respective candidates.
On Dec. 1, former President Barack Obama will return to Atlanta to campaign for Warnock and encourage Georgians to cast their ballots during the final days of early in-person voting.
Obama also came to Georgia in the final days ahead of the general election race on Nov. 8, during which the Warnock campaign said that large swaths of rally-goers signed up to participate in door knocking shifts.
Warnock has not committed to bringing President Joe Biden down to boost his race, noting that he doesn’t “have that much time” left in the race to bring down the current Democratic standard-bearer.
“We will see, we don’t have that much time,” he said at a campaign event last week. “We’ll see who shows up.”
Walker has not answered questions from ABC News about whether his party’s former leader, Donald Trump, would be asked to come down to campaign for him, while other GOP surrogates like Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and recently reelected Gov. Brian Kemp have jumped on the trail on his behalf.
National and statewide Republican officials cautioned how a Trump 2024 announcement could upend Herschel Walker’s chances in the runoff. Still, during Trump’s 2024 presidential announcement last week, he specifically voiced his support for Walker.
“We must all work very hard for a gentleman and a great person named Herschel Walker, a fabulous human being who loves our country and will be a great United States senator,” Trump said.
Just days after those comments, Warnock– who has tried to illuminate his rival’s closeness with the former president, especially after Trump-backed candidates suffered a number of midterm losses during the general election–released an ad broadcasting those remarks with photos of the two of them together. At the end of the 30-second ad, a message appears: “Stop Donald Trump. Stop Herschel Walker.”
