Key events
The Senate still plans to vote on overturning the DC bill revising the local criminal code, even after the council announced it would withdraw the proposal from congressional consideration.
Two Senate aides told CNN’s Manu Raju that they still expect the vote to occur:
Senate will STILL vote this week to halt DC criminal code rewrite despite the last-ditch attempt by the DC Council’s chairman to withdraw the legislation from Hill review, two aides said
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 6, 2023
Now that Joe Biden has said he would not veto the proposal to overturn the DC bill, more Senate Democrats are expected to join Republicans in supporting the motion.
The chair of the DC Council, Phil Mendelson, said this morning, “If the Republicans want to proceed with a vote … it will be a hollow vote because the bill isn’t there before them.”
Carlisa N Johnson reports on how Republican legislators are attempting to restrict voting access:
In the final few days of this year’s Georgia assembly legislative session, Republican lawmakers raced to propose laws seeking to restrict voting access, and make it easier for citizens to challenge and subvert normal election processes.
Senate bill 221, house bill 422 and house bill 426 are just a few of the newly proposed election laws, which come after state Republicans, including the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, praised election officials for smooth elections in the past two years.
They include measures to eradicate absentee ballot drop boxes, allow citizens to more easily challenge voter registrations – which Republican conspiracy theorists had already done with little backing evidence during the midterms – and even unseal ballots for review.
While some of the elements of these proposed laws offer expanded flexibility and resources for elections, including the popular bipartisan effort to eradicate runoff elections in the state, other aspects are grounded in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories surrounding mass election fraud stemming from the 2020 election.
Read Carlisa’s full report:
Before the DC Council announced it would withdraw the crime bill, Joe Biden faced criticism from a number of Democrats for saying that he would sign a Republican measure to reverse the policy.
“It’s disappointing to all of us who believe in home rule,” Congressman Pete Aguilar, chair of the House Democratic caucus, said Thursday.
“I’m deeply disappointed to see the President announce he will allow Congress to overturn a DC law for the first time in decades,” Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said. “This is simple: The District of Columbia must be allowed to govern itself.”
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi added Friday, “If he was going to do it, I wish he would’ve told us first because this was a hard vote for the House members.”
The Guardian’s Chris Stein has more details on the DC Council’s decision to withdraw a bill revising the local criminal code:
The chair of the DC council, Democrat Phil Mendelson, criticized the Republican opponents of the crime bill, saying Congress was more focused on winning political points rather than carefully considering the policy.
“It’s quite clear to me that the headwinds that have prevailed in Congress are about the politics of next year’s election and not about what’s the substance in this criminal code,” Mendelson said at a press conference this morning.
“The fact is is that the criminal code has hit these headwinds, which is why I pulled it back.”
Mendelson acknowledged that Senate Republicans may still push for a vote to overturn the bill, but he said such a maneuver would be “hollow” because the council has withdrawn the proposal from congressional consideration.
Mendelson blamed the criticism of the crime bill on misinformation about the content of the proposal, saying, “What people were hearing was we were decriminalizing or that we were reducing sentences and the messaging just got out of our control.”
Asked why he believed Joe Biden indicated he would sign the Republican reversal measure, Mendelson said he thought the president was trying to protect Democratic lawmakers.
“The reality is that if we’re to get statehood, it’s going to be the Democrats who help us with it,” Mendelson said. “So if we have any hope for statehood, we have to want to protect our Democratic friends in Congress. And that’s where I think the president is.”
DC moves to withdraw crime bill ahead of Senate vote
The city council of Washington, DC, is moving to withdraw a bill revising the local criminal code, which faced opposition from Republican lawmakers.
The chair of the DC council, Democrat Phil Mendelson, said in a letter to Vice-President Kamala Harris that he was withdrawing the bill from congressional consideration.
The news comes a month after the House voted to overturn the DC bill, which would have eliminated many mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and reduced the mandatory maximum sentences for a number of crimes.
The Senate was expected to soon consider the matter, and at least one Senate Democrat, centrist Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has already said he would side with Republicans when the bill came up for a vote.
Joe Biden announced last week that he would not veto the reversal if the proposal made it to his desk, sparking criticism from some fellow Democrats.
“I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” Biden said on Twitter last week. “If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did – I’ll sign it.”
The Florida legislature is set to begin its new session tomorrow, and Republican lawmakers are prepared to hand Governor Ron DeSantis a series of policy wins that could bolster his expected presidential campaign.
Much of the agenda focuses on education reform, Politico reports:
The sizable agenda ranges from targeting school unions to greatly expanding the use of state dollars to send children to private schools. GOP lawmakers, who have supermajorities in the House and Senate, are also gearing up to cancel diversity, equity and inclusion programs at colleges. …
Republican policymakers are looking to reshape education in Florida’s K-12 and universities, much like they did during the 2022 legislation sessions when GOP legislators approved bills that rooted out all traces of critical race theory within the state school system or banned educators from leading classroom lessons on gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade. …
The proposed policies are already scoring criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups that argue some proposals would ostracize LGBTQ students and their parents.
The new legislative session begins as DeSantis is expected to make education reform and “parents’ rights” a central focus of his campaign pitch.
Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican governor of Arkansas, applauded Larry Hogan’s work as governor of Maryland and celebrated Hogan’s commitment to continue to fight for the future of the party.
But Hutchinson disagreed with Hogan’s warning that the 2024 Republican primary risks becoming “another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr Trump recapture the nomination”.
“I actually think that more voices right now in opposition or providing an alternative to Donald Trump is the best thing and the right direction,” Hutchinson told CNN yesterday.
“Multiple candidates that have an alternative vision… is good for our party”
Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) argues that there should be multiple GOP candidates in 2024 who offer something different from former president Donald Trump. @CNNSotu #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/yJuO7BgoEy
— CNN (@CNN) March 5, 2023
Hutchinson, who has also been named as a potential presidential candidate, said he would make a final decision on entering the race next month.
“We don’t need to be led by arrogance and revenge in the future,” Hutchinson said. “We need to be led by those that are problem-solving, that want to stick with the principles of our party and unite us together. … It should not be someone that’s going to appeal to the worst instincts of our country.”
Hutchinson said he found Trump’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference to be “troubling,” saying, “If you want to heal our land and unite our country together, you don’t do it by appealing to the angry mob.”
Hogan rules out presidential bid and urges GOP to ‘move on’ from Trump
Maya Yang reports on the surprising announcement from Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, that he will not launch a presidential campaign:
Hogan had been widely tipped to enter the party’s nomination race but instead used an op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday to announce he would not be running and to warn against Donald Trump’s own 2024 campaign.
“I would never run for president to sell books or position myself for a cabinet role. I have long said that I care more about ensuring a future for the Republican party than securing my own future in the Republican party,” Hogan wrote.
He went on to warn that the Republican party cannot be successful if it puts “personality before principle, if our elected officials are afraid to say publicly what they freely admit behind closed doors, and if we can’t learn from our mistakes because of the political cost of admitting facts to be true”.
“For too long, Republican voters have been denied a real debate about what our party stands for beyond loyalty to Mr Trump. A cult of personality is no substitute for a party of principle,” Hogan continued.
He added: “I am deeply concerned about this next election. We cannot afford to have Mr Trump as our nominee and suffer defeat for the fourth consecutive election cycle. To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr Trump.”
Read Maya’s full report:
Thousands of pro-Trump bot accounts on Twitter are promoting the former president while disparaging his likely opponents in the 2024 Republican primary, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The AP reports:
Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump’s critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
When it came to Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn’t beat Trump, but would be a great running mate.
As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter’s algorithms to maximize their reach.
The report could open a new avenue of investigation for House Republicans, who are scrutinizing social media companies’ business practices.
Last month, the House oversight hearing held a hearing to examine claims that Twitter had attempted to silence voices on the right. But experts dismiss claims of social media companies targeting conservatives, as the Guardian’s Kari Paul has reported.
Kira Lerner, the Guardian’s democracy editor, reports on how election lies played a role at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference:
In the exhibit hall, vendors displayed various styles of hats declaring “Trump won” and attendees referred to former president Donald Trump as the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
But on the event stage, most prominent Republican lawmakers at CPAC didn’t bring up Trump’s big lie. Instead they largely chose not to repeat his common talking point that rampant voter fraud cost him his re-election.
CPAC this year was seen as a crucial barometer of the likely contours of the 2024 fight. In that regard the majority of conservatives here aligned themselves closely with the former president. But they also chose not to relitigate the 2020 election and looked ahead to the 2024 contest, repeatedly calling Trump the former and future president.
Attendees said they noticed the absence of a talking point that has in the past, including at last year’s CPAC, been pervasive.
“There’s a lot of gaps in the topic list,” said Suzzanne Monk, a DC resident who donned a Maga hat and a T-shirt reading: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump.” “The election integrity issues are kind of soft. We could be hitting a lot harder.”
Failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake wins CPAC VP poll
Kari Lake, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate who has continued to peddle the lie that she won her race in Arizona last year, won the vice-presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Lake defeated other contenders with 20% of the vote, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in second place at 14% and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley trailed with 10%.
The results were even more notable given that Lake beat out several declared and likely candidates in the 2024 presidential primary. Haley has already launched her campaign, and DeSantis is expected to announce in the coming months.
Lake also bested former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former Vice-President Mike Pence, both of whom are considered likely presidential candidates.
Lake’s team responded to the straw-poll results on Twitter, saying, “We’re flattered, but unfortunately our legal team says the Constitution won’t allow for her to serve as Governor and VP at the same time.”
Lake has continued to push her baseless claim that she actually won the Arizona gubernatorial race last year, even though she has failed to produce any meaningful evidence to support that assertion.
An appeals court rejected Lake’s effort to challenge the election results last month, upholding a lower court’s ruling that she had failed to substantiate her accusations of widespread fraud.
The Maricopa county superior court judge, Peter Thompson, wrote in his ruling in December: “The court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.”
Results show that Democratic candidate and now-Governor Katie Hobbs defeated Lake by 17,117 votes.
David Smith
David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, reports on the diminished status of CPAC this year:
The Conservative Political Action Conference, which bills itself as the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world, has been taking place for nearly half a century.
After a pandemic-enforced move to Florida and Texas, it returned to the Washington area this week. But proximity to the capital was no guarantee of relevance. The list of Republicans who decided to stay away was as striking as those who showed up.
The absentees included potential 2024 contenders such as the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis; the Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin; former vice-president Mike Pence; and Senator Tim Scott. Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel were also missing.
Even Fox News, once Trump’s loudest cheerleader, appeared to have given up the ghost and has been supplanted by the more extreme and fringy Newsmax.
It was a far cry from the days when CPAC commanded national headlines as the rehearsal dinner for Republican primary candidates. In 2015, the year before the last competitive Republican primary, the marquee event heard from nearly all the major candidates, including Jeb Bush.
Read the full report:
Ron DeSantis skipped the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, leaving Donald Trump to dominate the annual event.
In his CPAC speech, Trump did not directly criticize DeSantis, although he did attack those Republicans who “want to destroy our great Social Security system”.
“I wonder who that might be,” Trump said.
The remark was interpreted as a thinly veiled attack on DeSantis, who has recently backtracked on his past House votes supporting raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Other than his indirect criticism of DeSantis, Trump’s CPAC speech also included multiple attacks on Joe Biden and promises of “retribution” against his political enemies.
“We are going to finish what we started,” Trump told supporters. “We’re going to complete the mission, we’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again.”
Read David Smith’s full report from CPAC:
DeSantis inches closer to presidential announcement with California speech
Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.
Republican Ron DeSantis delivered a speech yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, as the Florida governor appears to inch closer to announcing a presidential campaign.
In his remarks, DeSantis’ condemned other states’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic and celebrated Florida as a “citadel of freedom throughout the United States and indeed throughout the world”.
Criticizing policies that required people to get vaccinated against coronavirus, DeSantis said: “Nobody in the state of Florida was going to be pushed to have to choose between the job they needed and the shots they didn’t want to take.”
The speech seemed like a dress rehearsal of sorts for DeSantis, who is expected to enter the 2024 presidential primary in the coming months. Polls currently indicate that DeSantis poses the largest threat to Donald Trump, who continues to lead in most surveys.
DeSantis did not make those plans official yesterday, but his busy schedule of events, combined with the release of his new book, indicate that a formal campaign launch could be just around the corner.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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Joe Biden will headline the 2023 International Association of Fire Fighters Legislative Conference. The union was the first major labor organization to endorse his presidential bid in 2020.
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Kamala Harris will travel to Colorado to speak at the Arvada Center for Performing Arts. The vice-president will participate in a discussion on the White House’s efforts to combat the climate crisis.
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Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 1.30pm ET. The White House press secretary will likely face questions over DeSantis’ speech.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
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