Mitch McConnell: Biden administration making it easy for GOP to unify

Senate minority leader discusses proposed COVID stimulus package, says he's focusing on holding the Senate in 2022

Recommended Stories

  • Federal judge in Texas rules eviction moratorium is unconstitutional

    The pandemic-related emergency measure was aimed at halting evictions of people whose livelihoods were upended by Covid-19.

  • McCarthy won't say whether he'll get involved in a primary race against Liz Cheney

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Friday declined to say whether he would get involved in a primary race against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) when asked by reporters during a weekly press conference.Why it matters: Tensions between the two House leaders highlight fractures in the Republican Party that will be on full display as the party struggles to define itself in the post-Trump era.Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeWhat he's saying: "Liz hasn't asked me," McCarthy said when a reporter asked whether he'd defend Cheney in a primary challenge.Background: Cheney received intense scrutiny after voting to impeach former President Trump, including from state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, who announced he plans to run against Cheney in the 2022 primary. Cheney also faced backlash from her own conference. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) flew to Cheney's home state to rally against the third-ranking Republican House member.House Republicans lobbied to remove Cheney from her position, but the measure was defeated. Members voted 145-61 to keep Cheney as chair of the GOP conference. Former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski founded a political group to raise money to run a primary challenge against Cheney.Of note: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came to Cheney's defense after her impeachment vote, CNN reported."Liz Cheney is a leader with deep convictions and the courage to act on them," McConnell said. "She is an important leader in our party and in our nation. I am grateful for her service and look forward to continuing to work with her on the crucial issues facing our nation."More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

  • Criticism builds over Biden's failure to lift Trump sanctions on ICC prosecutors

    Trump targeted officials for launching war crimes investigations, as reports say Israel is lobbying to keep sanctions in place Joe Biden in the Roosevelt Room on Tuesday with Kamala Harris, the secretary of state, Tony Blinken, national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Juan Gonzalez of the NSC. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP The Biden administration is facing growing criticism for failing to lift US sanctions imposed last year on war crimes prosecutors at the international criminal court, at the same time as Israel is lobbying to keep the punitive measures in place. The sanctions, targeting officials in the ICC prosecutors and their families were imposed by the Trump administration in September in retaliation for launching investigations into the Afghan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Days after Joe Biden was inaugurated, the state department said that, though the new administration did not agree with the decision to launch those investigations, “the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps”. Over a month later, there has been no move to lift the sanctions, and a state department spokesperson said this week they had no further comment. The failure to take action has provoked unease among US allies in Europe and elsewhere, who are staunch supporters of the ICC. According to Axios reporting confirmed by the Guardian, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lobbied Biden on 17 February, in their first phone call since the new president was inaugurated, to keep the sanctions in place. An official familiar with the conversation confirmed the report. In December, the ICC prosecutor declared there were grounds to open an investigation in the West Bank and Gaza, and a panel of judges earlier this month agreed that the prosecutor had jurisdiction. Like the US, Israel is not a signatory to the Rome treaty establishing the ICC, but Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority are. The Israeli embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration did not just sanction ICC officials involved in the investigation of alleged war crimes by the US and its allies, it also imposed visa restrictions on the families of those officials. It also claimed it would launch a counter-investigation into the ICC for alleged corruption, though it is unclear whether such an investigation was ever launched. The justice department did not respond to an inquiry on the status of the investigation. Legal sources said the continuing threat of sanctions has had the effect of seriously hindering investigations into atrocities by all sides in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza, because lawyers and institutions have been reticent in cooperating with the ICC out of fear of bringing US sanctions on themselves. Earlier this month, more than 70 human rights organisations, faith-based groups and academic institutions made an appeal for the lifting of sanctions they described as “an unprecedented attack on the court’s mandate to deliver justice and the rule of law globally, an abuse of the US government’s financial powers, and a betrayal of the US legacy in establishing institutions of international justice”. Diplomats and experts predicted that the Biden administration would eventually lift the sanctions, but was seeking a way to do so without seeming to endorse the ICC investigations in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories. The sanctions, one diplomat said, had been caught up in a broader review of how the US will engage with the court in general. “The US relationship with the ICC is in a much more complicated place than it was when the Obama administration took over,” said David Bosco, author of a book on the ICC, called Rough Justice. “The ICC now has an investigation under way in Afghanistan that includes scrutiny of US personnel and of course the judges just made clear that the prosecutor can investigate in Palestine.” Bosco added: “In this environment, figuring out how the US should approach the court is really tricky, and I think the administration has decided they need to assess all approaches before pulling off the sanctions.”

  • SC Republican files bill to allow Donald Trump to be buried on State House grounds

    The bill was filed in response to a piece of legislation in the U.S. House that would bar twice-impeached presidents from being buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

  • A less Trumpy version of Trumpism might be the future of the Republican Party

    Is Sen. Marco Rubio, espousing a polished populism, the future of the GOP? Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesDonald Trump lost the 2020 election, but his populist ideas may continue to animate the Republican Party. As scholars of American beliefs and elections, we can envision a less Trumpy version of Trumpism holding sway over the party in coming years. We call it “polished populism.” Populism is folk-politics based on the premise that ordinary citizens are wiser and more virtuous than supposedly corrupt and self-serving elites. Populist rhetoric is often expressed in cruder, coarser language than ordinary political speech – less like a politician on a stage and more like a guy in a bar. Trump, a prime practitioner of populist rhetoric, took this to an extreme with the shorthand of Twitter and the insults of the locker room. Polished populists take a different approach, arguing for the same policies that Trump did – limiting immigration, redistributing wealth toward the working class rather than just the poor, opposing the woke policies of social justice movements, promoting “America First” foreign and trade policies – but without his overtly antagonistic language. Some Republicans are now arguing for a rejection of populism and a return to traditional conservatism. Those long-standing GOP priorities include limited government, strong national defense of American interests abroad, religious values and, perhaps most importantly, ordinary political personalities. For two reasons – the GOP’s narrow electoral defeat in 2020 and the changing demographics of the Republican Party – we believe that populist policies, if not rhetoric, will continue to be a dominant theme of the Republican Party. President Donald Trump smiles after speaking during an election rally on Nov. 3, 2020, in Grand Rapids, Mich. Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty Images Populism versus traditional conservatism The contemporary conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and George W. Bush in the 2000s has several facets and factions, but it can be summed up in the phrase, “You keep what you earn, it’s a dangerous world, and God is good.” The economic, national defense and social conservatives of previous decades tended to agree that human nature is untrustworthy and society is fragile, so the U.S. needs to defend against external enemies and internal decline. Populist conservatism accepts those views but adds something different: the interests and perceptions of “ordinary” people against “elites.” So populism rejects the notion of a natural aristocracy of wealth and education, replacing it with the idea that people it considers elites, including career politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics, have been promoting their own interests at the expense of regular folk. The identity divide The recent rise of populism in America has been driven in part by a clear economic reality: The expansion of wealth over the last 40 years has gone almost entirely to the upper reaches of society. At the same time, the middle has stagnated or declined economically. The populist interpretation is that elites benefited from the globalization and technological advancements they encouraged, while the advantages of those trends bypassed ordinary working people. Calls for trade protections and national borders appeal to Americans who feel left behind. Populism also has a cultural aspect: rejection of the perceived condescension and smugness of the “highly educated elite.” In that sense, populism is driven by identity (who someone believes they are like, and perhaps more importantly, who they are not like). For populists, the like-minded are ordinary folk – middle income, middle-brow educations at public high schools and state universities, often middle-of-the-country – and the dissimilar are the products of expensive educations and urban lifestyles. While traditional conservatism has not vanished from the GOP, populist perceptions dominate the new working-class foundations of the party. And those reflect the emerging divide in education. The base of the Republican Party has shifted from more wealthy and educated Americans to voters without college degrees. In the 1990s, whites who did not attend college tended to back Democrat Bill Clinton, but in 2016 they supported Republican Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton by 39 percentage points. In 2020, it was roughly the same for Trump over Biden. In 2002, President George W. Bush spoke about the ideals represented in his ‘compassionate conservatism’ to representatives from local community groups in Cleveland, Ohio. Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images The 2020 outcome and the GOP future We believe the Republican Party will be slow to move away from this new identity. Even after a pandemic, a recession, an impeachment, four years of anti-immigration sentiment and the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump still received more votes than any presidential candidate in history not named Joe Biden. Biden’s overall victory was by a margin of 7 million votes. But his victory in the Electoral College relied on a total of 45,000 votes in three states. This was similar to Trump’s narrow 2016 Electoral College margin of 77,000 votes, also in three states. A strong Republican candidate, a foreign policy problem for the incumbent Democrat or a small piece of luck could shift the presidency back to the other party. Support for Republicans even grew somewhat among traditionally Democratic African American and Hispanic voters, despite the GOP’s anti-Black Lives Matter and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Clearly, Trumpism was not repudiated by voters in the way that Democrats had hoped. It is entirely possible that if the pandemic had not occurred – which was a major source of the decline in his support – Donald Trump would still be in the White House. The GOP could conclude that its loss was only due to an outside event and not a fundamental rejection of policy. That would give the party little incentive to change course, aside from changing the face on the poster. Over the next four years we believe the GOP will solidify the transition to a populist base, though not without resistance from traditional conservatives. Republican victory in a future presidential election would likely require an alliance between traditional and populist conservatives, with both groups turning out to vote. The question is which one will lead the coalition. The competition for the 2024 Republican nomination will likely also be a contest between these two party bases and ideologies, with the emerging winner defining the post-Trump GOP. The 2024 standard bearers The Republican contenders for the 2024 nomination and the new leadership of the GOP include a broad range of populists versus traditional conservatives. Perhaps a leading indicator of the move toward polished populism is the shift in the rhetoric employed by Marco Rubio. The senator from Florida was once a traditional conservative, but has shifted toward populism after his trouncing by Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Recently he argued that “the future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition,” defined as “normal, everyday people who don’t want to live in a city where there is no police department, where people rampage through the streets every time they are upset about something.” The opposing trend toward rejecting Trumpist populism is exemplified by the shift in the arguments made by Nikki Haley. Haley, the U.N. ambassador under the Trump administration and former South Carolina governor, has rejected Trump’s leadership, now arguing that “we shouldn’t have followed him.” These two Republicans and several others see a potential president in the mirror. Which one mirrors the current GOP will depend on the realignment or retrenchment between the populists and the traditionalists. Polished populism – Trump’s policies without his personality – may be the future of the GOP’s identity.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Morgan Marietta, University of Massachusetts Lowell and David C. Barker, American University School of Public Affairs. Read more:From ‘Total exoneration!’ to ‘Impeach now!’ – the Mueller report and dueling fact perceptionsYoung Black Americans not sold on Biden, the Democrats or voting The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

  • Liberal group targets Republicans who voted to overturn 2020 election

    The Voter Protection Project expects to spend $10 million in total on midterm House and Senate races.

  • Trump endorses primary rival challenging Republican impeachment supporter

    The former president backed Max Miller, a former White House and campaign aide running against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez in Ohio.

  • Biden on track to apply Trump-era rule targeting Chinese tech supply chain concerns

    The Biden administration plans to allow a Trump-era rule targeting Chinese technology firms deemed to pose a threat to the United States to go into effect despite objections from U.S. businesses, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Friday. The department issued an interim final rule in the final days of the Trump administration aimed at addressing information and communications technology supply chain concerns and said it would become effective after a 60-day period of public comment. On Friday, a Commerce spokeswoman said in a statement the department would continue to accept public comment on the rule until March 22, when it would go into effect.

  • Mark Meadows says all the top 2024 GOP candidates 'have Trump as their last name'

    Meadows said he was "excited" for Trump to reassert his power in the Republican party, which he suggested will continue to be led by the Trumps.

  • Republicans unveil two minimum wage bills in response to Democrats' push

    Senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton set $10-an-hour target while Josh Hawley promotes tax credit scheme Senator Mitt Romney said his proposal ‘would raise the floor for workers without costing jobs’. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP Republican lawmakers have been vocal about their opposition to Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief bill, particularly to Democrats’ inclusion of a provision that would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. But two sets of Republicans from opposite sides of the party have now introduced bills that show what they believe are more palatable policies that address criticism of America’s current minimum wage. The moves come amid a major push by leftwing Democrats, unions and progressive pressure groups to raise the minimum wage – a push that appears to have a higher chance of success than ever before. The campaign – often spearheaded by walkout worker protests – has put pressure on the Republican party to respond. In keeping with the party’s deep division between its dominant Trumpist faction and its more traditionalist party elites, the twin responses seem aimed at appealing on one hand to its corporate-friendly allies and on the other hand to its populist rightwing base. Both have an anti-immigrant element. Senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton unveiled on Tuesday a proposal for a $10 federal minimum wage, to be implemented over the course of four years with a slower, phased approach for small businesses. Their bill also requires employers to use the federal government’s E-Verify program to ensure they are not hiring undocumented workers. Currently, 29 states, including Arkansas, Cotton’s home state, have minimum wages above the federal level. A few states have already passed a $15 minimum wage, including California, Massachusetts and Colorado. In a statement about the bill, Cotton railed against “millions of illegal immigrants” who compete with American workers “for too few jobs with wages that are too low”. Meanwhile, Romney said the legislation “would raise the floor for workers without costing jobs”. While immigration has largely been left out of the debate over a $15 minimum wage, Republicans when arguing against the wage hike have cited a report from the Congressional Budget Office that 1.4m jobs could be lost with the increase. The same report also says that 17 million workers would see increases in their wages and 900,000 Americans could be lifted out of poverty with the policy. Romney and Cotton’s plan would affect the wages of 3.5 million workers, according to a fact sheet by Romney’s office. Subtly referring to the bill on Twitter, the Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called a $10 minimum wage “legislated poverty” on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the far-right Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri released his alternative to an increase in the minimum wage: a tax credit for those who make less than $16.50 an hour. The credit would be applied based on the number of hours a person worked and would be available only to those with an American social security number, barring non-US citizens and undocumented workers. A full-time worker could get up to $4,680 in tax credits a year, according to the bill. “It’s time we give blue-collar workers some respect and a pay raise. This plan would deliver meaningful relief for families and working Americans through higher pay while incentivizing and promoting work,” Hawley said in a statement. According to Axios, Hawley’s team estimated his plan would cost the government $200bn, a figure traditional Republicans would eschew. Hawley has also split off from traditional Republicans by saying on Twitter he would support a $15 minimum wage for workers of big corporations that make at least $1bn in annual revenue. The two bills have little chance of getting any serious consideration as Democrats are focused on internal debates over their $15 minimum wage proposal. Two of the more conservative members of the party, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, indicated that they will not support the bill if it includes the wage hike. Manchin said that he would support an $11 minimum wage, telling reporters that “throwing $15 out there right now just makes it very difficult in rural America”.

  • U.S. Senate referee says Democrats cannot include $15 minimum wage in COVID bill

    In a blow to Democrats, the Senate parliamentarian ruled the chamber cannot include President Joe Biden's proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage in a $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill the party aims to pass without Republican votes, lawmakers said on Thursday. Democrats and progressives had hoped to include the minimum wage increase in the legislation to help cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic and better compensate low-wage workers who have spent months on the front lines of the health crisis as essential workers. Biden is "disappointed in the decision," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement, and "will work with leaders in Congress to determine the best path forward because no one in this country should work full time and live in poverty."

  • Jim Jordan says Trump should lead GOP after keeping promises over four years in office

    Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on what he expects former President Donald Trump to say in CPAC speech.

  • Biden says U.S. will hold Russia accountable over Crimea

    U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday said the United States would stand with Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its aggression against Crimea, according to a statement released by the White House on the anniversary of Moscow's 2014 annexation of the peninsula. The Biden administration has said still conducting its foreign policy reviews regarding Russia, China and other key areas after taking the reins from former Republican President Donald Trump on Jan. 20.

  • Letters to the Editor: Xavier Becerra isn't a doctor. Now the Republicans care about expertise?

    Alex Azar, Trump's last secretary of Health and Human Services, was a lawyer just like Xavier Becerra, and they voted to confirm him.

  • Harris gets a crash course on foreign policy

    The vice president is trying to build up her relationships with foreign leaders and profile on the world's stage.

  • Fiscal stimulus fires up U.S. consumer spending; inflation benign

    U.S. consumer spending increased by the most in seven months in January as the government doled out more pandemic relief money to low-income households and new COVID-19 infections dropped, positioning the economy for faster growth in the first quarter. Despite the strong rebound in consumer spending reported by the Commerce Department on Friday, price pressures were muted. Inflation is being closely watched amid concerns from some quarters that President Joe Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 recovery package could cause the economy to overheat.

  • Canada approves AstraZeneca vaccine as Trudeau looks for rollout lift

    Public frustration over the government’s vaccine plan has even hurt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approval ratings.

  • Biden to talk migration with Mexico's López Obrador, who spent weeks refusing to recognize the president's 2020 victory

    US President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, "will discuss cooperation on migration," according to the White House.

  • Prosecutors Fight Against Dismissing Steve Bannon Indictment, Despite Trump's Pardon

    The former White House strategist's pardon might not be so simple after all.

  • Democrats drubbing Trumpless GOP on social media

    Data: Twitter/CrowdTangle (Feb 24, 2021); Chart: Will Chase/AxiosIn a swift reversal from 90 days ago, Democrats are now the ones with overpowering social media muscle and the ability to drive news.The big picture: Former President Donald Trump’s digital exile and the reversal of national power has turned the tables on which party can keep a stranglehold on online conversation.Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeAcross Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the banishment of Trump and the loss of his massive following have left the GOP barren against Democrats' clout.The combined Twitter following for the 10 elected Democrats with the biggest audiences is 102 million compared to 23 million for the top 10 Republicans. Even taking President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris out of the equation, Democrats' following is nearly triple Republicans'. On Instagram over the last 30 days, the 10 most-engaged Democrats drove 76 million interactions vs. 6 million for the 10 most-engaged Republicans, according to CrowdTangle data. Take away Biden and Harris and the advantage is still double.On Facebook, the top 10 Democrats have generated 2.5x more interactions than top 10 Republicans over the last 30 days, per CrowdTangle data.Between the lines: Stars from the Democratic primary like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg accrued massive followings over the last few years.With the Trump show crowding out everyone else over the last four years, few other Republicans had a chance to build their profiles.Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul — all of 2016 GOP primary fame — currently have the three biggest Twitter followings among elected Republicans.The picture for Republicans is particularly grim on Instagram, which has become a home for young, progressive politics.While AOC has 8.9m followers and Sanders has 6.7m, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw (2.3m) is the only elected Republican over a million.Yes, but: Outside of elected officials, Republicans have a bigger bench of social clout, including the Trump family, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and the potent right-wing media ecosystem.Flashback: Democrats slogged through the Trump era powerless to break through the president’s ability to commandeer the national conversation through his Twitter feed. Only after AOC’s election to Congress in 2018 did Democrats have an authentic social media powerhouse to counter Trump’s attention monopoly.The bottom line: Trump is keeping himself in the 2024 conversation and his continued omnipresence, even without a digital footprint, could keep the rest of the party neutered.More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free