Politics

The demise of political party bosses and the smoke-filled rooms in which they operated was heralded a long time ago as an important step toward handing more power over the selection of presidential nominees to ordinary citizens. Who would have thought then that billionaires would seek to become the new bosses of American politics?

Super-wealthy individuals receive outsize attention in presidential politics. And virtually every prospective candidate wants the support of a well-funded super PAC and the vocal backing of the mega rich. The defection of a disenchanted billionaire is treated as bad news for any candidate. But what difference does all this make?

Just last week, Americans for Prosperity, part of the political network of billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, endorsed Nikki Haley in her bid to become the Republican nominee. The endorsement was heralded as a major coup for the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, who has been gaining in the polls.

It is also considered news that billionaire Jamie Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, spoke with her on the phone, and that Larry Fink, the chairman of BlackRock, attended a small gathering for her. When hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin said he would back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), it garnered headlines, and again when he stopped short of doing so and declared himself “still on the sidelines.”

DeSantis has enjoyed the support of a sizable super PAC called Never Back Down. Now he has another newly formed super PAC that was established amid infighting among the leaders of Never Back Down. His campaign so far has failed to meet the expectations of his donors and break away from the pack to become the principal challenger to former president Donald Trump that many at the start of the year thought he would be.

The goal of these rich Republicans is to find a credible candidate and consolidate behind that person to avoid a repeat of the 2016 primaries, when Trump was able to win against a divided field. That may be commendable but so far they have been no more successful in slowing Trump than the Republican establishment was in 2016. Billionaires influence Democratic presidential politics as well. Candidates have courted them assiduously as they competed for their party nominations in recent campaigns. But this dynamic on the left is not as pronounced as it has become in the Republican Party.

What all this says about the nature of politics today is far more concerning. Citizens — voters — do have a larger voice in the selection of presidential nominees than they did many decades ago, but billionaires get special treatment. The richest among us can influence who runs and who does not, who has the money to stay in the race and who does not. No one planned this. The system today is an accident of several seemingly unrelated changes.

The influence of the old bosses, including powerful governors, mayors and other party leaders, began to wane over half a century ago when, after the tumultuous 1968 Chicago convention, the Democratic Party revamped rules to give more power over the selection of national convention delegates, and therefore the eventual nominee, to voters.

Congress, too, had a hand in the changes. After the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted new campaign finance laws designed to limit both individual contributions and overall spending by candidates. A system of federal-matching funds provided candidates with money from a voluntary taxpayer-funded pool to match smaller contributions. It was built on a bargain: In return for getting those federal funds, candidates agreed to abide by spending limits.

That system began to erode about two decades ago as candidates with the capacity to raise money far beyond the spending limits opted out of the system. That allowed them to spend freely in the nomination contest. Over time, the whole system collapsed, putting candidates who could not raise huge amounts of money through individual contributions at a disadvantage.

In 2012, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which along with related court rulings that followed, once again changed the structure of campaign financing. One result was a new breed of entities called super PACs, typically backed by billionaires and multimillionaires, including “dark money” groups which do not report the names of their contributors. Some of these committees operated independently. Others were designed to supplement the work of national party committees or individual presidential candidates, though coordination was to be limited. Today, the super PACs supporting a candidate coordinate more closely than ever.

Why are super PACs funded by the super-wealthy so attractive to candidates? Federal rules limit contributions from individuals to candidates for federal office, including the presidency, to $3,300 per election. So an individual can give a candidate $3,300 for the primary election and $3,300 for the general election. If candidates seek out people who can give the maximum, that means every $1 million raised requires finding roughly 300 individuals to donate.

Candidates like Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders were able to use the rules to produce a gusher of grass-roots money. They showed that by generating passion and enthusiasm among the masses, the money would follow, $15 or $25 or $50 at a time. Some small donors even reached the maximum legal limit. For most candidates, however, raising individual contributions under the federal rules is laborious and sometimes produces minimal revenue.

The system also leads to distortions. The Republican National Committee has set terms to qualify for the presidential debates this year with a combination of strength in public polls and numbers of individual donors. Those who do not reach the threshold cannot participate in the debates, and the threshold rises with each debate.

This fall, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) was struggling to qualify for one of the debates. He has plenty of personal money to fund his campaign. What he lacked was individual donors, so his campaign offered $20 gasoline cards to new donors who gave $1. Burgum made it to the first two debates but failed to make it to the third one last month in Miami.

Few viable candidates run for president without a flush super PAC backing them up, which enhances the power of the mega-rich donors. They are courted by candidates, their family members and their top strategists, and sought out by political reporters as sources of inside information. Their opinions should carry no more weight about the strengths and weaknesses of a candidate than those of voters in Iowa or Michigan or Arizona. But their voices are amplified because they speak with dollar signs.

This fall, Thomas Peterffy was looking to entice Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to make a late entry into the party nomination battle. At the time, he told Robert Costa of CBS News that, if Youngkin were to declare his candidacy, “the money would be there.” He meant that a super PAC would be assembled quickly to provide support.

The story in The Washington Post carried the headline, “Alarmed Republicans are preparing to draft Glenn Youngkin.” But there was no evident groundswell of voters trying to draft the governor and former private equity executive. It was some nervous billionaires conspiring to flex their muscles. And all that talk faded after Republicans suffered setbacks in the Virginia legislative elections last month.

Would those major donors have made a difference had Youngkin decided to run? The evidence is mixed. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, learned the limits of this new system when he ran for president in 2016. He had a super PAC funded for the long haul. The voters had other ideas. All that money failed to produce the support of voters, and Bush ended his campaign in defeat after the South Carolina primary.

Candidates still must do the work of campaigning, of knowing why they are running, honing their message and making a persuasive case to voters. Money alone does not do that. Those with the biggest bank accounts had the best seats at the table of democracy in this year. But voters will begin to make their voices heard next month when the primary and caucus season begins.

Under a sweltering July heat outside the Capitol, members of the House Freedom Caucus devoted a half-hour news conference to lambasting their Republican colleagues for supporting a bipartisan debt ceiling deal that they argued did nothing to curb spending or the deficit.

“Everyone who voted for that bill essentially kept in place the Biden agenda,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said a month after the deal became law, adding that the Freedom Caucus “was committed to using every tool in our disposal” to get to a lower top-line number.

At issue was the spending cap to fund the federal government for the upcoming fiscal year. Months earlier, House Republicans had passed a Freedom Caucus-approved proposal that would have forced Congress to slash $350 billion in spending with a cap of $1.471 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year. But the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act deal struck by President Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), that passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support, codified a higher top-line number of $1.59 trillion.

Four months, two House speakers and two averted government shutdowns later, the Freedom Caucus abruptly announced on Wednesday that their staunch defense of the lower spending cap had evaporated for most members. They now supported the $1.59 trillion level after months of defying their Republican colleagues, who had begged them to acknowledge the spending cap as a win — it was still lower than what Democrats set when they controlled the House and the Senate — and help expedite the government funding process.

The turnaround was consequential: It clears the way for the House and Senate to start negotiations in hopes of striking a compromise on how to fund the government with looming deadlines in mid-January and early February. But the far-right flank’s acceptance came far too late for some House Republican colleagues, who expressed shock, anger and dismay over the time wasted on placating the Freedom Caucus.

“It could have saved ourselves some time,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said flatly. The spending debate was a key component in the effort to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker of the House in October, which left the chamber paralyzed and without a leader for three weeks.

Leaders in both parties and chambers have not declared yet whether $1.59 trillion will indeed be the cap for government spending until Sept. 30, 2024, but Democrats have called on House Republicans to abide by the top line codified in the debt ceiling deal. The Senate has marked up their bipartisan bills higher than the cap, but the expectation by appropriators was that both chambers would negotiate to ensure the funding bills met the agreed upon number.

“It’s frustrating,” said Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), a vulnerable incumbent who serves on the House Appropriations Committee. “But I think it’s actually an encouraging sign that … they’re actually negotiating and, you know, conditions around that are reasonable.”

But several McCarthy allies in particular were flabbergasted when they heard about the Freedom Caucus’s change of heart, privately expressing “outrage,” as one member put it, over the epiphany many had tried to force earlier in the year.

“What this goes to show is that everything that’s been happening over the last few months is based entirely on ignorance or lack of information or understanding,” said another McCarthy ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party tensions, about the far-right flank. “They’re just a bunch of idiots.”

Freedom Caucus members said the calculation has more to do with timing, blaming McCarthy for not adhering to their demands earlier in the year. They also argued that they came around after recognizing the Senate had marked up their appropriation bills to a significantly higher level, making $1.59 trillion a realistically achievable cut to current levels. Moderate Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), who serves on the Appropriations Committee, said that the Senate overshooting the codified top line and House Republicans marking up their bills under it always meant that the two chambers would likely land back at the number agreed to by McCarthy and Biden.

But some far-right members’ openness to the $1.59 trillion level doesn’t guarantee support if appropriators simply mark up legislation to that number. There is a general consensus that the House and Senate cannot exceed that number, which would force them to then consider supplemental spending on foreign democracies and disasters at home. Others also want the appropriations bills to include House Republicans’ border security bill or funding for Israel, publicly threatening that they will reject a multifaceted national security proposal in the Senate that is meant to coax House Republicans to support more funding for Ukraine.

“No more gimmicks. Most of the House voted for it. Most of the Senate voted for it. That’s where we have to be. Don’t be adding stuff on to it,” Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said. “Let’s write the appropriations bills, let’s get the spending bills right. Let’s set that as the number. And then when we do that, let’s start conferencing bills.”

Conversations with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and pragmatic colleagues helped move the Freedom Caucus to relent, according to multiple Republicans familiar with the talks. Johnson had relayed to Freedom Caucus members in several meetings that a top-line number needed to be agreed to by the four Senate and House leaders — himself, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — so both chambers could begin negotiating in an effort to either pass a full-year funding plan and avoid a government shutdown or begin implementing an automatic one percent cut across all federal departments, a condition added to the debt ceiling deal.

Not all members of the Freedom Caucus are on board. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) has always preferred reducing spending to 2019 pre-pandemic levels and believes that Republicans should use the upcoming fiscal deadlines to demand more, suggesting that a shutdown could be worth it if it extracts concessions on border security.

“This is absolutely unsustainable. We’re heading off the cliff,” he said. “If you give [Democrats] pretty much everything that they want, you will never entice them, persuade them, leverage them into giving us the border security we need.”

How to fund the government has been the central issue that has tested House Republicans in their majority. While they all agree with wanting to reduce spending, they have been plagued with disagreements on the way in which to do so.

Members of the Freedom Caucus first made their intentions clear to McCarthy during his 15-ballot speakership election in January. They claim that McCarthy promised to cap spending at pre-pandemic levels for nondefense discretionary spending behind closed doors to earn their support, though those reported promises were never written down or released publicly.

McCarthy largely agreed to a number of the far-right’s demands, particularly when House Republicans’ debt ceiling proposal incorporated all of the Freedom Caucuses’ main requests. But when Republicans’ partisan plan was rejected in negotiations with the Biden administration, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) passionately declared that a “breach” in trust had been committed by McCarthy.

Days after the eventual bipartisan debt deal was signed into law in early June, 11 furious far-right lawmakers blocked a procedural hurdle on noncontroversial bills that prevented the House from considering any legislation for a week. McCarthy then relented and directed the House Appropriations Committee to mark up all funding bills to the levels the Freedom Caucus demanded, breaching the deal made with Biden. The decision rankled appropriators, who were now assigned the daunting task of making significant cuts that also teed up tough votes for vulnerable Republicans serving on the committee.

“We were in meetings that were hours long debating that $1.471 [trillion] number where they said we’d never go up to $1.59 [trillion],” a vulnerable Republican said about Freedom Caucus colleagues. “I’m glad we got there but my gosh, why? Why do this? We wasted 10 weeks here for what?”

The real test for Republicans and McCarthy began in September with just weeks to fund the government before a possible shutdown, kicking off a tumultuous 10 weeks. Three members of the Freedom Caucus — Perry, Roy and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) — along with three lawmakers from the conservative Main Street Caucus proposed a short-term deal that would slash spending by one percent until October, included Republicans’ border security bill and capped full-year funding at $1.59 trillion. It was the first break within the Freedom Caucus that showed some members, though not the majority, were willing to strike a deal at the higher top line. It was almost immediately rejected.

Unable to strike a deal within his conference after providing myriad options, McCarthy ultimately averted a government shutdown at the 11th hour by passing a clean extension of current funding levels with the help of House Democrats. Three days later, he became the first speaker of the House to be ousted ― targeted by several members for having violated the far-right’s demand that he not rely on Democratic help to avert the shutdown like he had for the debt ceiling deal.

After three weeks and three failed attempts to elect a speaker, Republicans unanimously chose Johnson, a staunch member of the far-right flank. But becoming second-in-line to the presidency and meeting critical deadlines to avert a second possible shutdown forced Johnson to mimic McCarthy and pass a clean extension of current fiscal levels to avoid a shutdown in mid-November until early next year with help from Democrats. Though he adopted the Freedom Caucus’s two-deadline approach to the extension, they fired the same warning shot as they had months earlier — sinking a procedural vote for a long-term appropriation bill.

So far, members of the far-right continue to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt, even though they are trying to stress what their expectations are moving forward. Johnson made clear to Republican senators this week that the House prefers passage of their border security package as part of the broader national security bill and that the Senate should take up the House’s supplemental Israel proposal.

“What a great thing to have Mike in there because you trust what he says. You trust when he goes back to Schumer that he will lay out what he believes and it comes from us,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said after meeting with Johnson early Friday.

Still, not all members are lauding Johnson, and instead are critical that he continues to listen to the far-right’s demands. Rep. Max L. Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish, claimed Johnson “screwed up” by tying Israel aid to IRS funding cuts that do not offset the costs of the legislation as Republican leaders and the Freedom Caucus claim.

“I’m sure a lot of people are going to be upset, but they only have one person to blame and his name is Speaker Johnson,” Miller said about possibly voting in support of a Senate funding bill that includes Israel aid. “I’m saying the quiet part out loud. There’s over 120 members within [the House] that feel just like I do. Except I’m at the point now, where the American people need to know what’s going on behind closed doors of Congress.”

Jackie Alemany and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) receives lots of compliments from both sides of the aisle.

“High level of trust in him,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a first-year member and one of the most conservative in the chamber.

“I like James. I think he’s earnest. I think he’s smart,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), one of the most liberal members finishing his 11th year in office.

But Lankford is now heading into the most critical phase of his 13 years in Congress, four in the House and nine in the Senate.

Taking the lead on a major bipartisan negotiation, Lankford finds himself well respected, but facing doubters. No one is quite sure whether the 55-year-old former Baptist youth minister can rise to this occasion and, as they so often say on Capitol Hill, land the plane.

This isn’t just any negotiation. It’s not one of those typical spending deals where one side proposes X number of dollars to be spent on an issue, while the other proposes Y dollars, leaving a relatively easy settlement of cutting the differences in half for Z dollars.

Lankford is the top Republican trying to solve the single most difficult issue Congress has repeatedly failed to comprehensively address over the last 20 years — the issue of migrant crossings at the Mexican border.

And the fate of these talks isn’t just relegated to the Southwest border. Their success is considered the mandatory linchpin for being able to pass a global security package stretching from Europe to the Middle East and the Far East.

“We’re just trying to really figure out how do we actually solve this. There’s lots of different pieces,” Lankford told reporters a couple of days ago, sticking to his characteristic understatements.

He acknowledged that another failure on border and immigration issues — just as happened in 2006, 2007, 2013 and 2017 — would have ramifications all across the globe because of the four-legged stool that has been assembled late in an otherwise mostly fruitless year of congressional legislating.

“We have to be able to solve this,” Lankford said.

As various crises erupted around the globe, leaving President Biden requesting billions of dollars in emergency aid, Senate leaders did that traditional thing they have done over the last 15 or so years: decided to roll all the separate pieces into one massive bill, calling it an “emergency supplemental” funding plan.

The request included more than $60 billion to help Ukraine’s defenses against Russia; $14 billion for Israel; $9 billion for humanitarian aid in these regions; more than $7 billion to shore up Taiwan’s defenses; and about $14 billion for increasing the number of U.S. border agents and other administrative agents.

The concept — a Senate classic — was that there would be something for everyone: Those who despise Russian President Vladimir Putin saw Ukraine money; those focused on Chinese aggression had Taiwan defense funds; those focused on defending Israel had their piece of the pie.

And, for Republicans fixated on border crossings, those additional funds might help there. But as conservative voters grew increasingly skeptical of supporting Ukraine, Republicans decided they needed a bigger trade-off for going along with those funds and demanded policy changes to border laws.

So now Lankford — who has been part of a small bipartisan group talking about border and immigration policy since they visited the border in Texas and Arizona in January — has been tasked with leading these negotiations in search of the elusive solution to this decades-long crisis.

His demeanor has won praise for years, explaining why he has previously led the bipartisan National Prayer Breakfast and received the highly sensitive task of co-chairing the Senate Ethics Committee.

But these negotiations are an entirely different game.

“What I’ve learned is that it’s pretty easy to be in the room, and it’s pretty easy to talk about the issues. It’s really hard to get to yes, because the result is ultimately going to split your caucus,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who is Lankford’s partner in the high-stakes talks.

Murphy, first elected to the Senate in 2012, spent most of his early years a bit more aligned with Democratic firebrands, but in recent years refashioned himself into a bipartisan dealmaker.

After several failed efforts, Murphy worked with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) last year to come up with a modest-but-important gun violence bill, the first of its kind in 30 years. And he worked with the group that crafted the bill that reshaped Congress’s role in presidential elections following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

He then joined a group of eight senators that included Lankford who traveled to the border, with Cornyn leading the trip in Texas and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) leading the portion in Arizona. They continued to talk about the issue throughout the year, informally — sometimes in small meetings, sometimes via text messages.

“This is not a new thing that just started a couple weeks ago. This has been an ongoing conversation,” Lankford told reporters.

Murphy appreciates how Lankford has studied the issue, in part through his top Republican spot on a border policy subcommittee. “He’s one of the most intellectual, detail-oriented guys in the Senate. And on immigration policy, you need to know the details. It’s the most complicated law on the books,” Murphy said in an interview.

But the dysfunctional House, struggling to elect a speaker in January and then shutting down for three weeks in October to find a new speaker, left the senators doubtful that there was any point in even trying a big, bipartisan border-immigration deal.

In the last few weeks, as the situation grew dire in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war began, Democrats shifted their views enough that they considered these matters so important that they would be willing to set aside long-standing demands for a path to citizenship or permanent resident status for millions of undocumented immigrants who have been living in the United States.

And that move, Democrats say, is not getting nearly enough appreciation from Lankford and Republicans, who they say are endangering global security over a long-standing domestic policy dispute.

“The question for all of us to ask is, 50 years from now, how will this Congress be defined? And my judgment is that we will be defined by whether we let Putin take a European country by force, not whether we tweak the asylum laws,” Schatz, one of Murphy’s closest friends, said.

And Schatz, like other Democrats, questions whether some Republicans injected the border policy issue merely to sabotage the entire legislative package.

“Democrats have displayed a historical willingness to entertain some pretty tough measures at the United States border. Republicans should take the win. Rather than get greedy and blow up the whole thing, unless their original purpose is to blow up the whole thing,” Schatz said.

But the staunchest conservatives, at least in the Senate, maintain they care enough about the border that they are willing to keep up funding for Ukraine.

“Look, the one thing I care more about than not funding an endless war in Ukraine is securing the southern border. There’s certainly a universe where if I think there’s sufficient border security, I’d be willing to make a trade for it,” Vance said.

“I think the Dems need to understand that we view this — the southern border — as a national security crisis,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters, vowing that Republicans will filibuster a bill for all the global aid if it does not meet GOP border demands.

Having won reelection last year, Lankford might have more freedom to broker a bipartisan deal without having to face his state’s deeply conservative GOP primary voters for almost five more years.

But others still aren’t sure whether someone so new to these types of negotiations, dealing with such a complex issue, can overcome all these obstacles, even with defeat being so potentially calamitous to other critical priorities.

“There are always people who want to blow everything up. I don’t think James is one,” Schatz said. “But to say he’s working in good faith, is different from saying that he’s going to be able to land the airplane.”

A new Biden campaign ad highlights the president’s work to lower health care costs. His allies are appearing on cable news to warn that a victory for former president Donald Trump would strip insurance from millions of Americans. Biden’s team is blasting out statements seeking to tie other Republicans to Trump’s calls to repeal Obamacare.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, has become a flash point in the presidential race in recent days as Biden and his allies have sought to contrast Trump’s recent dismissive remarks with what they frame as Biden’s commitment to health-care affordability.

On Friday, Biden hailed North Carolina’s expansion of Medicaid under the ACA, which officials say will provide immediate coverage to 300,000 North Carolinians, and lambasted “MAGA Republicans” who want to repeal the law. His campaign warned that millions of Americans who get health care through Obamacare “could wave goodbye to their coverage” if Trump wins the White House again.

“To those who want to repeal this lifesaving law, let me be clear: I won’t let it happen on my watch,” Biden said in a statement.

Trump has argued since his 2016 campaign that the ACA is a “disaster” that has increased Americans’ health costs while providing inadequate coverage.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), a surrogate for Biden’s campaign, appeared on CNN to argue that Trump is underestimating the importance of the health-care law to the working Americans who are central to his appeal.

“We’re talking about child care workers, we’re talking about people who take care of seniors, we’re talking about people who work in restaurants,” Cooper said. “These are the people that Donald Trump wants to rip away insurance from, and that is a message that I think will resound during these next campaigns.”

The flurry of activity suggests that Biden and Democrats are preparing to highlight health care, along with abortion, as central to their message that unlike Republicans, they are concerned about Americans’ pressing needs. While Democrats also plan to focus on such issues as the economy and Trump’s threat to democracy, they increasingly think that health care and abortion rights could be powerful motivators in their favor.

The politics of health care have changed dramatically in recent years. After President Barack Obama pushed through the ACA in 2010, Republicans won a string of elections by criticizing it as an overbearing big-government program.

But when Republicans, led by Trump, actually sought to repeal the ACA in 2017, the threat made the law far more popular, and the repeal effort collapsed. Since then, Republicans have largely shied away from talking about health care.

Abortion rights have in some ways had a similar trajectory. Republicans for years gained political advantage from attacking abortion rights, but when those rights were overturned by the Supreme Court in June 2022, it upset even many conservatives, and the issue almost overnight became a strength for Democrats.

The ACA expanded health coverage to millions of American by subsidizing their purchase of private insurance through newly created marketplaces, as well as by providing money to states that made more people eligible for Medicaid. Republicans have continually challenged the law in court, and GOP members of Congress for years campaigned on a pledge to repeal the legislation. But once the GOP held majorities in both chambers of Congress and the White House, they could not agree on exactly how to do that.

Trump criticized the Affordable Care Act last Saturday, writing on Truth Social that its cost “is out of control” and that he is “seriously looking at alternatives” to it. He followed up Wednesday with another post asserting that the law “sucks.”

Trump has not proposed an alternative to the ACA, a challenge that has long bedeviled Republicans despite their years-long promises to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

In a sign of his renewed emphasis, Biden personally spoke on Obamacare twice this week, saying on Monday that Republicans “just don’t give up” on trying to destroy it and contending on Wednesday that repealing it would especially hurt minorities.

“Folks, this is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said Wednesday at an event in Pueblo, Colo.

Biden and his allies are also seeking to tie other GOP candidates to Trump’s comments. After presidential candidate Nikki Haley declined this week to say whether she would support repealing Obamacare, Biden’s campaign responded with an email saying she had “left the door open to ripping away health care coverage from millions of Americans.”

Haley’s remarks came on a New Hampshire-based podcast, where the former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina governor listed aspects of the American health-care system that she would work to alter but did not say whether those changes would include repealing the ACA — a cause that remains popular among a small segment of the GOP base.

“It’s not about one small policy of, you know, Affordable Care Act,” she said on “Good Morning New Hampshire.” “It’s about fixing the entire health care system.”

Democratic National Committee officials highlighted several Republicans’ positions on the law going back more than a decade. They cited Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s comments in 2012 and 2013 that it should have never been passed and he intended to repeal it. They noted former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s record of calling for an Obamacare replacement and saying more recently on the campaign trail that he would not commit to expanding the ACA.

The DNC also attacked entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for calling Obamacare a “disaster” while campaigning. Christie and Ramaswamy have criticized Trump this election cycle for failing to fulfill his promise to repeal and replace the health-care law when he was president.

While perceptions of the Affordable Care Act remain divided along partisan lines, its popularity hit an all-time high in March, with 62 percent of adults saying they had a favorable view of the law, according to KFF, an independent health research and polling organization.

KFF’s latest poll on the topic, conducted in May, found that 59 percent of adults viewed the law favorably. Among its most popular elements is a provision that prevents insurance companies from refusing to cover someone or charging them more because of a preexisting condition. Those who disapprove of the ACA, in contrast, argue that it has increased health care costs, according to KFF.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced last month that 4.6 million people had selected health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace in the first three weeks of this year’s open enrollment period.

Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), an underdog Democratic primary challenger to Biden, jumped into the fray Thursday by suggesting on the left-leaning podcast “Pod Save America” that he would “start from scratch” in building a national health insurance program.

Some Democrats seized on his remarks, accusing him of backing Trump’s call to ditch the health-care law. Phillips’s campaign clarified that his plan would “supplement” the Affordable Care Act and that he had no intention of scrapping it.

The Biden campaign’s new health care ad began airing Thursday in seven swing states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan. It targeted general-interest programming such as “The Voice” and “Survivor,” the campaign said.

In the TV spot, a pediatric nurse from Nevada says Biden has lowered health-care costs in ways that support families in her state.

“The last administration’s policies were so troubling, and our health-care system has become a business, and people are becoming billionaires off the backs of sick people,” says the nurse, identified as Jody. “The idea that we could go back to the policies that help the rich get richer and left so many people behind … I don’t want to go back.”

Abortion access — no longer considered a constitutional right after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year — helped fuel several electoral wins for Democrats last month. The party is pushing for ballot initiatives on abortion rights in competitive states such as Arizona and Florida in 2024.

As Democrats try to maintain a thin majority in the Senate, some members facing tough races are embracing the issue. In conservative-leaning Ohio, where voters this year passed an amendment to add abortion rights to the state constitution, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) has been defending abortion rights on the campaign trail. Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D) has also been pressing the topic.

Vice President Harris, meanwhile, has made abortion rights a central theme of her campaign message. In Houston on Tuesday, she castigated “extremist so-called leaders” for criminalizing abortion in their states and argued that many people are “silently suffering” because of abortion bans.

“This is not just some intellectual conversation about where do you stand on this issue,” Harris said. “I have met and talked with and heard the stories about women who are literally having miscarriages in a toilet. Understand, every day in America, what this issue means to real people.”

Meryl Kornfield, Azi Paybarah, Tyler Pager and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.

The Biden administration urgently hoped to use the recent pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas to change the course of the war in Gaza. As the fighting began anew Friday, it was unclear whether those efforts were having any effect.

In a marked contrast from their tone before the initial Israeli onslaught in Gaza, top U.S. officials during the brief window when guns were silent made it clear that if Israel’s renewed operations again yielded massive casualties, it would be openly rejecting the explicit position of American leaders.

Biden officials — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in the Middle East this week on his third trip to the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — declared publicly that they would support an Israeli military campaign in the south of Gaza only if Israel took concrete steps to limit civilian casualties, protect critical infrastructure such as hospitals and ensure it did not displace even more people in Gaza, where about 80 percent of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been uprooted since the war began.

Despite this notable change in message and tone, outside advisers and Middle East experts said it remains unclear whether Biden would be willing to distance himself or break with Israel if it does not heed the American exhortations and undertakes another broadly devastating aerial campaign.

“There’s a rhetorical change in how they’re talking about it, but it doesn’t seem substantive,” said Steven Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “If Israel pursues its military operations in a similar fashion, then you know the administration really hasn’t had an effect.”

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said Israeli officials recognize that there cannot be a repeat of what happened in the north. But he said the United States and Israel were probably headed for a public break over what happens after the war in Gaza is over. Biden has repeatedly called for a two-state solution with a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority running Gaza and the West Bank, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long made clear he has little interest in establishing a Palestinian state.

“The big problem, as I see it, is the thinking about the day after,” said Rabinovich, a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. The Biden administration “would like to see a renewal of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the prospect of a Palestinian state at the end of the process. That’s a big problem between the Biden administration and Netanyahu government, because Netanyahu is very much focused on staying in power.”

Many diplomats believe Netanyahu is loath to do anything to upset the far-right members of his cabinet whose defection could threaten his political prospects.

U.S. officials had hoped the seven-day pause between Israel and Hamas, when more than 100 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and increased aid flowed into the besieged Gaza Strip, would last longer and possibly lay the groundwork for a permanent cease-fire. A slightly more hopeful mood briefly prevailed as hostages joyfully reunited with their families, food and fuel finally reached decimated parts of Gaza, and the bombs and missiles fell silent.

But on Friday, Israel and Hamas blamed each other for the breakdown of the fragile truce, and Israel resumed its airstrikes. The United States blamed Hamas for the breakdown after it fired rockets into Israel and failed to produce a promised list of hostages.

Blinken said after meeting with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv this week that Israel had agreed to adopt a “clear plan” for averting civilian deaths before resuming its assault of southern Gaza, though he did not provide details. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 178 Palestinians died Friday after hostilities resumed.

A senior administration official said Biden aides had worked around-the-clock during the pause — when they hoped Israeli officials were calmer and more receptive to U.S. advice — to help them come up with a more targeted military strategy. U.S. officials stressed that Israel, which sealed off northern Gaza and has not allowed residents to return, could not then seal off southern Gaza and carry out another deadly aerial attack with 2 million civilians crammed there.

Israeli officials dropped leaflets Friday on Khan Younis, one of the largest cities in Gaza, saying it plans to target several Hamas targets in the southern city, declaring the area a “dangerous combat zone” and directing residents to move farther south to Rafah, near the Egyptian border.

The senior U.S. administration official said there are areas of Khan Younis that are legitimate Hamas targets, but that U.S. officials have told Israel those sites should not be attacked by air because of the civilian population.

Overall, it remained far from clear whether Israel has changed course in the way U.S. officials were pushing for — adopting a far more limited, targeted approach to going after Hamas fighters while sparing civilians. Some officials pointed to Israel’s decision to publish a numbered map that divides Gaza into several zones and tells residents which ones should be evacuated as evidence that it was heeding U.S. guidance.

But some experts said they saw little sign that the renewed Israeli bombing raids were being undertaken with the kind of caution needed to limit civilian casualties in one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Israeli military officials say they take the advice of U.S. officials seriously but have suggested they do not see the need for significant changes in the way they are conducting their operation.

“We’re continuously talking with anyone who has lessons learned about this area, including our American counterparts,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Amnon Sheffler told reporters this week at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “I don’t think that so far, there’s big lessons that we have been missing. We have not heard anything that we’ve been missing. We know, sadly, that that’s really the situation.”

The warnings from top Biden officials mark a clear departure from the administration’s rhetoric at the beginning of the conflict. When Israel launched its unrelenting bombing campaign in northern Gaza in October — one that has killed more than 13,000 Palestinians and forced more than 1 million civilians to evacuate — the United States was careful not to criticize Israel or issue strong warnings, other than to say it expected the Jewish state to abide by international law.

But Biden has come under growing pressure from fellow Democrats and U.S. allies to help bring the war to an end as the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens and outrage mounts over civilian casualties, particularly the deaths of thousands of children. Israel did not allow aid to enter Gaza — where residents have for weeks struggled to obtain basic necessities including food, water and medicine — after the resumption of fighting.

“The administration somewhat belatedly realized that a war in Gaza is not in American interests, that however much we may agree with Israel that Hamas is an evil terrorist organization, a war in which thousands of innocent Palestinians are killed damages America’s reputation throughout the Middle East, the Islamic world and beyond,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former official in the Clinton administration involved in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Biden, however, has repeatedly justified the incursion by saying Israel has a right and a responsibility to defend itself after the brutality of the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israelis took some 230 hostage. It is not clear that the president, a staunch defender of Israel who has called himself a Zionist, is willing to distance himself or break with Israel even if it resumes a deadly aerial bombardment in defiance of American wishes.

“I think the president is very, very reluctant to go further,” Riedel said. “He finds himself in a very unpleasant place: He’s a lifelong supporter of Israel dealing with the biggest crisis in Israel in 50 years, and he knows war in Gaza is not in the American interest, but he doesn’t have a mechanism to compel the Israelis to stop.”

Biden has used what some allies call a “bear hug” strategy of publicly embracing Israel and seeking to use his leverage — including his immense popularity in Israel — to influence the Israeli government in private. But as Israel has continued to use scorched-earth tactics, U.S. officials have increasingly sought to distance themselves from its approach.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday lambasted Netanyahu for resuming the attacks.

“Netanyahu’s resumption of bombing in Gaza is beyond the pale. Two million people are now in south Gaza. Many have fled earlier fighting in the north. The pause must be extended to get more humanitarian aid in and more hostages out,” Sanders wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Even some defenders of Israel in Congress are taking once unlikely positions. A group of Senate Democrats has discussed imposing conditions on the aid that the United States provides Israel, for example requiring it to abide by the tenets of international law.

“We have an interest in making sure that the assistance we provide to Israel helps win the war and makes Israel safer,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “As I have said, the level of civilian harm inside Gaza is unacceptable, unsustainable, and comes at not only a moral, but also a strategic cost to Israel’s long-term security.”

John Hudson contributed to this report.

Two top White House spokespeople violated the Hatch Act by repeatedly using the term “MAGA” to refer to some Republicans, a watchdog agency found — though the organization did not recommend disciplinary action.

The independent Office of the Special Counsel said the spokespeople failed to comply with the law, designed to limit the political activity of government employees, when they slammed “MAGA” Republicans for their budget proposal in June.

The phrase, which stands for “Make America Great Again,” is former president Donald Trump’s signature slogan. He continues to use it as he runs for president again.

The OSC’s letter, dated Oct. 19 and first reported Friday by NBC News, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Andrew Bates, a deputy press secretary, acted against the law by using “MAGA” on June 14 — a week after the OSC warned Jean-Pierre not to use the acronym. The OSC also issued broad guidance establishing that the use of “MAGA” is considered political activity because it is the campaign slogan of a candidate for office.

Because neither Jean-Pierre nor Bates appears to have used the term since mid-June, however, OSC said in its letter that it was closing its probe.

“Please rest assured that we will continue to monitor the situation and reserve the right to reopen these cases,” the OSC wrote to Michael Chamberlain, a former Trump administration official who runs a conservative government watchdog group. The organization, Protect the Public’s Trust, had asked OSC to open an investigation into the matter.

In a statement Friday, Chamberlain said the OSC was failing to hold Jean-Pierre and her colleagues accountable.

“It is deeply disappointing that the spokesperson for the self-proclaimed most ethical administration in history, who constantly invokes the Hatch Act to swat away uncomfortable questions, has so brazenly and repeatedly violated it,” he said. “The American public has been inundated with statements claiming that ‘no one is above the law,’ yet it appears that she is among a select group who are.”

A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said, “We take the law seriously and uphold the Hatch Act.”

Bates most recently used the phrase “MAGA” on Monday, when he said in a statement that congressional Republicans have shown that the goal of “MAGAnomics” is tax breaks for special interests. The OSC, however, has said that term does not violate the Hatch Act because the Trump administration used it to brand its economic policies.

The Hatch Act also became an issue for that administration, during which the OSC accused White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and trade adviser Peter Navarro, among others, of violations. The OSC also said more than a dozen top Trump officials had violated the act ahead of the 2020 elections.

The OSC has limited power to enforce the Hatch Act, and the law is rarely brought to bear against high-ranking officials.

A federal judge on Friday rejected Donald Trump’s claim of “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for actions taken while he was president, setting the stage for a legal battle over presidential power probably headed to the U.S. Supreme Court and starting the clock ticking on whether the justices will agree to allow him to face trial in Washington before the 2024 election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan denied Trump’s request to toss out his four-count August indictment on charges of conspiring to defraud the federal government’s election process, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the vote on Jan. 6, 2021, and to disenfranchise American voters.

“Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote in the 48-page opinion. She said Trump may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.

“Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan added.

Chutkan said no court or any other branch of government has ever accepted Trump’s contention that former presidents enjoy “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.” Nor, she said, was there any basis for Trump’s double jeopardy argument asserting he could not be prosecuted for a crime unless he had been impeached and convicted of those actions while in office. It defied the Constitution’s “plain meaning, original understanding, and common sense,” she wrote.

Attorneys for Trump are expected to appeal immediately to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, potentially delaying Trump’s scheduled March 4 trial.

The decision by the judge, a 2014 appointee of President Barack Obama, was a defeat for Trump, whose defense has said it would raise similar immunity claims in four criminal prosecutions charged this year in which he has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

The others include a federal indictment in Florida over Trump’s alleged retention and mishandling of classified documents and obstruction after leaving the White House; a state trial in Georgia that involves similar allegations of trying to obstruct the state’s election results; and a New York state business fraud prosecution accusing Trump of covering up hush money payments made during his 2016 election campaign.

The case before Chutkan is the soonest scheduled to reach trial, and Trump has other motions pending to toss it. However, only his claims involving a constitutional right not to face trial at all must be decided before trial, posing a key hurdle as well a potential history-setting legal precedent.

U.S. prosecutors had urged Chutkan to deny Trump’s immunity claim, asserting that he is “not above the law.”

“No court has ever alluded to the existence of absolute criminal immunity for former presidents,” assistant special counsel James I. Pearce wrote. The Justice Department argued that legal principles, historical evidence and sound policy reasons establish that once former presidents leave office, they are subject to federal criminal prosecution “like more than 330 million other Americans, including Members of Congress, federal judges, and everyday citizens.”

Chutkan’s decision followed a unanimous opinion earlier in the day by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit rejecting Trump’s claim of blanket immunity from civil liability for inciting the violent Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The 67-page appeals court opinion in the lawsuit filed by police officers and lawmakers distinguished between protected conduct in his “official capacity as president” and actions taken “in his unofficial capacity as presidential candidate.”

Although the appeals court panel included a judge appointed by Trump, his campaign spokesman Steven Cheung in a statement Friday night blamed “Radical Democrats” for “dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole.” He vowed that “Trump will keep fighting for America and Americans, including by challenging these wrongful decisions in higher courts.”

Legal analysts said both rulings undercut Trump’s argument that as long as his actions were “within the ambit of his office, he is absolutely immune from prosecution.”

Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and law instructor at George Washington University, said Chutkan’s decision “seems clearly correct, particularly in light of” the earlier ruling from the D.C. Circuit. He added that “the key question now is whether the appellate courts are willing to fast-track that appeal to allow the trial to go forward as scheduled, or whether Trump will be able to delay the trial for months, potentially past the presidential election.”

Judges, analysts suggested, may want to act swiftly so voters will know before next November whether a candidate is criminally culpable for trying to overturn the last election.

“This one is for all the marbles,” said former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade. “The question is how long it will take, and it is really up to the D.C. Circuit how quickly they can decide the case.”

The 90-minute “red state-blue state” debate hosted by Sean Hannity of Fox News featured a blizzard of statistics by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Here’s a quick guide to some of the more noteworthy claims and whether they stand up to scrutiny.

Hannity framed this as California losing population to Florida — “In 2021-2022, California’s lost 750,000 residents to other states …. Governor DeSantis, during that same two-year period, you gained 454,000 residents from other states” — which DeSantis eagerly accepted. Newsom pushed back with his own data, though for the first time since achieving statehood in 1850, California’s population is shrinking.

“They actually, at one point, ran out of U-Hauls in the state of California because so many people were leaving.”

— DeSantis

California media reported in 2022 that this was true. “U-Haul put out a news release in which it said California was the state that saw the biggest loss of one-way U-Haul trucks in 2021,” KGTV said. “In fact, U-Haul says it actually ran out of trucks to rent out here. The top destination for U-Haul’s trucks was Texas followed by Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arizona.”

“You mean, the last two years, more Floridians going to California than Californians going to Florida? … More Floridians coming to California than the other way around the last two years.”

— Newsom

How is this claim possible given the raw numbers that Hannity displayed, citing the Census Bureau? The missing words here are “per capita,” a phrase that Newsom usually slips in. California, of course, has a much higher population than Florida, so raw numbers can be deceiving. In 2022, 1.32 per 1,000 Floridians moved to California, and 1.31 per 1,000 Californians moved to Florida. The difference is not statistically significant.

“We have a 50-year low in the crime rate.”

— DeSantis

This statement is based on incomplete data, according to the Marshall Project, an online journalism organization that focuses on criminal justice issues.

“About half of the agencies that police more than 40% of the state’s population are missing from figures the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) used for a statewide estimation,” the news organization said. Participation in national data collection is even lower, with less than 8 percent of Florida’s police departments included in an FBI federal database. (Many of the largest, such as the Miami Police Department, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the St. Petersburg Police Department, are missing from the national numbers. It is impossible, then, to compare Florida’s crime rate with that of other states.)

In any case, the crime rate in Florida has been steadily declining for three decades.

“Seven of the top 10 murder rates in the United States of America are red states.”

— Newsom

This is a favorite statistic of the California governor, one we have explored before. He is relying on data from Third Way, a left-leaning policy group, which says it conducted the study to combat Republican claims about high crime in blue states. Newsom’s use of the 2020 presidential electoral map to make his case leaves out important context: Many of the states on the top 10 list today have been on the list for decades, regardless of whether they voted for the Republican candidate for president.

“We’re near 50-year lows, down 55 percent violent crimes in the state of California from the 1990s.”

— Newsom

This is correct, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. After reaching a 1992 peak of 1,115 per 100,000 residents, California’s violent crime rate steadily fell, reaching a 50-year low of 391 in 2014. California’s violent crime rate increased by 5.7 percent, to 495 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2022. That is still 56 percent lower than the 1992 rate.

“In the last 10 years, we have had a 45 percent decline in homelessness. California’s had a 45 percent increase in homelessness.”

— DeSantis

This is correct, based on data from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The group’s interactive website shows that Florida’s homeless population has decreased by 46 percent between 2013 and 2022, while California’s homeless population has increased by 45 percent in the same 10-year period.

“He has one of the most regressive tax rates in the United States of America. It’s the number three most regressive state in America …. He taxes low-income workers more than we tax millionaires and billionaires in the state of California.”

— Newsom

“Regressive” means that lower-income people are taxed at higher rates than top-earning taxpayers. In the first part of this statement, Newsom is referring to a study by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Florida has no state income tax, but the study — which concluded that Florida ranks third among the most regressive states — says that by relying on sales and excise taxes, Florida has among the highest taxes on low-income households. The effective tax rate on the bottom 20 percent of households in Florida is 12.7 percent, the study says. The top one percent in Florida pay 2.3 percent of their income in taxes, compared to 12.4 percent in California, which the study lauds for its tax system.

That comparison — 12.7 percent effective tax on the poorest residents in Florida, compared to 12.4 percent on the wealthiest in California — appears to be the source of Newsom’s claim that DeSantis “taxes low income workers more than we tax millionaires and billionaires in the state of California.”

There are various ways to look at death rates from the coronavirus, making it especially susceptible to spin. Hannity set the stage for the discussion by showing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Your states’ death rates were also identical,” he said — 248.7 deaths per 100,000 in California and 252.8 for Florida. DeSantis readily agreed, while Newsom objected: “This is factually untrue.”

Our colleague Philip Bump delves more deeply into this exchange, but these numbers are from the start of the pandemic and are adjusted for age. Florida has a much higher percentage of elderly people than California, so an age adjustment is appropriate.

Newsom argued that DeSantis shifted course because of politics and, after being one of the first governors to shut down a state, reversed course and cast doubt on science. As a result, he argued, covid deaths in Florida were higher after vaccines were introduced. That is reflected by CDC data. CDC statistics show that in 2020, age-adjusted death rates in California were 68.7 per 100,000 in 2020, compared to 56.4 for Florida. In 2021, after the introduction of the vaccines, California’s death rate was 99.9 — compared to 111.7 for Florida. In other words, the death rate more than doubled in Florida, even after adjusting for age, in 2021, while it went up 45 percent in California in the same time period.

Newsom charged that there was a “29 percent higher death rate in the state of Florida versus the state of California.” He’s referring to death rates adjusted by population. California, with a population of 39 million and 110,208 coronavirus deaths, had a death rate of 282 per 100,000 people. Florida, with 22.2 million people and 81,238 deaths, had a death rate of 365 per 100,000.

His staff also pointed to a Los Angeles Times article published this week. “In raw terms, significantly more Floridians died on a per capita basis during the COVID-19 emergency than Californians,” the article said. “Of the four most-populous states, California had the lowest cumulative COVID death rate: 2,560 for every 1 million residents. Florida’s rate was 60 percent worse, with 4,044 COVID fatalities for every 1 million residents, according to a Times analysis of Johns Hopkins University data through early March, when the university ended its data tracking.”

But the article also acknowledged the numbers changed after adjusting for Florida’s older population: “When factoring in demographics, another estimate has Florida with an age-adjusted COVID mortality rate that’s only slightly higher than California’s. And when adjusting for how Florida’s population is relatively unhealthier than California’s, another estimate actually ranks Florida better.”

“I think about one of our Floridians, a lady named Penny Hopper. She actually survived a late-term abortion back in the day and they left her on the — on the table there, to basically wither away. Her grandmother came, saved her, brought her to a hospital, saved her, and she ended up living a good life.”

— DeSantis

DeSantis first mentioned Hopper in the Republican presidential debate in August. At the time, The Fact Checker took an in-depth look at her story and revealed new details. DeSantis has made a subtle adjustment in his retelling. He no longer claims she was abandoned in a pan on the back porch of the hospital. (Experts said a 23-week-old baby would have had little chance of survival.) But he still suggests the doctor was at fault. Our review of contemporary news articles and interviews revealed a different story: The doctor and nurses valiantly tried to save her and arranged for a police escort to rush the infant to a hospital that had a new type of incubator.

“He signed a bill banning any exceptions for rape and incest; and then he said it didn’t go far enough and decided to sign a six-week ban. … So extreme is your ban that criminalizes women and criminalizes doctors that even Donald Trump said it was too extreme.”

— Newsom

A political action committee tied to Newsom aired TV ads in Florida ahead of the debate charging that a law signed by DeSantis would subject women to criminal charges if they received an abortion beyond the six-week ban in the law — a claim the DeSantis campaign rejected as “a lie.” Democrats say the law has ambiguous language — “Any person who willfully performs, or actively participates in, a termination of pregnancy in violation of the requirements of this section” will be subject to a felony — but DeSantis has repeatedly said the penalties in the law apply to health-care providers, not women seeking abortion care.

“1,406 books have been banned just last year under Ron DeSantis’ leadership. … 1,406 books have been banned on your banning binge.”

— Newsom

Newsom is referring to a study by PEN America, an advocacy group that has an expansive definition of a book ban, including whether “access to a book is restricted or diminished.”

A local Florida NBC station concluded that about 300 book titles were removed from shelves across the state’s school districts in 2022, and there were wide disparities across the state. “Of Florida’s 67 counties, 21 of them removed books last year. Clay County in northeast Florida had the most removals with 177, followed by Martin County in the southeast with 98 removals,” the report said.

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Supreme Court justices past and present issued statements honoring retired justice Sandra Day O’Connor after her death Friday at 93.

The justices, appointed to the court by presidents across the political spectrum, expressed their admiration for O’Connor, remembering her as a trailblazer and a friend.

The court’s four female justices also emphasized the personal impact of O’Connor’s legacy as the first female Supreme Court justice, as well as her independence, which made her the pivotal vote in closely contested cases.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said O’Connor “changed the world and made history.” Justice Elena Kagan recalled how “as a young woman looking forward to law school,” she was inspired by O’Connor’s nomination. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was 9 years old when O’Connor was appointed to the court, said that as an adult, she “began to appreciate what it took to occupy her place in history.” And Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recalled observing O’Connor as a clerk for the court, writing that “she was a marvel to watch and learn from during oral argument.”

“A daughter of the American Southwest, Sandra Day O’Connor blazed a historic trail as our Nation’s first female Justice. She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor. We at the Supreme Court mourn the loss of a beloved colleague, a fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education. And we celebrate her enduring legacy as a true public servant and patriot.”

“Virginia and I are deeply, deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our dear friend, Sandra Day O’Connor. From our very first days at the Court in 1991 and throughout the past three decades she has been the embodiment of kindness, warmth, grace, and intelligence. It was truly a profound honor to have been her colleague. And, we are deeply grateful to have known her and John, for whom we also had the greatest affection. We will keep her family in our thoughts and prayers.”

“Martha-Ann and I are deeply saddened by the news that Justice O’Connor has passed away. Her appointment was a pivotal event in the history of the Supreme Court and the nation, and I will never forget the electric atmosphere in the Court at her investiture in September of 1981 when I was beginning my time in the Solicitor General’s office. During her long service, she met the challenges of her pioneering role with great acumen, aplomb, dignity, and a collegial spirit. She was an inspiration for many. Both because of her unique role and her many significant opinions, she will always be remembered as one of the most important justices in the history of our institution. I enjoyed the times when we were able to spend time together during her retirement and only wish that there had been more such occasions.”

“I mourn the passing of another American hero. When Sandra Day O’Connor, the “cowgirl from out west,” became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, she changed the world and made history. Indeed, her entire life was pathbreaking. She served in all three branches of government, was a brilliant champion of women’s rights, and promoted civic education in a way that transformed how children learn about our shared responsibility as citizens. Sandra was a warm and caring colleague, always practical but also an unyielding visionary about the role of the Court in our society. I extend my condolences to her children Scott, Brian, and Jay, and their families. Sandra devoted her life to her family and the country. I am truly grateful, but also deeply sad that we lost the guiding light of an outstanding trailblazer and an even better friend. I will miss her.”

“I remember the day Justice O’Connor was nominated to the Court as though it just happened. As a young woman looking forward to law school, I thought the event momentous and inspirational. But I couldn’t have known then how momentous and inspirational that new nominee’s tenure on the Court would turn out to be. Justice O’Connor of course became a hugely influential figure — often the single person who decided the Court’s most important cases. What is striking to me now is how she used her influence — with extraordinary understanding of this Nation and its people; with appreciation of this Court’s necessary role, but also of its necessary limits; and with a will to promote balance and mutual respect in this too-often divided country. Justice O’Connor never stopped thinking and listening, learning and growing. She judged with wisdom. And her service left both this Court and this Nation better. It is impossible to have a greater legacy.”

“Louise and I join the Nation in mourning the loss of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. From her earliest days in the legal profession to the halls of this Court, she blazed a remarkable trail of firsts. Through it all she never wavered from her core values: courage, civility, love of this country and its Constitution, and an independent spirit born of the West. I cherish the time I was able to spend with and learning from her — from the days I spent clerking for her friend Byron White 30 years ago, to the days we spent in Phoenix together as judges decades later poring over revisions to the federal rules of procedure. Her work promoting civics education and civility while on the bench and after her retirement were visionary. As she put it, “We must arm today’s young people with innovative civic education that is relevant to them. Bringing high-quality civics to every school in every state of our union is the only way that the next generations will become effective citizens and leaders.” Today, the group she founded, iCivics, does just that, reaching millions of students in all 50 States. Her legacy of service to the Nation is profound, her example a model, her memory a blessing.”

“Ashley, Margaret, Liza, and I are profoundly saddened by the passing of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. We extend our deepest condolences to her wonderful sons, grandchildren, and brother, as well as to her extraordinary law clerk family, whom she dearly loved. As President Reagan forecast when nominating her, Justice O’Connor left her footprints on the sands of time. She made equal justice under law a reality, blazing trails and opening doors for the millions of American women and girls who have followed her lead. As the first woman on the Supreme Court, she worked and lived under enormous scrutiny, which she handled with unparalleled grace and grit as she thrived on and off the Court. Justice O’Connor will always be revered by Americans not only because she was the first woman on the Supreme Court but also because she was a spectacular judge and person — a model of dignity and civility who was principled and common-sensical, wise and funny, forceful and kind. A woman for all seasons, Justice O’Connor was all class, all the time. I thank God for Justice O’Connor because she, as much as any judge in the history of this country, helped make America a more perfect Union. May God always bless Sandra Day O’Connor.”

“I was nine years old when Justice O’Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court. I remember being awestruck by her example of what was possible: she had a job previously unattainable by women, and a family besides. My admiration grew when, as an adult, I began to appreciate what it took to occupy her place in history. Being the first woman on the Supreme Court was about so much more than being the first to sit on the bench. Justice O’Connor had to decide whether to mimic the men or do it her own way. She chose the latter, in everything from the lace jabot she wore with her robe to the aerobics classes she held at the Court. It took remarkable self-confidence and independence to be her own brand of Supreme Court justice, feminine touches included, with all the world watching. Because of her sharp mind, she became a pivotal justice who has left her mark on American constitutional law. Because of her indomitable spirit, she made the job uniquely hers. Sandra Day O’Connor was the perfect trailblazer. I am grateful not only for the doors she opened, but for the style with which she walked through them.”

“I had the honor of observing Justice O’Connor at work during my service as a law clerk for Justice Breyer. Full of grace and grit, she was a marvel to watch and learn from during oral argument. In addition, as the first female Justice, Justice O’Connor helped pave the road on which other jurists, including me, now walk. Her story has inspired generations of lawyers and generations of Americans, and her commitment to justice and to the rule of law continues to serve as a model to us all. I was saddened to learn of her passing, and I send my deepest condolences to her family.”

“From the moment I became a member of the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor blessed me with personal kindness. Within an hour (literally) of the Senate vote confirming my nomination, she somehow found me at the New Hampshire law office of a friend, and over the telephone she welcomed me to the Court and made me feel welcome. While kindness like that never had a role in deciding cases, I knew it was there for me personally as Sandra’s friend.”

“Sandra Day O’Connor had a personal and professional stature that inspired all who knew her, in person or by reputation. She reached out to us soon after our arrival in Washington and we became the closest of friends. She was the first in so many admirable respects, and was admired in this nation and by those beyond the seas who learned from her and her career what freedom can mean to all of us. We will treasure her always.”

“We have missed, and we will continue to miss, Sandra Day O’Connor. She was the first woman Justice, she was a great judge, and she was a kind, thoughtful, cheerful, generous human being. As a judge, she was careful and practical. She considered every legal question with intelligence. She was concerned about the welfare of those whom the Court’s decisions could affect. Her decisions were sound. Sandra was a patriot. She was concerned about America. And, to her, a job at the Supreme Court meant that she could make good use of her wisdom and intelligence. As a colleague, Sandra always was interested in what others thought about law or other topics. And she was fun. The lunch room would light up when she walked in. So would rooms in other nations when she would help organize meetings with judges from around the world. She was an enthusiast. She expanded our horizons. She was a natural leader. Hers was a life well-lived. Yes, her marvelous family will miss her; her former colleagues will miss her; her friends will miss her; and America will miss her — my dear friend, Sandra O’Connor.”

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said his home in Bellevue, Wash., was vandalized Thursday night by people advocating for a cease-fire in Gaza, and a spokesman for the Bellevue Police said Friday the department was working with U.S. Capitol Police to investigate the incident that included graffiti spray painted on the home’s garage door.

Seth Tyler, the public information officer for the police department in Bellevue, said it was contacted Friday morning about the incident. According to a statement from Smith’s office, red spray paint was used to write a pro-cease-fire message on the garage door. Tyler said no arrests have been made and no similar acts of vandalism have occurred in the area.

Smith has previously spoken about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that was spurred by the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state. In an Oct. 28 statement, Smith said he supports Israel’s fight against Hamas militants and urged for “much more” to be done to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And he’s given more than a dozen interviews and released several statements since the fighting began, according to his congressional website.

Smith, who was elected to Congress in 1996, said Friday that he has met with people across the ideological spectrum, “including Pro-Palestinian and left-wing activists, and I remain open” to such meetings, and he urged people to “reject the rise in political violence that we have witnessed over the past several years.”

Lawmakers and other politicians have faced growing tension over U.S. support for Israel and the Palestinian civilians killed in the fighting.

President Biden has faced a backlash from young voters, and even from some younger staffers, over his handling of the war.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — the only Palestinian American member of Congress — was censured in the House in early November over her comments related to the war.

In late October, about 300 people were arrested after a protest organized by Jewish Voice for Peace happened inside the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building, demanding Congress pass a cease-fire resolution. And last month, at least one person was arrested after advocates for a cease-fire “illegally and violently” protested outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, U.S. Capitol Police said.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, gave a 40-minute speech on the senate floor about violence aimed at Jewish people and said antisemites are “taking advantage of the pro-Palestinian movement to espouse hatred and bigotry toward Jewish people.”

Smith echoed Schumer’s concern about extremism in his Friday statement.

“The extremism on both the left and right side of our political spectrum is a threat to a healthy, functioning democracy and has been condoned for far too long,” he said.