Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.
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Pompeo to INN: No evidence that this administration is listening to the Israelis on Iran
Former US Secretary of State: Biden admin appears intent on giving Iran hundreds of billions of dollars. That would be an enormous mistake.
Iranian_Nuclear_Program
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to Israel National News at the Israel Heritage Foundation event in New York City.
Asked if the United States is listening to the Israeli opinion on the nuclear deal with Iran, Pompeo replied, “There is no evidence that this administration is listening to the Israelis, or frankly to others in the region who are really worried about Iran having a nuclear weapon. They appear intent on giving them hundreds of billions of dollars with which to continue their terror campaign. That would be an enormous mistake.”
On Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria, which he has expressed support for in the past but the Biden administration opposes, Pompeo said, “It all begins with the simple understanding of Judea and Samaria as the rightful homeland of the Jewish people. Once you begin in that place and recognize that Israelis aren’t occupiers, this isn’t an apartheid nation but rather this is their homeland, then - Jews who want to build there, frankly they live alongside Christians and Arabs in the place - this administration has just taken the position that the progressive left in America has held for a long time, which is antithetical to understanding Israel’s right to this place.”
Asked about US officials demanding that Israel reassess the IDF’s rules of engagement following the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, Pompeo said he is not surprised by the demands.
“It should be America’s view that the Israeli people have a right, just like every nation has a right, to defend its own people, to protect its own sovereignty, to place demands on them about how they engage - We all want everyone to live alongside each other in peace and harmony, but when there’s a terror threat, the Israeli government has a responsibility to protect its own people,” said Pompeo.
Asked whether he would run for President in 2024, the former Secretary of State replied, “Not much has changed. We’re still trying to figure our way through this. We’re probably six months closer than when we last spoke. Come the first of the year or the beginning of the next, Susan and I will have to make a decision. I’m just praying that America gets the right next leader.”
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The Real Midterm Election Stakes
Will voters put a check on the unrequited ambitions of the Democratic left?
The Editorial Board
If the election polls are right, Democrats have a good chance of adding to their majority in the Senate and even keeping it in the House. Toward that end they are trying to convince voters that abortion and Donald Trump are the main election issues. But the real issue, by far the most important for actual policy, is whether voters will put a legislative check on the political left.
In other words, the Democratic election strategy is a new version of their 2020 campaign bait-and-switch. Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress won by making the election a referendum on Mr. Trump and Covid-19. But once in office they pivoted to advance a far-left labor agenda and enact the biggest expansion of government in modern history. They succeeded on many fronts, and only the opposition of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema prevented them from killing the filibuster to do much more.
The Democratic left hasn’t given up on any of this, however, as they are admitting if you pay attention. The media are ignoring this as they echo the abortion and Trump narrative. So it’s worth laying out what Democrats really have in mind, based on what they tried to do this Congress and are promising for the next.
Start with targeting the filibuster, which is priority one because a 51-vote Senate majority opens the door to everything the current House has passed. Vice President Kamala Harris made that clear in a recent speech to the Democratic National Committee.
“With just two more seats in the Senate, we can codify Roe v. Wade, we can put the protections of Roe in law,” Ms. Harris said. “With two more seats in the United States Senate we can pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Two more seats.”
Democratic Senate candidates in Wisconsin (Mandela Barnes), Pennsylvania (John Fetterman) and Ohio (Tim Ryan) say they’d vote to kill the filibuster. They also favor adding Washington, D.C., as a new state. “50/50 is not enough. We must expand our Democratic Senate majority to abolish the filibuster once and for all. And our campaign is the best chance to do it,” Mr. Ryan tweeted in January. And he claims to be a moderate.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan have supported a filibuster carve-out for voting legislation. The H.R.1 voting bill creates a federal right to mail ballots and overrides state laws banning ballot harvesting. It requires same-day voter registration and up to 15 days of early voting.
House Democrats also passed H.R.4 that would require the Justice Department or D.C. district court to approve election-law changes in states and localities with a putative history of voting-rights violations. The Attorney General would have broad discretion, and you can bet GOP states will be the main targets as they were under Eric Holder before the Supreme Court voided pre-clearance in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).
Once the legislative filibuster goes for one issue, the political pressure will be enormous to kill it for much more. The Pro Act will surely make a comeback. That bill would override state right-to-work laws that give workers the choice of joining a union; impose a backdoor card-check procedure that neuters secret-ballot election; impose the Obama-era joint-employer standard that put corporations and contractors on the hook for workers they don’t employ but “indirectly” control, and much more.
Democrats also want to pass a CO2 emissions “enforcement mechanism” that failed this year because it violated Senate budget reconciliation rules. Ditto a provision originally in the Inflation Reduction Act that gave the Environmental Protection Agency sweeping power to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Build Back Better entitlements including free universal pre-K, child-care subsidies, an expanded refundable child tax credit, paid family leave and Medicare dental and hearing benefits will re-emerge from the grave. Many Democrats are hankering to lower the Medicare age to 60 from 65, and Mr. Ryan co-sponsored legislation in the House.
Major tax increases will also be back in play. Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal recently told a Bloomberg reporter that Democrats will raise individual and corporate tax rates if they keep power. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a recent speech that the Administration’s goal is to return “tax rates for high earners and corporations to historical norms.”
How high is “historical”? Mr. Neal’s original proposal in 2021 raised the corporate rate to 26.5%, and the individual rate to 39.6% from 37% at $400,000 in income and 42.6% above $5 million, and imposed a tax on capital gains at death. With two more Senators, expect those rates to go much higher.
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There’s much more we could include here, but you get the idea. If Democrats add seats in the Senate and hold the House, there won’t be much of a check on progressive ambitions. If they accomplish this with inflation at 8%, they will be even more emboldened. That is what’s really on the ballot in November.
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An excellent and sober analysis of Republican mid-term prospects:
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Opinion: The albatross around Democrats' necks
By Charlie Dent - a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who served as chair of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 until 2017 and chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies from 2015 until 2018. He is a CNN political commentator. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
(CNN) — President Joe Biden and the Democrats have been on a bit of a roll since August -- beginning with the enactment of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.
The law's impact on inflation will likely be minimal, although the climate change, pharmaceutical price controls and health care provisions are significant and consequential. Meanwhile, gasoline prices, while still high, have fallen, as Biden's approval rating, while still perilously low, has risen.
Democratic victories in competitive special elections in the recent New York and Alaska House races have injected a shot of adrenaline into Democratic candidates across the country. The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, former President Donald Trump's unhelpful meddling in the midterm scrum and GOP candidate stumbles -- particularly in swing state Senate races -- have lowered Republican expectations of a massive red wave.
Democrats now want to act as if they can defy history and mitigate expected midterm losses -- possibly retaining control of both chambers of Congress. But all of that optimism should be tempered after the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revealed on Tuesday that inflation ticked back up last month.
National poll after national poll shows the economy and inflation remain top concerns among voters -- and these latest government figures will not do much to ease voter anxiety.
The news is even worse in cities in key swing states -- including Phoenix, Atlanta and Miami, with inflation jumps year over year of 13%, 11.7%, and 10.7%, respectively, according to Axios analysis of BLS data. Meanwhile, as consumers are paying less for gasoline overall, gas prices remain stubbornly high, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and other critical states to the Democrats' goal of maintaining congressional control.
So, what does this all mean for the GOP and its prospects of winning majorities in the House and Senate?
No doubt Republicans will continue to hammer Democrats on out-of-control spending, particularly the American Rescue Plan, and how that profligacy has helped to turbocharge inflation at a time when supply was already low and demand quite high. The GOP will also amplify attacks on Democrats over soaring crime rates in Democratic-run cities and states, and the ongoing crisis at the border. Combined with inflation, these are powerful issues to campaign on.
But GOP messaging does not occur in a vacuum -- and Republicans need to contend with several major obstacles.
First, Democrats will relentlessly pound Republicans over abortion. The GOP never had a coherent plan for victory after the Dobbs decision. Several Republican-controlled states have enacted extreme abortion bans with few or no exceptions. Public reaction has been fierce to these measures, as witnessed by the recent referendum in ruby-red Kansas where abortion rights were affirmed by a wide margin -- providing further evidence that these abortion bills are alienating significant numbers of Republican voters, as well as Democrats and independents.
Adding to the incoherence is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina's introduction of national abortion ban legislation after 15 weeks, placing congressional candidates in the uncomfortable position of answering unwanted questions on a highly controversial abortion bill. After the Dobbs ruling, GOP congressional candidates simply wanted to deflect these abortion questions to the states.
Second, extreme election-denying GOP candidates are making victory less likely in some critical swing states and districts. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tacitly acknowledged this problem when he recently spoke of candidate quality. At a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce event he said, "I think there is a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate...Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome." In an era of extreme polarization, candidates may matter less, but candidates still matter.
Finally, the GOP must acknowledge the elephant in the room: Trump. Many Republican candidates in competitive races want Trump to go radio silent between now and the midterms.
After all, it's hard to sell a strong anti-inflation or tough-on-crime message when Trump keeps bringing the story back to himself. Witness the recent Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he provided a gift to Democrats by relentlessly attacking the law enforcement agencies responsible for investigating his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Indeed, it's difficult for the GOP to make the midterms a referendum on the Biden administration while Trump, unpopular with many Democrats and independents, is the public face of the GOP.
So, two questions remain: Will the GOP message on rising inflation, crime and historical midterm dynamics favoring the party out of power prevail? Or will Trump, abortion and GOP candidate quality mitigate expected Democrat losses?
The truth is we have never seen a defeated, unpopular former president play such an outsized role in a midterm election. But Republicans still have a fighting chance. While they cannot control Trump, they can try to ignore him as much as possible between now and November -- focusing instead on their winning messages on the economy and crime.
It's not an ideal situation, but if they succeed in doing so, I expect a very slender GOP House majority in the next Congress. The Senate is a jump ball, but Democrats in the upper chamber still have reason for optimism.
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The man is a threat to America. Keep him locked up.
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Biden says US troops would defend Taiwan; White House backtracks remarks
By Allie Griffin
President Joe Biden appears during the 60 Minutes Interview via CBS News on Sept. 18, 2022.President Joe Biden appears during the 60 Minutes Interview via CBS News on Sept. 18, 2022. CBS News
The White House walked back comments President Joe Biden made about sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Biden made the remarks during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday.
Correspondent Scott Pelley asked the president if the U.S. military would defend the democratic government of Taiwan should China take inspiration from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and attack the self-governed island.
“[W]ould U.S. forces defend the island?” Pelley asked, in the interview taped on Thursday.
“Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack,” the president said.
“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir — U.S. forces, U.S. men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Pelley clarified.
“Yes,” Biden said.
Scott Pelley interviews President Biden in regards to the possible invasion China could impose on Taiwan.Scott Pelley interviews President Biden in regards to the possible invasion China could impose on Taiwan.CBS News
However, following the interview, a White House official told “60 Minutes” that U.S. policy regarding Taiwan hasn’t changed.
The U.S. maintains “strategic ambiguity” on whether American soldiers would defend Taiwan, but has pledged to help equip the island to defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.
Earlier this month, the State Department announced the sale of a $1.1 billion defense package — which included anti-ship and air-to-air missiles — to Taiwan.
CM-11 tanks maneuver during the 2-day live-fire drill, amid intensifying threats military from China, in Pingtung county, Taiwan on Sept. 7, 2022. CM-11 tanks maneuver during the 2-day live-fire drill, amid intensifying threats military from China, in Pingtung county, Taiwan on Sept. 7, 2022. NurPhoto via Getty Images Artillery hits a target during the 2-day live-fire drill in Taiwan on Sept. 7, 2022.Artillery hits a target during the 2-day live-fire drill in Taiwan on Sept. 7, 2022.NurPhoto via Getty Images
“This package was in the works for some time precisely because we expected it would be needed as China increased its pressure on Taiwan,” State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a press briefing on Sept. 6.
The sale sparked backlash from China.
Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said the deal “severely jeopardizes China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Patel, however, said there was no reason for China to react poorly as the systems are only for “defensive purposes” and the U.S. has been providing defensive capabilities to the Democratic island for decades, while respecting its “one China” policy which recognizes Taiwan as part of the country.
“Consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. makes available to Taiwan defense articles and services necessary to enable it to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability,” he said. “I’ll note that since 2010, the Executive Branch has notified Congress of over $35 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.”
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