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Go to Source: Breitbart News
Go to Source: Breitbart News
Lingering tensions between the Biden and Obama teams broke into the open this week when the former president’s close political adviser David Axelrod said President Biden should consider stepping aside from reelection for the sake of the country.
Former Biden White House chief of staff and longtime Biden confidant Ron Klain shot back, complaining about past pointed criticisms of the president from Axelrod.
White House aides brushed aside Axelrod’s comments, pointing out former President Obama was in a difficult polling situation a year ahead of his reelection race and still won.
But the criticism, and media attention on a New York Times/Sienna College poll showing Biden behind Trump in five swing-states, which prompted Axelrod’s remarks, were clearly an annoyance.
The White House released a memo days later criticizing the media’s focus on one poll a year out from the election, while noting polls and pundits had predicted a 2022 “red wave” for the midterms that never materialized.
A Biden White House alum described a collective Biden World “eye roll” when a “Democratic talking head” makes remarks like Axelrod’s.
“Any time someone lights up the White House, the campaign, or the administration but doesn’t have to do any real work, there’s sort of an eye roll effect. Like maybe roll up in your sleeves and get in the arena,” the source said.
The alum, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said Axelrod should have kept his comments to himself, given the former Obama adviser broadly thinks Biden has done a good job as president.
“Sure, there are a million things you can criticize the administration about in any day. But on the whole, David Axelrod, you think Biden is doing a good job, but maybe keep your 10 percent opinion quiet when the 90 percent is he’s doing a good job,” the alum said. “Why do you have an innate ability to focus on the 10 percent?”
But whenever there is piercing criticism of Biden from someone in ObamaWorld, there will be attention.
Sources from both the Obama and Biden camps told The Hill that while there has been strain over the years, there is also respect and support. And sources suggested Axelrod doesn’t represent the old boss’s whole team.
What was described as a collective eye roll was a reminder of old tensions.
Biden for eight years served as Obama’s vice president, yet former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the Democratic candidate in 2016 — not the vice president.
Biden wrote in his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” that Obama “had been subtly weighing in against,” a White House run in 2015 and he believed at the time that Obama concluded Clinton would be the nominee.
In his 2023 book on Biden, “The Last Politician,” author Franklin Foer wrote about how Biden made an effort to extend empathy and respect for his vice president, Kamala Harris, because he wasn’t always granted that when he served in the role.
“[B]iden wanted to treat Harris with the respect that he felt Barack Obama hadn’t accorded him,” Foer wrote. “He a made a point of referring to her as the vice president, as opposed to my vice president. He was a stickler for asking her opinion in meetings— and making sure that her office was kept in the loop.”
The idea that Biden is constantly underestimated by his party, by the media and by some Obama alumni is a running theme of this presidency, say sources who spoke to The Hill.
“Prior to [Axelrod’s] comments, there was always tension between the staff at all levels. There’s a tension there between the two camps, for sure, that has always existed,” said a former staffer for the Biden 2020 campaign.
A former Obama administration aide agreed “there’s always tension there” and described the Obama-Biden aides dynamic as a result of an Obama White House that had “sharp elbows” and an inner circle that was “difficult to penetrate” for Biden’s team.
“You’ve got lots of egos, and so there is the warmup folks and then the main show. The undercard and the main event. There’s always that dynamic between the presidency and the vice presidency staff,” the source said.
The former Biden 2020 campaign alum described a preoccupation at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Philadelphia that year with “Pod Save America,” a podcast run by former Obama staffers, including Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett.
“Everyone in Philadelphia was a little obsessed with those guys because they were always shitting on Biden and giving the benefit of the doubt to other candidates,” the source said.
Still, several sources who spoke to The Hill downplayed the impact of any friction.
“I do think that there’s still a lot of respect that’s there,” said one source who served on Obama’s campaign.
Axelrod has gotten under Biden’s skin before. He’s a fixture on social media and cable television whose success as a political analyst is in part reflected by his willingness to offer tough criticism of his own party.
Foer outlined in his book that Biden felt Axelrod didn’t give him “a fair shake.”
“He complained that there weren’t enough surrogates on television defending him. One of his fixations was David Axelrod’s appearances of CNN. He was part of the Obama in crowd, and Biden complained to a friend that he still didn’t get a fair shake from the guy,” Foer wrote.
The former Biden 2020 campaign aide said Axelrod’s comments probably fired up the Biden team, saying it puts junior staff in a competitive position they love.
“They like being in the position to say, ‘You all thought we couldn’t win the primary, you all thought we couldn’t beat Trump, you thought there was a red wave coming, you thought he couldn’t bring back bipartisanship,’” the source said.
Other voices The Hill spoke to emphasized that Axelrod doesn’t speak for Obama or many on his team. Axelrod has since said that it’s overreacting to say he told Biden to drop out.
Former Obama adviser Jim Messina, who often shares his support for Biden through social media and punditry, went on CNN on Monday to dismiss the recent negative polls, giving a nod to Biden.
Another former Biden White House aide told The Hill the Biden and Obama teams are in touch “on an almost daily basis” and that Obama’s team has largely come to defend and support the current president.
“My sense is that’s just a theme that’s been kind of repeated across the Biden administration, that this administration has been underestimated. But I don’t think that’s a reflection or a nudge to the Obama team,” the source said.
Obama this week has been touting the work of the Biden administration on artificial intelligence. In June, and the former president participated in two fundraising videos for Biden’s reelection campaign.
Around that time, his adviser Eric Schultz put out a statement about how Obama “looks forward to supporting Democrats up and down the ballot next fall, and no race has bigger stakes than President Biden’s reelection.” He added that the Obama team is “deliberate in picking our moments” because their “objective is to move the needle.”
Many of the people who work or worked for Biden are Obama alumni. That includes Klain, who helped Obama with debate prep in 2008 and was later his Ebola czar.
Biden’s current chief of staff, Jeff Zients, was director of the National Economic Council for Obama, and his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, worked for the Obama administration as deputy director of public engagement. His previous campaign manger, Jen O’Malley Dillon, who is now Biden’s deputy chief of staff, worked on Obama’s 2012 campaign as deputy campaign manager.
One aide who worked for both presidents agreed there are sometimes tensions, but said they are easily put aside — especially after an electoral success like the one Democrats notched on Tuesday.
“Those tensions feel a lot more tangential following a Tuesday night like we just had. Playing around the margins about what you think and want the Democratic Party to be, all of that is fine when you win like we won Tuesday night,” the source said.
“No one has been a stronger supporter of the Biden-Harris Administration and its agenda than President Obama, his team, and veterans of the Obama-Biden Administration,” said White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates.
Go to Source: Administration News | The Hill
Former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke criticized President Biden for his administration’s immigration policy, particularly regarding the asylum process that the former lawmaker says fails to deliver on Biden’s 2020 campaign promises.
Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics on Thursday, O’Rourke said he was optimistic during Biden’s campaign that his border policy would be a drastic improvement over former President Trump’s strategy.
“When Joe Biden was running in 2020, he ran with such incredible moral clarity on this issue: ‘We will no longer put kids in cages because they’re not animals, we will no longer tear babies from the breasts of their mothers,’ literally what Trump was doing in his family separation policy,” O’Rourke said. “‘We’re going to restore the soul of America, and we’re going to live up to our promise.’ Man, that was inspiring to me. I needed to hear that, living on the border and as someone who really cares about that.”
O’Rourke admitted that he believes Biden has been successful in addressing immigration “on some counts” and that his administration’s rhetoric is a “night-and-day” difference when compared to the Trump years.
WHITE HOUSE, SENATE DEMS REJECT GOP BORDER SECURITY PROPOSALS: ‘TOTAL NON-STARTER’
“Biden is not inspiring, I don’t think, any acts of political terror or the kind of slaughter that we saw in El Paso, and yet, on other counts, he’s really failing us,” he said.
“The asylum ban that we see that makes it so hard for people to lawfully, safely, and in an orderly fashion come to this country when they cannot stay in their own,” the ex-congressman continued. “Because why the hell else would you travel 2,000 miles – the length of this continent – much of it on foot, some of it on top, not inside, of a train, called the beast, La Bestia, facing rape, torture, you know, kidnapping by these transnational criminal organizations, only to come to the most heavily militarized border probably anywhere in this hemisphere, if not this planet, where you risk your life. And more migrants have died this year than any year on record.”
O’Rourke, a three-term congressman who lost the 2018 Texas Senate election to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the 2020 presidential election that ultimately went to Biden and the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election to incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, also warned that Biden’s immigration policy could hurt his support among younger voters in next year’s presidential election.
A New York Times-Siena College poll released last weekend shows Trump, the GOP frontrunner, leading Biden in five of six swing states with a year until the 2024 presidential election.
“This is critical if you want to win in 2024. It is no secret that Democratic voters are unexcited about Biden — that’s putting it politely. It is no secret, thanks to the poll that we just read,” O’Rourke said. “The young voters especially are leaving his banner in droves. Now will they vote for Donald Trump? Will they vote for [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]? Will they not vote at all? I don’t know. But let’s give them a reason to vote for the president. Something bold, something big, something that matches the rhetoric that he used in 2020 and inspires voters in 2024 is what’s needed right now.”
The Biden administration has reversed several of the Trump administration’s border policies since 2021. It has also attempted to open new pathways for legal entry into the U.S. while making it more difficult to claim asylum without previous authorization, a policy O’Rourke described as an “asylum ban.”
“More migrants have died this year than any year on record. And last year more migrants had died than any year on record,” O’Rourke said. “They’re drowning, they’re dying of dehydration and exposure in the desert, and these are little babies and mothers and f***ing human beings who don’t deserve to be treated that way.”
He added: “And when you ban them from coming to this country lawfully and when they know to stay in Honduras, or El Salvador or Haiti is to die in Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti, and they have no other choice but to try to come into this country between ports of entry, risking drowning and death and imprisonment, and yes, some level of separation that is still taking place in this country.”
WHITE HOUSE FUNDING REQUEST INCLUDES $14 BILLION FOR BORDER AS CRISIS HITS NEW RECORDS
The White House announced last month that it would use executive authority to sidestep environmental and historical protection regulations to build segments of border wall in Texas. Biden had said during his 2020 campaign that he would not build “another foot” of Trump’s wall.
The Biden administration has also expanded some forms of relief for migrants, including expanding the Temporary Protected Status program and the use of immigration parole for certain new arrivals.
“And look, I understand he has an argument to make when he says, ‘Look, this Congress will not work with me and you know, the majority in the House of Representatives aren’t going to do anything to improve the situation at our border to treat people with the humanity that they deserve,'” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke also highlighted that Democrats held majorities in the House and Senate during the first two years of Biden’s presidency and claimed immigration reform was not prioritized during that time. He also said Biden could move faster on granting parole and work authorization to new migrant arrivals.
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Republican Jeff Gunter, a dermatologist, candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada and the former ambassador to Iceland under the Trump administration, is touting his past support for a Pride group known to promote radical gender ideology and bash law enforcement as part of its support for the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM).
According to Gunter’s campaign website, he lists as “triumphs” his participation in the 2019 Reykjavik Pride Parade, an $11,000 grant awarded by the U.S. government to the Reykjavik Pride organization that same year “to promote equal rights,” and said that he “demonstrated U.S. commitment to LGBTI+ rights during the 2020 Reykjavik Pride event.”
Reykjavik Pride’s history with radical gender ideology includes what one local Iceland media outlet reported was the group’s planning lectures about transphobia and LGBTQ school children as part of its Pride 2020 celebration, in addition to the president of the organization boasting about marching in drag during that year’s parade and inspiring a friend’s child to cross dress.
Photos posted on social media by Reykjavik Pride show that on a number of other occasions, the group included drag queens as part of its celebrations that had children in attendance. One of those celebrations, the 2022 “family Rainbow Festival,” involved children dancing with drag queens in front of the crowd.
Other photos also included sexually explicit performances at events over the years.
Additionally, the group’s 2020 Pride celebration, held in the wake of the death of George Floyd in the U.S., included lectures calling to defund the police and expressed support for BLM.
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE ANNOUNCES LOCATION, CRITERIA FOR FOURTH GOP PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
When reached for comment, Gunter told Fox News Digital that his participation in the Reykjavik Pride events was within his capacity as U.S. ambassador, that it was in support of former President Donald Trump’s “campaign to decriminalize homosexuality around the world and to stand against brutal regimes like Iran who continue to criminalize gays.”
“Obviously, marching in a pride parade doesn’t constitute an endorsement of anything and everything that someone may be saying or doing in parades across the globe,” Gunter said.
“To clarify, I never gave the organization money, in fact it was authorized before I arrived. In addition, I declined to give money to them in 2020 and gave it instead to an advocacy group to support those who are disabled. I also officially asked the Icelandic Ambassador to the U.S. to remove the BLM endorsement from the official Icelandic Government Website,” he added.
KARI LAKE BUILD MOMENTUM WITH MORE BIG-NAME BACKING IN RACE TO FLIP ARIZONA SENATE SEAT
When asked whether the Icelandic government complied with the request, a spokesperson for Gunter said they did not.
Gunter also took a jab at fellow Republican Sam Brown, one of his opponents in the Nevada GOP Senate primary, whom he called “Scam Brown.”
Brown is “more in line with Iran than Donald Trump on this issue,” he added. “It’s just one of the many reasons that he refuses to endorse Donald Trump for 2024 and will barely say his name.”
“I’m proud of my work supporting the Trump agenda abroad. And I’m 110% supporting Donald Trump in 2024,” he added.
Gunter is one of eight candidates vying for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s Senate race, which is expected to be one of the most closely watched of the 2024 election cycle and could determine which party controls the chamber.
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President Biden already faces increasing doubts about his ability to win re-election next year, but now Democrats must confront the prospect of a growing list of potential 2024 challengers running as third-party candidates.
Major Democratic Party victories on Tuesday in the 2023 off-year elections gave Biden a much-needed boost after a slew of well publicized polls suggested he was trailing former President Donald Trump — the commanding GOP nomination front-runner — in a 2024 rematch.
But Thursday’s announcement by 2016 Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein that she will make another White House run next year was not welcome news for Team Biden.
WAS BIDEN A BIG WINNER IN THE DEMOCRATIC VICTORIES IN THE 2023 ELECTIONS?
Plenty of Democrats still blame Stein’s 2016 campaign for putting Trump in the White House. Her vote totals seven years ago in the key battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin topped Trump’s margins over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in each state.
A couple of hours after Stein’s news broke, moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced he wouldn’t seek re-election next year in heavily red West Virginia, deflating his party’s hopes of holding their Senate majority in 2024.
TOP TAKEAWAYS FROM ELECTION NIGHT 2023 AND WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE 2024 SHOWDOWNS
Manchin, who has openly flirted with the possibility of launching a third-party presidential bid, highlighted in his announcement video that in the coming months he would travel across the nation to see “if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”
There has been rampant speculation Manchin could join a potential bipartisan national ticket that the centrist group No Labels is considering launching next spring.
Veteran New Hampshire-based political scientist Wayne Lesperance, the president of New England College, noted that Manchin potentially “creates new troubles for Team Biden’s re-election.”
“Manchin has options — none of which are good for the president. He can decide to make a White House run on his own. He can join a No Labels-fueled effort to run. Even if he decided to just travel to battleground states and urge voters to support moderate or centrist campaigns, the impact will be felt by Team Biden,” Lesperance said.
Biden is already facing independent presidential runs by environmental advocate and high-profile vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a scion of the Kennedy family political dynasty, and outspoken progressive university scholar Cornel West.
Recent polls indicate that Biden faces rising concerns from American voters over his age. Surveys suggest that many Americans, including plenty of Democrats, do not want the president to seek a second term in the White House, and a handful of influential Democrats have suggested that the 80-year-old president should drop out of the 2024 race and pass the baton to a new generation.
The president is currently facing long-shot primary challenges from a pair of Democratic rivals.
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Three-term Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who launched a primary challenge against the president late last month, has been arguing that Biden cannot beat Trump in 2024. The recent polls released over the past week gave Phillips plenty of fresh ammunition.
Spiritual adviser and best-selling author Marianne Williamson, who is making her second straight White House run, is also challenging Biden.
Pointing to the strong performance by Democrats at the ballot box earlier this week, Biden 2024 re-election campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Thursday that “we’ve heard the press and pundits count Joe Biden out time and time again, but we know he always proves them wrong.”
“On Tuesday, voters in states across the country proved the pundits wrong,” Chavez Rodriguez emphasized.
During a trip Thursday to speak to the United Auto Workers in Illinois, Biden himself took aim at media coverage of the latest surveys suggesting he’s losing to Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups.
“Because you don’t read the polls,” Biden pointed out. “Ten polls. Eight of them, I’m beating [Trump] in those places. Eight of them. You guys only do two. CNN and New York Times. Check it out. Check it out.”
Asked if he believed he was trailing Trump in the key battlegrounds, the president answered, “No, I don’t.”
It’s not clear if Manchin will join a potential national ticket that No Labels is considering launching, and independent candidates like Kennedy and West face high hurdles when it comes to getting on the presidential ballot next year in states across the country.
In addition, some of these candidates could theoretically pull more support from Trump than Biden in a likely multiple-candidate 2024 presidential election field.
Lesperance noted “the fact that polling numbers suggest that voters are unhappy with the prospect of another Trump-Biden contest, add that to the candidacies of Jill Stein, RFK Jr., and Cornell West, and it’s hard not to conclude that the president’s prospects are more difficult. Political headaches abound.”
Biden — at least outwardly — isn’t fazed.
On Thursday, at a fundraising event in Chicago, he pointed to the election results from earlier in the week and said, “Democrats had an incredible night once again.”
Referring to Trump, the president asserted that “we haven’t stopped winning, and he hasn’t stopped losing.”
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President Biden will travel to San Francisco and meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for a high-stakes meeting at the 30th annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
The showdown between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies, who are on the opposite end of many issues, is likely to dominate the summit. For Biden, it will be an opportunity to highlight some of the areas where cooperation is possible, while also issuing stern warnings on key U.S. national interests in the region. The Chinese president will likely assert China’s ability to influence global affairs and act as a mediator in some of the world’s conflicts.
APEC is a coalition of nations with conflicting interests and values. It groups member economies and not nations and covers nearly 40% of the global population, about 62% of GDP and almost half of global trade, according to the State Department. Participants include Taiwan, an island territory that Beijing considers part of China but the U.S. backs with military support.
This will be the first meeting between Biden and Xi since they met on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Bali in November 2022. Biden’s meeting with Xi comes after several high-level U.S. officials met with their Chinese counterparts to ease tensions after the spy balloon incident earlier this year.
WH OFFICIALS CONFIRM DATE, LOCATION FOR BIDEN’S US MEETING WITH CHINESE PRESIDENT XI
The U.S. and China are fundamentally at odds on many issues, and there are low expectations the meeting will yield significant results.
“There is no need for President Biden to meet with Xi Jinping to talk about Ukraine and Israel next Wednesday,” China expert Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital. “If Biden wants Beijing to stop supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine and Iran’s war on Israel, he needs to impose severe costs on China.
“What more can Biden say to Xi next Wednesday that he hasn’t already said? It’s time to stop talking with Beijing and give up trying to entice and persuade the regime. We have tried all that ‘engagement.'”
Chang, author of the just-released “China Is Going to War,” concluded, “Engagement has definitely failed. Continuing engagement looks like desperation. Nothing good ever happens when Chinese communists smell desperation.”
“The issues that divide the two sides are deep and structural at this point, and not something that can be resolved after a single conversation,” Kharis Templeman, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told Fox News Digital.
Templeman notes that the best opportunity for the Biden administration to assert American leadership will be on economic issues.
THE ONE THING ZELENSKYY SHOULD DO TO PROVE UKRAINE DESERVES MORE FUNDING
“Concerns about supply chain security, AI regulation, green energy and carbon emissions and internet governance are all on the table and will probably see the U.S. and China on opposite sides. The open question is how other APEC members see these issues and whether the Biden administration can forge a consensus among like-minded allies and partners,” Templeman said.
Multiple world crises underpin the international summit, with Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine atop the global agenda. Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 Israelis and saw 240 people taken hostage, Israel has launched a military campaign to eliminate the terrorist group.
As the war in Ukraine approaches its second year, the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east has hit a stalemate at a time when domestic forces in the U.S. and across NATO are starting to question the unrelenting military and financial support to Kyiv.
Beijing and Washington take vastly different approaches to Israel’s war in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“On the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the U.S. message will be that if China wants to be respected as a great power in the world, it also has to shoulder more of the responsibility for global governance,” Templeman noted.
While Biden has stood firmly behind Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beijing took a cautious approach after the attack from Hamas. China criticized Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the innocent loss of life but has refused to strongly condemn atrocities committed by Hamas.
China is also calling for a cease-fire, while Biden has stopped short of calling for one. Instead, he’s pushed for a temporary halt to the bombardment to allow for humanitarian aid to get into Gaza.
China has also been accused of taking sides in the Ukraine conflict with reports earlier this year claiming it was helping arm Russia in its war against Kyiv.
APEC officially gets underway Saturday and runs through the following week. Biden and Xi are expected to meet later next week.
Fox News’ Emily Robertson contributed to this report.
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Republicans are all but sure to pick up a new Senate seat in ruby-red West Virginia next year with Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement ringing like a death knell for Democrats’ presence in state-wide offices there.
Manchin’s Thursday announcement sent shock waves through Capitol Hill, but it is not the first time he has dealt a blow to his own party — particularly in recent years under President Biden.
The conservative Democrat announced in December 2021 that he would not support Biden’s $2.2 trillion progressive Build Back Better package, effectively sinking the left-wing wish list.
It invoked the ire of progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who attacked Manchin for forcing Democrats to decouple the package from a more moderate bipartisan infrastructure proposal.
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“When a handful of us in the House warned this would happen if Dem leaders gave Manchin everything he wanted 1st by moving [infrastructure] before BBB instead of passing together, many ridiculed our position. Maybe they’ll believe us next time. Or maybe people will just keep calling us naïve,” she wrote on X at the time.
Manchin’s support for Biden’s policies plummeted over the course of his administration as well. A report from polling aggregation site FiveThirtyEight found that Manchin voted with Biden’s position roughly 21% of the time during this Congress.
MANCHIN TORCHES DEMOCRATS ON ENERGY POLICY
Republicans are now confident that Manchin has handed them a victory over Democrats with his announcement that he will not run again in 2024, in a state that overwhelmingly voted for former President Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chair Steve Daines, R-Mont., released a simple statement on the news, “We like our odds in West Virginia.”
“When a party committee puts out a one-sentence statement, they’re telling you very bluntly how they assess the situation,” GOP strategist Doug Heye told Fox News Digital on Friday. “Clearly, the NRSC believes [Manchin’s] retirement makes this a very, very safe seat for Republicans now.”
While it could very well help Democrats lose the Senate majority, Republicans now likely just need to flip one more vulnerable Democratic seat to win. Democrats have already lacked a reliable vote in Manchin on some of Biden’s more progressive nominees.
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This past May, Manchin vowed to oppose all of Biden’s nominees to the Environmental Protection Agency, citing the administration’s “commitment to their extreme ideology,” which he said “overshadows their responsibility to ensure long-lasting energy and economic security.”
He also derailed acting Labor Secretary Julie Su’s nomination to Biden’s Cabinet.
What Manchin does next is not immediately clear, but he could further pose problems for the Democratic Party down the line — his pledge to “unite the middle” in his Thursday announcement raised eyebrows whether he will challenge Biden for the White House.
“I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate,” Manchin said. “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”
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Congress is rapidly running out of time to hash out a spending deal to keep the government open past Nov. 17.
House GOP leaders are expected to put a short-term spending bill known as a continuing resolution (CR) on the floor for a vote Tuesday, a source told Fox News Digital Friday. Its text is expected to be released this weekend.
GOP leaders have primarily eyed two main routes for a CR — a “clean” extension of last year’s funding, or a “laddered” option that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and conservative House GOP lawmakers have floated that would stagger funding deadlines for different needs.
If they go with the laddered approach, it’s almost guaranteed to force a showdown with the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., advanced a bill Thursday that the Senate will use as a vehicle for its own CR, which will likely be “clean.”
SPEAKER JOHNSON DRAWS BATTLE LINES AHEAD OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING SHOWDOWN
Conservatives have been opposed to a “clean” CR, arguing it is an extension of progressive policies enacted by the previous Democrat-controlled Congress. Johnson was one of 90 Republicans to vote against the “clean” CR brought by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Sept. 30, which averted a government shutdown by just hours.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., however, denounced the “laddered” approach as “another right-wing joyride which would crash and burn the economy.”
GOP REBELS’ FAITH IN SPEAKER JOHNSON ON SPENDING FIGHT COULD AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
“A CR at the fiscal year 2023 levels is the only way to go,” Jeffries said at a Thursday morning press conference.
The discussions also come as House Republicans fall behind on an ambitious appropriations schedule Johnson laid out the day he became speaker.
Two spending bills were pulled from the schedule shortly before their expected votes this week — one concerning Transportation with Housing and Urban Development, the other on the Treasury and White House — over issues raised by both GOP moderates and hardliners.
House Republicans have pledged to pass 12 appropriations bills, as opposed to Democrats’ mammoth “omnibus” spending package right-wingers decried last year. They have currently passed seven, all which have been labeled non-starters by Schumer in the Senate.
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On Schumer’s side of Congress, however, there has also been little action. Senators passed a bipartisan “minibus” containing three of their individual spending bills.
The House and Senate are also at least $120 billion apart on the overall numbers they are working to fund the government.
And while Johnson is still benefiting from the unity that House Republicans achieved with his election, it’s not clear how much longer he’ll have it. The division that caused the GOP’s ideological rifts are still very much present.
“I think there’s a honeymoon period here. I’m not sure how long it lasts,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Thursday after the second of two spending bills was pulled that week. “With what’s going on on the floor today, I think that indicates the honeymoon might be shorter than we thought.
“Every time the CR expires, the speaker’s putting his head in the lion’s mouth and that’s why, you know, if I were advising the speaker, I would say do a one-year CR for everybody before the honeymoon period runs out.”
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