Politics

Ron DeSantis is doing just fine Is Ron DeSantis a shoo-in for the 2024 Republican nomination or this cycle’s Scott Walker — an overhyped early favorite who flops in dramatic fashion? A lot of very over-caffeinated coverage of the Florida governor seems to assume these are the only two possibilities. Never mind that he still hasn’t announced a presidential bid. Never mind that it is still only April, and we’re still nine months out from anyone actually voting. So far, 2024 punditry has veered from one extreme to the other on DeSantis’s chances.  For at least a month, conventional wisdom has been bearish, largely thanks to polls that show DeSantis stalling in his effort to make inroads against Trump and the internal GOP dynamics around the Trump indictment.

I sometimes think about how left-wing news anchor John Harwood opened a line of questioning during a CNBC presidential debate: John Harwood: Mr. Trump, you’ve done very well on this campaign so far by promising to build a wall and make another country pay for it. Donald Trump: Right. Harwood: Send 11 million people out of the country, cut taxes $10 trillion without increasing the deficit. Trump: Right. John: And make Americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others. Trump: That’s right. John: Let’s be honest. Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign? Trump: It’s not a comic book, and it’s not a very nicely asked question, the way you say that.

Why everyone lacks credibility on the debt ceiling Time to cough up, America. Tomorrow is Tax Day and, fittingly, Congress returns this week with negotiations over the debt limit at the top of the agenda in Washington. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy set out his stall this morning with a speech in Manhattan. With the summer deadline on the fiscal cliff fast approaching, McCarthy today vowed that “in the coming weeks, the House will vote on a bill to lift the debt ceiling into next year,” adding that the legislation would also “save taxpayers trillions of dollars, make us less dependent on China, and curb high inflation, all without touching Social Security or Medicare.

Why Feinstein’s intransigence will worry the White House I’m not quitting! Dianne Feinstein was channeling her inner Jordan Belfort this week when she refused to cave to calls from fellow Democrats to retire. The eighty-nine-year-old senator has been a headache for her party for some time now, with colleagues seemingly convinced that she is no longer mentally capable of executing her duties as senator and hoping for a speedy, low-key and dignified departure. The Democrats’ Feinstein problem looked like it was solved when, in February, she announced her retirement at the end of her term in 2024. But in early March Feinstein announced she had contracted shingles. Her staff said she’d only be away from the Senate for a few weeks.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has been out of the public eye for weeks, following a serious fall that hospitalized him. Now multiple sources confirm that Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota are actively reaching out to fellow Republican senators in efforts to prepare for an anticipated leadership vote — a vote that would occur upon announcement that McConnell would be retiring from his duties as leader, and presumably the Senate itself. One source says that Cornyn has been particularly active in his preparations, taking fellow senators with whom he has little in common to lunch in attempts to court them.

Everywhere she goes, Representative Katie Porter leaves chaos in her wake. From her home to her office to her local police department, the California congresswoman leaves no one unscarred. The protégé of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who went as far as to name one of her children “Elizabeth” after the senator, is currently rolling out a new book, titled I Swear: Politics is Messier Than My Minivan, and aiming for an open US Senate seat. But her long-rumored divorce filings are getting Congresswoman Porter the wrong sort of publicity. They contain accusations from her ex-husband that she would scream “get out of my face and leave me alone!” to her children and would take a “ceramic bowl of steaming hot potatoes and dump[] it on [her husband’s] head, burning [his] scalp.

South Carolina Tim Scott is set to announce his bid for the presidency as soon as this week, Cockburn has heard from three sources. Scott has been doing the pre-announcement ritual of touring early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire — as well as his home state of South Carolina. Per one of Cockburn's sources, Scott will announce at an event in South Carolina. No surprises there. Scott is set to throw his hat in the ring after former president Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, and as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, thought to be the party’s top alternative to Trump, falters in the polls. DeSantis himself is also yet to announce.

A few weeks before Easter, a staffer for Republican senator Rand Paul was randomly and brutally attacked in downtown Washington, DC. The staffer, Phillip Todd, was leaving dinner with his friend when an assailant stabbed him four times in the abdomen, skull, brain and lungs. He suffered a punctured lung and potential brain bleeding. Todd was rushed to hospital, where he was operated on and ultimately survived the attack.   The man who stabbed Todd is a forty-two-year-old named Glynn Neal. Like many of DC’s violent criminals, Neal has a lengthy rap sheet. Virginians for Safe Communities, a nonprofit organization, detailed the man’s long history of criminal behavior.