Politics

(NEW YORK) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, who will be remembered for the tenacity that defined his career and his work on behalf of fellow military veterans, died in his sleep Sunday morning. He was 98.

“Thank you for the outpouring of love over the last year, it continues to sustain us as we grieve the loss of the precious man we knew as husband and father,” the Dole family said in a statement Sunday. “Bob Dole was never only ours – we shared him with Americans from every walk of life and every political persuasion. He dedicated his life to serving you, and so it is heartwarming that so many honor him at his passing.

In his memoir, One Soldier’s Story, Dole wrote that his experiences in World War II defined his life.

“Adversity can be a harsh teacher,” he wrote. “But its lessons often define our lives. As much as we may wish that we could go back and relive them, do things differently, make better, wiser decisions, we can’t change history. War is like that. You can rewrite it, attempt to infuse it with your own personal opinions, twist or spin it to make it more palatable, but eventually the truth will come out.”

As an Army officer in World War II, he was wounded and there were doubts he’d survive. His right arm was permanently disabled, but he adapted.

“If unable to reach voters with my right hand, I could always reach out with my left,” he wrote in The Doles: Unlimited Partners, a book he co-authored with his wife, Elizabeth, and Richard Norton Smith.

He went on to graduate from college, and, while still in law school, won a seat in the Kansas state legislature. He won a seat in Congress in 1960 and went on to serve in the House until he was elected to the Senate in 1968.

Dole ran three times for president. He lost in primaries in 1980 to Ronald Reagan and in 1988 to George H.W. Bush. He won the Republican party nomination in 1996, but lost the general election to Bill Clinton.

“Those pivotal moments remain indelibly impressed in your heart and mind,” he wrote in One Soldier’s Story. “For me, the defining period in my life was not running for the highest office in the land. It started years earlier, in a foreign country, where hardly anyone knew my name.”

‘An All American Boy,’ wartime service and wounds

Robert Dole was born in the small town of Russell, Kansas, on July 22, 1923.

His father, Doran, ran a local creamery, and his mother, Bina, occasionally sold Singer sewing machines door-to-door to make ends meet. He grew up with three siblings and, according to a timeline on the Dole Institute website, the four children shared a room, a bike and a pair of roller skates.

His neighbors recalled him growing up as “an all-American boy,” according to his 1996 presidential campaign website. In school, he was an honor student, sports editor of his school newspaper and he lettered in football, basketball and track.

In 1941, he graduated from Russell High School and enrolled at the University of Kansas, becoming the first in his family to go to college — thanks to a $300 loan from a Russell banker.

A year into college, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Dole left the university in 1943 to enroll in the Army. He had hoped to become a doctor and trained in the medical corps at Camp Barkley in Texas, according to a Dole Institute timeline. He later attended Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Georgia and, by the end of 1944, graduated as a second lieutenant in the Army infantry.

In 1945, Dole was assigned to the 85th Regime, 10th Mountain Division. It was originally intended to be a group of “skiing soldiers” to fight the Germans in the snow and mountains. But Dole was wounded during “Operation Craftsmen,” a spring offensive in Italy that was meant to overtake German troops scattered in the hills and valleys of the Apennine Mountains and gain control of northern Italy.

Dole’s platoon was to take Hill 913. His fellow soldiers later described it as a “suicide mission.”

It was April, and a stone wall and a field of landmines trapped the Americans in an exposed area. A Nazi sniper, perched in a farmhouse, began firing at the battalion, according to Dole’s 1996 campaign website. The platoon leader was ordered to take out the sniper and gunners. But as Dole climbed a rocky field, his radio man was hit.

Dole crawled across the battlefield on his stomach and then pulled the wounded soldier into a foxhole. Seconds later, an exploding shell ripped into Dole’s right shoulder and back. His collarbone was shattered, part of his spine was smashed and his right arm was dangling from his side.

Lying facedown in the dirt, Dole recalled being unable to see or move his arms.

“I thought they were missing,” he said on his campaign website. He called for help, and two medics who tried to rescue him were gunned down. A sergeant eventually dragged him to safety.

Dole earned two Purple Hearts and was awarded the Bronze Star, but doctors weren’t sure he’d survive. He was hospitalized for three years. He suffered infections, grueling therapy, several operations and in one instance developed a blood clot that nearly killed him.

Good Samaritans helped him. A surgeon performed several of Dole’s surgeries at no charge. Back home in Russell, the community collected money in a cigar box at the local drug store to help pay for his medical bills. Dole kept that cigar box, decades later, in his Senate office desk drawer.

He recovered sensation in most of his body and was able to walk, but his right arm was permanently disabled. He would often carry a pen in his right hand to prevent his fingers from splaying. He usually avoided shaking hands with his right hand.

“Coming back from a war is a longer journey than any plane flight home,” Dole wrote in a 2006 forward to Courage After Fire: Coping Strategies for Troops Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and Their Families. “I sustained my own injuries in World War II; some of my wounds were obvious, some were not. Some wounds were healed more quickly than others. And though I was lucky to be surrounded by great doctors, wonderful family, and a more supportive community than anyone could reasonably ask for, that mental readjustment was no small task.”

In 1948, while still recovering, he married Phyllis Holden, an occupational therapist from New Hampshire. They met during his last months of treatment at a hospital dance and married three months later.

His hopes of becoming a physician dashed, he set his sights on becoming a lawyer.

“Maybe I couldn’t use my hand, I told myself, but I could develop my mind,” he wrote in The Doles: Unlimited Partners.

He first enrolled at the University of Arizona in Tucson on the GI Bill, and a year later transferred to Washburn University in his home state of Kansas. He graduated in 1952.

Senate leadership, presidential aspirations, a political power couple

Still in law school, Dole won his first election, claiming a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives. He served from 1951 to 1953, until he was elected Russell County Attorney.

His daughter, Robin, was born in 1954.

He served as county attorney until 1961, when he was first elected as a Republican to the 87th Congress.

His campaign events featured singers playing the ukulele and women referred to as “Dolls for Dole,” who handed out cups of Dole pineapple juice, according to the Dole Institute. He served on the House Agriculture Committee after having pledged to support farmers’ interests, such as promoting rural electricity and soil conservation.

In 1964, he voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act, and in 1965 voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act. He considered them to be the most important votes of his career.

He was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating former Kansas Gov. Bill Avery, and served for 28 years, garnering national attention.

In the early 1970s, he served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, including during the 1972 election and Watergate break-in. He lived at the Watergate at the time, and a hometown reporter asked whether he had hidden the break-in tools in his one-bedroom apartment, according to The New York Times. He said he did not.

Dole and Phyllis divorced in 1972. In 1976, she told an interviewer that much of what her former husband had achieved since the war was an effort to prove that he could do it in spite of his handicap, according to a 1982 profile in The New York Times.

He married Elizabeth Hanford in December 1975 in a ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral.

In 1976, then-President Gerald Ford selected Dole as his running mate at the Republican National Convention. And at the end of the decade, Dole made a brief run for president in the Republican primary, but withdrew after a lackluster showing in New Hampshire.

Dole went on to serve as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 1981 to 1985. He served as the Republican leader from 1985 to 1996. In the midst of his leadership role, he ran for president again. This time, he scored an upset over then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in Iowa, but fell short again in New Hampshire in 1988, withdrawing from the race.

Elizabeth Dole became labor secretary under Bush. In 1991, she left her Cabinet position to become the president of the American Red Cross. From 1983 to 1987, Elizabeth Dole, under President Ronald Reagan, had become the first woman to serve as secretary for the Department of Transportation and the first woman to lead a branch of the armed services, the Coast Guard.

In 1996, Dole retired from the Senate to fully pursue the presidency. This time, he secured the Republican nomination and, with former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, challenged President Bill Clinton.

“When I delivered my concession speech that evening, I meant it when I said, ‘Tomorrow is the first day of my life when I have nothing to do,'” Dole wrote in Great Political Wit: Laughing (Almost) All the Way to the White House.

He was wrong. He went to his Washington campaign office to personally thank his staff and volunteers. While there, he got a call from the producers of The Late Show with David Letterman asking if he’d be a guest on their show while they broadcasted from Washington.

Two nights later, he recalled trading quips with Letterman when he asked Dole about Clinton’s weight.

“‘I don’t know,’ was my comeback. ‘I never tried to lift him. I just tried to beat him,'” Dole wrote, then describing the audience’s laughter. “Pundits, ever quick to grasp the obvious, claimed to have discovered a New Dole.”

He was no longer the “glowering, Social Security-devouring sourpuss they’d come to know,” he wrote. He made appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Saturday Night Live and filmed a Visa commercial that premiered during the 1997 Super Bowl. In it, he returned to his hometown to be asked by the diner’s waitress for identification before he could cash a check.

“I just can’t win,” he said in the advertisement.

In his book, he wrote, “Over the years I’ve grown ever more convinced that my hero, Dwight Eisenhower, was absolutely right when he said, ‘A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.'”

As Dole settled into a post-political life, Elizabeth Dole returned to politics.

She sought the Republican nomination for president before exiting the race in October 1999. Then in 2002, when longtime Sen. Jesse Helms announced his retirement, she decided to run for his seat and became the state’s first female senator. She served one term before being defeated in her reelection bid in 2008.

Post-political life, continued service to veterans

In 1997, months after losing the presidential election, Clinton presented Dole with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“Through it, we honor not just his individual achievement but his clear embodiment in the common values and beliefs that join us as a people,” Clinton said ahead of placing the medal around his neck. “Values and beliefs that he has spent his life advancing. Sen. Dole, a grateful nation presents this award, with respect for the example you have set for Americans today and for Americans and generations yet to come.”

After accepting the medal, Dole said, “No one can claim to be equal to this honor, but I will cherish it as long as I live because this occasion allows me to honor others who are more entitled.”

Dole went on to lead the World War II Memorial Commission. As national chairman, he helped to raise more than $197 million to construct a national memorial to honor the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during the war. Construction began in September 2001 and was completed in April 2004.

At the dedication ceremony, Dole spoke about the importance of remembering the sacrifices made to uphold democracy.

“It is only fitting when this memorial was opened to the public about a month ago the very first visitors were school children,” Dole said. “For them, our war is ancient history and those who fought it are slightly ancient themselves. Yet, in the end, they are the ones for whom we built this shrine and to whom we now hand the baton in the unending relay of human possibility.”

In addition to his Visa commercial, Dole went on to pitch for Dunkin’ Donuts, Pepsi and Viagra. His good humor also won him a place on Comedy Central, where he supplied commentary on The Daily Show during the 2000 election. And ground was broken for the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1997 and dedicated in 2003.

But his work with and for veterans is something he notably continued into his later years. Elizabeth Dole began to work in support of military caregivers.

He served as honorary adviser of the Honor Flight Network, which works to provide veterans the opportunity to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington for free. Dole would often spend Saturdays at the memorial, greeting veterans, swapping stories and posting for photos.

In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed Dole to help lead a bipartisan commission to investigate a neglect scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Elizabeth Dole, in 2012, established the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, which was designed to empower, support and honor the nation’s 5.5 million military caregivers.

Dole embarked on a reunion tour of his home state, visiting all 105 counties, in his early 1990s. And in 2017, at the age of 94, he returned to Fort Benning, from which he’d graduated from Army Officer Candidate School in 1944.

On his Twitter account, he posted that he hadn’t been there since he graduated. “Jiminy!” he wrote, posting a photo of him sitting on a plane.

On Dec. 4, 2018, Dole made headlines celebrating a fellow veteran. He visited the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and was helped out of his wheelchair so that he could stand and salute the casket of George H.W. Bush.

Two days later, the Doles celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary.

In April 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill authorizing Dole’s honorary promotion to colonel.

“He turned adversity into action as he healed from the grave wounds sustained while risking his life for a fellow soldier, and decided to come to Congress and to serve the people of Kansas,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi said in January 2018 at a ceremony granting Dole the Congressional Gold Medal. “Sen. Bob Dole, for a lifetime spent defending, advancing and exemplifying our proudest American ideals, we thank you.”

Dole announced in February 2021 that he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

“While I certainly have some hurdles ahead, I also know that I join millions of Americans who face significant health challenges of their own,” Dole said.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., attempted to downplay the tumultuous week in the Republican conference on Friday, acknowledging only that some of his hard-right members distract from the GOP midterm message in their feuds with Democrats and each other but not condemning the anti-Muslim rhetoric from his member that set off the most recent controversies.

“It’s things we would not want to deal with,” he said of the controversies over the last few weeks surrounding comments and social media posts from Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona.

“It’s [distracting from] things the American people want to focus on: stopping inflation, gas prices and others,” he said. “Anything that deviates from that causes problems.”

The infighting this week began when Boebert’s remarks that likened Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to a terrorist first appeared on social media. Boebert tweeted an apology to “anyone in the Muslim community I offended” but refused Omar’s request to make a direct public apology to her.

“She apologized publicly, she apologized personally,” McCarthy suggested of Boebert’s comments, defending the lawmaker.

According to both Omar and Boebert, Omar hung up on Boebert in their private phone call because, Omar said, she refused to apologize directly and Bobert, instead, demanded she apologize for “anti-American” sentiments.

McCarthy did not specifically address the content of Boebert’s bigoted remarks that set off the exchange.

The second feud of the week broke out soon after between Greene and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., a freshman who has loudly and repeatedly criticized some of her far-right colleagues.

After Mace condemned Boebert’s remarks in a CNN interview, Greene referred to her as “trash” and a “RINO” or “Republican in name only,” calling her “pro-abort” because Mace, a rape survivor, supports access to abortion in cases of rape and incest.

Mace responded on Twitter with taunting emojis to Greene, calling her “crazy” and “insane.” The feud continued even after McCarthy met with both women in private: Greene claimed to have spoken with former President Donald Trump about supporting a primary challenger against Mace next year.

The escalating series of attacks left moderate Republicans grumbling and worried that McCarthy’s refusal to publicly condemn his far-right members’ antics could further embolden them and inject more chaos into the midterms and hurt Republicans’ increasingly likely chances of taking the House next year.

McCarthy, who needs to keep both wings of his party happy to win the speaker’s gavel next year, had a different take.

“We’re going to be quite fine,” he predicted brightly.

McCarthy’s press conference comes hours after more than 40 House Democrats called for Boebert to be removed from her committee assignments “following her Islamophobic comments and incitement of anti-Muslim animus.”

“There must be consequences for vicious workplace harassment and abuse that creates an environment so unsafe for colleagues and staff that it invites death threats against them,” said the statement from Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Congressional Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, Congressional Asian Pacific American Chair Judy Chu, D-Calif., Congressional Equality Caucus Chair David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., and signed by 36 other members of the Progressive Caucus.

If the House does take action against Bobert, it would follow Green and Gosar being stripped from their committee assignments, as well as Gosar becoming the first congressional lawmaker to be censured in more than a decade last month after he tweeted an edited Japanese cartoon depicting violence against Democrats.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., attempted to downplay the tumultuous week in the Republican conference on Friday, acknowledging only that some of his hard-right members distract from the GOP midterm message in their feuds with Democrats and each other but not condemning the anti-Muslim rhetoric from his member that set off the most recent controversies.

“It’s things we would not want to deal with,” he said of the controversies over the last few weeks surrounding comments and social media posts from Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona.

“It’s [distracting from] things the American people want to focus on: stopping inflation, gas prices and others,” he said. “Anything that deviates from that causes problems.”

The infighting this week began when Boebert’s remarks that likened Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to a terrorist first appeared on social media. Boebert tweeted an apology to “anyone in the Muslim community I offended” but refused Omar’s request to make a direct public apology to her.

“She apologized publicly, she apologized personally,” McCarthy suggested of Boebert’s comments, defending the lawmaker.

According to both Omar and Boebert, Omar hung up on Boebert in their private phone call because, Omar said, she refused to apologize directly and Bobert, instead, demanded she apologize for “anti-American” sentiments.

McCarthy did not specifically address the content of Boebert’s bigoted remarks that set off the exchange.

The second feud of the week broke out soon after between Greene and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., a freshman who has loudly and repeatedly criticized some of her far-right colleagues.

After Mace condemned Boebert’s remarks in a CNN interview, Greene referred to her as “trash” and a “RINO” or “Republican in name only,” calling her “pro-abort” because Mace, a rape survivor, supports access to abortion in cases of rape and incest.

Mace responded on Twitter with taunting emojis to Greene, calling her “crazy” and “insane.” The feud continued even after McCarthy met with both women in private: Greene claimed to have spoken with former President Donald Trump about supporting a primary challenger against Mace next year.

The escalating series of attacks left moderate Republicans grumbling and worried that McCarthy’s refusal to publicly condemn his far-right members’ antics could further embolden them and inject more chaos into the midterms and hurt Republicans’ increasingly likely chances of taking the House next year.

McCarthy, who needs to keep both wings of his party happy to win the speaker’s gavel next year, had a different take.

“We’re going to be quite fine,” he predicted brightly.

McCarthy’s press conference comes hours after more than 40 House Democrats called for Boebert to be removed from her committee assignments “following her Islamophobic comments and incitement of anti-Muslim animus.”

“There must be consequences for vicious workplace harassment and abuse that creates an environment so unsafe for colleagues and staff that it invites death threats against them,” said the statement from Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Congressional Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, Congressional Asian Pacific American Chair Judy Chu, D-Calif., Congressional Equality Caucus Chair David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., and signed by 36 other members of the Progressive Caucus.

If the House does take action against Bobert, it would follow Green and Gosar being stripped from their committee assignments, as well as Gosar becoming the first congressional lawmaker to be censured in more than a decade last month after he tweeted an edited Japanese cartoon depicting violence against Democrats.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has signed a short-term funding bill to keep the government open until Feb. 18, 2022, narrowly averting a shutdown that loomed for Friday, the White House said.

At the top of earlier remarks on the November jobs report Friday, Biden teased he would sign the bill before heading to Camp David for the weekend and said the action represents the “bare minimum” of what Congress should do.

“Funding the government isn’t a great achievement, it’s a bare minimum of what we need to get done,” he said.

The president also thanked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for their leadership on getting the bill passed and called for them to start working now on a full-year funding bill.

“In these times, a bipartisan cooperation is worth recognition. So I want to thank Speaker Pelosi and Schumer getting this done. And I want to urge Congress to use the time this bill provides to work toward a bipartisan agreement on a full-year funding bill that makes the needed investments in our economy and our people,” he said.

Both chambers of Congress passed the continuing resolution on Thursday that will kick the can of keeping the government open down the road until mid-February, averting a shutdown even after a small group of Senate Republicans threatened to stall the legislation in protest of Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers.

The small contingent of GOP senators, fronted by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, insisted that the Senate consider an amendment to the stopgap funding bill that would have effectively zeroed out funding to support the mandate.

Debate between Senate leaders about whether to allow such a vote nearly ground the upper chamber to a halt and threatened to cause time-consuming procedural delays that would have led to a temporary shutdown — but late Thursday night, a deal was reached to allow a vote on the amendment and on final passage.

“I am glad that in the end cooler heads prevailed. The government will stay open and I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink of an avoidable needless and costly shutdown,” Schumer said just before the votes were taken.

Efforts to strip funds for the mandate failed, with two Republicans absent for the vote, but the short-term spending bill passed. Nineteen Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted with Democrats after the House approved the bill largely along party lines — other than the support of a single Republican, retiring Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

Sometime next week, the Senate will take another vote on overturning Biden’s vaccine mandate. The effort has been backed by moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and is expected to pass the upper chamber, though it likely won’t get a vote in the Democrat-controlled House.

To avert a future shutdown, Congress will need to pass another short-term spending bill before Feb. 18 or pass a package of large appropriations bills that have been caught up in negotiation for months.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Christmas season has begun in Washington, with bright lights, festive trees and a touch of bipartisanship in the spirt of the holiday.

President Joe Biden, joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, lit the National Christmas Tree outside the White House on Thursday evening.

The president delivered a message of optimism, telling the crowd of first responders and military families, “We have so much ahead of us.”

“We are a great nation because of you, the American people,” Biden said. “You’ve made me so optimistic.”

While Biden struck a tone of optimism, the reality of the pandemic was still on display with a smaller crowd allowed than most years and guests required to wear a mask despite being outside.

Last year’s ceremony had no guests and was completely virtual because of the pandemic.

The national Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony began in 1923 with President Calvin Coolidge, when he lit a 48-foot balsam fir tree from Vermont with festive bulbs in red, white and green on Christmas Eve.

This year’s tree came from Middleburg, Pennsylvania, and is adorned with white and red lights. It is surrounded by smaller trees each representing a different state and territory with decorations unique to the area handcrafted by students across the country.

The White House tree was lit one night after the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony, which featured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday.

“Now, as always, this tree is our symbol of hope. That it has earned the nickname ‘The People’s Tree,’ is a testament to its special ability to unite us in comfort and joy, no matter who we are where we’re from,” Pelosi said.

The Capitol Hill Christmas tree is a tradition dating back to 1964.

The 84-foot white fir, nicknamed “Sugar Bear,” made its way to D.C. after venturing across the country from Six Rivers National Forest in California. The tree features hand-painted ornaments made by California residents.

“A tree is the lungs of the earth. A tree breathes in CO2, captures the carbon but releases the oxygen, and purifies,” McCarthy said. “So it’s a rightful symbol of why we have it here.”

Both the National Christmas Tree and the Capitol Hill tree are free to visit for the public until early January.

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(WASHINGTON) — Competitive races across the country are expected to disappear as states begin to submit their re-drawn maps for this decade’s round of redistricting.

While only 18 states have finished their gerrymandering process, nearly half a dozen highly competitive seats have been slashed from the last batch of congressional maps according to data tracked by FiveThirtyEight. Instead, swing and lightly safe districts are being transformed into incumbent safe havens, giving Republicans a competitive edge over Democrats in the map overall, with 55 seats leaning Democratic and 90 seats leaning Republican.

On the old maps, drawn in 2011, Republicans had 21 competitive seats and 67 solid seats; this go around, only 12 competitive seats remain while 78 are solidly GOP. Democrats can’t bank on the same certainty. Instead, many Democrat-drawn maps have so far added competition, creating six new competitive left-leaning seats and creating no additional safe races.

“There’s concern about competition because Republicans don’t view their ability to compete in a competitive race as very durable,” Doug Spencer, redistricting expert at the University of Colorado’s Bryon White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law, told ABC News. “Republicans did a very good job at gerrymandering in 2010, so they don’t have a lot of room to grow, and they do have a lot of room to lose, so they’re shoring up now as many of these seats as safely as possible.”

Rapidly shifting racial demographics, especially in key swing suburban counties within red states, is one of the motivating factors for GOP-led legislatures to propose redrawn boundaries as to not lose out on seats in future elections to a more diverse voting bloc, even if it means delivering safe seats to Democrats in exchange. Compared with old maps, Democrats so far have picked up six safe seats, while Republicans have two additional ones. This shift can be seen clearly in highly coveted Georgia, where a proposed map pushes two critically competitive Atlanta-area counties, GA-6 and GA-7, squeezing Democrat Rep. Lucy McBath into a heavily conservative district, effectively creating a safe GOP challenge and placing Rep. Carolyn Bourdeux in a secure Democratic seat, respectively. McBath has since announced she will be running for Congress in Bourdeux’s district instead.

“I refuse to let (Gov.) Brian Kemp, the (National Rifle Association) and the Republican Party keep me from fighting,” McBath told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They are not going to have the last word.”

Gwinnett County, a portion of which is in GA’s seventh district, had nearly 90% white residents in 1990. Now, it’s only 35% — a clear threat to potential conservative candidates down ballot, likely to be a part of this round of gerrymandering calculus, redistricting expert Michael Li explained to ABC News.

“The suburbs are becoming much more multiracial than they were in the past and also at the same time, suburban white voters have proven to be much more volatile much more less automatically supportive of Republicans than in the past ad that’s created uncertainty for Republicans,” said Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “Suburbs are dangerous to Republicans in a way that they weren’t before. And so the best play under those circumstances is to circle the wagons and try to hang on to what you have, and to make your districts ultra Republican.”

Such buffer building is present in Texas, a state with rapidly diversifying population growth. New maps in the Lone Star State show a net loss of five competitive seats, with Democrats picking up five safe seats and Republicans picking up two. According to data tracked by 538, Republicans were able to flip seven “light-red seats” (or slightly safe) as well as a Republican-held swing seat into safe seats. Only one race in Texas remains competitive with the newly approved map, a much more advantageous map for Republicans in the state than in years past.

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a nonpartisan analysis tool that measures political advantage in redistricting maps state by state, gave Georgia a grade of “C” in partisan fairness, competitiveness and geography. Texas received an “F.”

Midterm competition elimination present in the new maps is likely to “piss off Democrats” says Spencer. He suggested that it’s possible that Democrats may be able to harness the collective anger to spike turnout in the few key competitive races that remain, though it’s unlikely to know this early if impassioned messaging alone is enough to rally in impactful numbers. He agreed that lack of durability, especially in the suburbs, has motivated Republicans to draw districts with incumbency protection in mind.

The immediate impact of less competition is uncertain. Yet Spencer said he is concerned that more safe seats may negatively impact voter engagement and the fundamentals of the democratic system.

“You’re now basically muting the voices of a lot of people who just feel like politics is dead to them,” Spencer said. “If we live in a country where you can’t unelect the people that you don’t support, it’s not a democracy. The core fundamental idea of democracy is elections are a check on the government and without competitive seats it’s just not true.”

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Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)(WASHINGTON) — As cases rise in the colder months and amid concerns of a new COVID-19 variant, President Joe Biden announced a plan Thursday for a winter coronavirus strategy that includes making at-home rapid tests free, extending the mask requirement on public transit and requiring more stringent testing protocols for all international travelers.

The latest plan does not include more aggressive measures like requiring testing for domestic flights or mandating testing for passengers after their arrival in the U.S.

To allow for free rapid tests, senior administration officials say the more than 150 million Americans with private insurance will be able to submit for reimbursement to their insurance companies through the same rule that allows tests on site to be covered by insurance.

To reach uninsured Americans and those on Medicare or Medicaid, the Biden administration will send 50 million at-home tests to 20,000 federal sites around the country to be handed out for free.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor and Treasury Department will put out guidance by Jan. 15 to determine exactly how many tests will be covered and at what frequency, the plan said, and it will not retroactively cover tests already purchased.

Senior administration officials said they are confident in the supply of rapid tests to meet the possible demand of Americans who will now be able to get them at no cost.

“Supply will quadruple this month from where it was at the end of summer, so we’re doing a ton to ramp up all tests, but specifically a big focus on ramping up these at-home tests,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters Wednesday night.

The extension of mask mandates on public transportation, including airplanes, rails and buses, will now go through March 18, per the plan, and tighter requirements for travel into the United States will go into place early next week.

The new travel rules call for proof of a negative COVID test within one day of travel to the U.S. for all passengers, regardless of their vaccination status or nationality.

The plan also puts a heavy emphasis on booster shots, which have had a sluggish uptake in the U.S. but experts urge for added protection in the face of the new omicron variant and its many unknowns.

Pharmacies will expand locations and hours to administer booster shots through December, according to the plan, and the Biden administration will up its outreach efforts through a public education campaign aimed at seniors and new family vaccination clinics that can be a one-stop shop for kids vaccines, adult vaccines and booster shots.

Biden also raises the possibility that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer suggest that schoolchildren quarantine for 14 days after exposure, instead relying on the popular “test-to-stay” policy that allows kids to keep attending school so long as they test negative each day.

“The CDC has been studying approaches to quarantine and testing, including looking at the science and data of how they may keep school communities safe. CDC will release their findings on these approaches in the coming weeks,” according to the plan.

In all, the new strategy comes as cases continue to rise, a combination of colder weather pushing people indoors together and vaccine immunity waning among people who got the shot more than six months ago and haven’t yet gotten a booster.

There are also new concerns about omicron, which has more mutations than previous variants but is still mostly a mystery — from how transmissible it is to its capability to cause more severe disease or evade vaccines.

On Monday, Biden reassured Americans that his administration is taking every precaution to protect the public from the omicron variant and that he doesn’t expect this to be the “new normal.”

“It’s a new variant that’s cause for concern, but not a cause for panic,” the president said. “And we’re gonna fight this with science and speed. We’re not going to fight it with chaos and confusion, and we believe we can deal with it.”

The administration’s ban on incoming travel from eight countries in southern Africa went into effect this week after the variant was first detected in Botswana. It has since been found in nearly 30 countries, including in the U.S. on Wednesday.

Over the past year, Biden has focused his efforts to defeat COVID on increasing vaccinations and testing.

When the country didn’t meet his goal of 70% of all adults vaccinated with at least one shot by July, and as cases spiked again from the delta variant’s arrival over the summer, Biden moved forward on vaccine mandates.

Though the mandates were supposed to apply to all federal government employees, health care workers and employees of large private companies, the rollout has been met with lawsuits and lax deadlines.

The mandate for government employees initially was supposed to be implemented in late November, but the government has delayed firing employees who refused to comply until after the holidays.

Still, 92% of federal employees had their first dose as of last week.

The mandates on health care workers and employees of large companies have faced legal challenges that halted them until a decision in higher courts later this winter.

But many hospitals and companies have gone ahead with mandates on their own, often successfully.

The nation’s public health experts have continued to push vaccines and boosters as the best defense against the variant, even as they wait for more data.

“We don’t know everything we need to know about the omicron variants, but we know that vaccination is a safe and effective way to protect yourself from severe illness and complications from all known SARS-CoV-2 variants to date,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters on Tuesday.

As of Wednesday, 71% of adults over 18 and almost 60% of the entire American population are currently fully vaccinated. Nearly 100 million adults who are eligible for boosters have yet to get them.

Reflecting on the past year, Biden on Monday said, “we’re in a very different place” as we enter December, noting that vaccinations were just being rolled out and the majority of schools were still closed in 2020.

“Last Christmas, our children were at risk without a vaccine. This Christmas, we have safe and effective vaccines for children ages 5 and older, with more than 19 million children and counting now vaccinated,” Biden said.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday began to hear historic arguments over a Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, asks the justices directly to reconsider the precedent set by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

This means that the justices, a majority of whom are conservative, have the real opportunity to lessen the right to an abortion or possibly overturn the landmark case that made abortion a federally protected right nearly half a century ago.

Legal scholars are raising the alarm that if the court should decide to uphold the Mississippi ban, it could clear the way for new restrictions on abortion across the U.S.

ABC News legal analyst Kate Shaw, a professor at Cardozo Law School, told ABC News’ “Start Here” that as many as 30 states would restrict abortions if Roe gets overturned.

“It’s certainly possible that there will be a majority of justices on board to just overturn Roe and Casey and rule that the Constitution doesn’t protect a right to terminate a pregnancy,” Shaw said. That would leave each state to decide for itself, and “a number of states already have laws on the books that go into effect immediately.”

According to a report from The Guttmacher Institute, 21 states have these so-called trigger laws, some of which include bans on abortion after six or eight weeks of pregnancy, effectively banning all abortions. Several other states without trigger laws, according to Shaw, would likely “move very quickly” to prohibit abortion should Roe be overturned.

Shaw said she believes that the court could reach a compromise solution that still would allow Mississippi to enforce its 15-week, and even though that also “would be a dramatic change in the constitutional law of abortion, but that they do that without overturning Roe and Casey, simply suggesting that Roe and Casey undervalued the state’s interest in protecting potential life, and thus that this viability line should be reconsidered.”

Such a ruling could give states more power to restrict abortions, Shaw continued, “but it would not allow them to prohibit or criminalize all abortions.”

This report was featured in the Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ daily news podcast.

“Start Here” offers a straightforward look at the day’s top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday declined to comment on the claim former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows makes in an upcoming book, according to the Guardian, that Trump had a positive COVID-19 test three days before their first presidential debate.

ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Biden, who was 78 and, like Trump, unvaccinated when they shared the stage in the September debate, if he believes Trump put him at risk of contracting the potentially fatal virus.

Biden paused, and then responded with a smirk, “I don’t think about the former president.”

Later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki took a different tone — slamming Republicans and Trump allies she said had appeared to withhold the positive test result.

“What is not lost on us is that no one should be surprised that currently in Congress, as we’re looking at the government staying open, you have supporters of the former president, supporters of the former president who withheld information, reportedly, about testing positive and appeared apparently at a debate, also held events at the White House, reportedly, with military veterans and military families,” she said.

She said the White House did not know about Meadows’ claim prior to the story breaking in The Guardian.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who notably was the target of Trump’s ire for his messaging surrounding the virus, also said he “certainly was not aware of his test positivity or negativity” when ABC News Correspondent Karen Travers asked him about the revelation at the afternoon White House briefing.

“I’m not going to specifically talk about who put who at risk, but I would say, as I’ve said, not only from an individual but for everybody, that if you test positive, you should be quarantining yourself,” he said.

The Guardian , which says it obtained a copy of Meadows’ upcoming book, reported that Trump test positive on Sept. 26, sending shockwaves through the White House, before a second COVID-19 test came back negative, according to the Meadows account.

ABC News has not independently confirmed the book’s contents.

According to the debate rules, each candidate was required “to test negative for the virus within seventy-two hours of the start time” of the Sept. 29 debate in Cleveland, Meadows recalls understanding in the book, according to The Guardian.

But Trump, then 74, was determined to go to the debate and face Biden, regardless, according to the account.

“Nothing was going to stop [Trump] from going out there,” Meadows writes, according to the excerpt in The Guardian.

Trump’s reportedly positive, then negative, in tests were taken on the same day of the now-infamous packed Rose Garden ceremony, described as a “superspreader event,” in which Trump announced he would nominate now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

At least 11 guests, including press secretary Kellyanne Conway, former New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie, Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins, tested positive afterward.

Meadows called Trump, who was on Air Force One at the time, with news of the positive test before calling back that he tested negative after another screening.

Trump went on to headline a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, that evening, and held public events at the White House in the coming days.

Meadows has dodged questions surrounding Trump and COVID-19 since the president tweeted in the early hours of Oct. 2 that he tested positive, at the time, repeatedly refused to tell reporters when he had last tested negative.

Two senior Trump officials later told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jon Karl they had heard Trump tested positive before the debate but Meadows told Karl several months ago that was not true.

“Some people say you first got — you got an initial positive test even before the debate. Is that true or is that not true?” Karl asked Trump in a March 18 interview at Mar-a-Lago for his new book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”

“No,” Trump responded. “No, that’s not true.”

In a new statement on Wednesday, the former president called the reporting “fake news” — but did not flat out deny that he had tested positive before the debate.

“The story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News. In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate,” he said.

Notably, Meadows did not write explicitly, according to The Guardian excerpts, that Trump had COVID-19 before the debate but that he had an initial positive test that was followed by a more reliable negative test.

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(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Wednesday will recommend the full House hold former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in contempt for refusing to cooperate with their investigation in the latest effort to ratchet up pressure on the former president’s aides and allies.

The move comes as Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, agreed to cooperate with the panel, turning over thousands of pages of records and agreeing to appear for a deposition in the coming days.

The full chamber could vote to hold Clark, the former acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, in contempt as soon as Thursday, making him the second Trump associate after Steve Bannon to be reprimanded by Congress for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

After a House vote, the Justice Department would determine whether to prosecute Clark as it has Bannon, who was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for spurning the panel’s subpoena.

Bannon has pleaded not guilty and faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine for each charge.

Unlike Bannon, Clark appeared before the committee with his attorney on Nov. 5, in response to a subpoena for records and testimony.

But he left after 90 minutes, after refusing to answer any questions, citing claims of executive privilege, which the committee has disputed, and Trump’s ongoing legal challenge to the panel’s inquiry.

Clark declined to answer direct questions about his knowledge of Georgia election law and his conversations with members of Congress, both of which committee members argued would not be covered by any claims of executive privilege.

The committee also sought to question him about Trump’s efforts to get the Justice Department to investigate baseless claims of election fraud.

Ahead of the Capitol riot, Clark played a prominent role advancing Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results inside his administration. He circulated a draft letter inside the Justice Department to urge Georgia’s governor and top Georgia officials to convene the state legislature to investigate voter fraud claims.

On Tuesday, committee members spent four hours interviewing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a source familiar with the interview confirmed to ABC News.

Raffensberger was the target of a pressure campaign from then-President Trump and his aides and allies last year over the results of the presidential election in Georgia. Joe Biden was the first Democrat to carry the state in a presidential election in nearly three decades.

ABC News’ Alex Mallin, Katherine Faulders and Ben Siegel contributed to this report.

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