Monthly Archives: May 2021

The latest entrant in the Republican effort to recall Gavin Newsom and west control of the Golden State is a bear.

Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox, who ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2018, is campaigning with a live, 1,000-pound bear and promising to make beastly changes if elected.

The Cox campaign is spending $5 million on an advertising campaign that portrays Newsom as the beauty who needs to be replaced by a beast.

The beautiful politicians have failed California, Cox said. We need big beastly changes to save it. Ill cut taxes, make California more affordable, and shakeup Sacramento.

Cox also began a six-city bus tour with the bear in tow. The first two stops are on Tuesday on the waterfront in Sacramento and outside the French Laundry restaurant in Yountville where Newsom dined during the coronavirus lockdown.

The bear is described as tame, and Cox advertising describes the candidate as the nicest, smartest beast youve ever met.

The field of Republicans vying to be elected if a majority of votes agree to recall Newsom also includes former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Olympic athlete and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, and former Rep. Doug Ose.

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Republican John Cox Campaigning for California Governor with 1,000-Pound Bear - Times of San Diego

Donald Trump incited a riot in order to overturn an election he lost. Hes responsible for hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths, as well.

Trump was never popular. He never came close to winning the popular vote in 2016 or 2020. But if voter suppression laws recently passed by Republican state legislatures stand, he could become even more unpopular and still capture the presidency again.

The Republicans motivations are clear. They believe that if you wont vote for them, you shouldnt vote at all. They are threatened by the multi-racial majority in this country. When they suppress the votes of my Black and Brown sisters and brothers, they harm us all. We cant let that happen.

Saving our democracy is much easier than people think. But our senators must hear from us.

Step 1: Get rid of the filibuster

Step 2: Pass the voting rights legislation known as the For the People Act.

All it will take is 50 votes in the Senate to get it done. Call Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Demand that they stand up for people of color and our democracy.

Neal Waltmire, Berwyn

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Firearm Owners Identification cards popularly called FOID cards do not prevent any law-abiding citizen from owning a firearm. The ID acts only as a barrier to people who should not own a firearm from owning one. And the cards $10 fee impedes firearm ownership no more than the price of a gun charged by a firearms dealer.

Yet the Illinois Supreme Court is now being asked to decide whether FOID cards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Amendment was penned in the 18th century. No one can seriously argue that the Founding Fathers were so wise they could predict the advances that would be made in the science of firearms more than 200 years into the future. The Second Amendment needs an update, not revocation.

Warren Rodgers, Jr., Matteson

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End filibuster to save democracy from Republican schemes to suppress the vote | Letters - Chicago Sun-Times

Superheroes Are Everywhere, a childrens book celebrating ordinary people, by Vice-President Kamala Harris, has landed, like so many things in American politics today, in the middle of a very childish controversy. It began when residents of Long Beach, California, organized a toy-and-book drive for unaccompanied child immigrants being housed in a convention center there. Someone donated a copy of Harriss book, and a journalist touring the facility saw it on a cot and took a picture of it. Partisan mayhem ensued, with headlines in the New York Post and on Fox News and complaints from sundry Republicans about an imaginary scheme to put a copy in a welcome kit for every immigrant, as if it were the Little Red Book, or an enrollment brochure for the Democratic Party. Was Harris paid for these books? Is she profiting from Bidens border crisis? Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, asked on Twitter.

Such fantastical pettiness is not confined to the immigration debate. As the new Administration enters its next hundred days, children are poised to be at the forefront of President Joe Bidens agenda. The address that he delivered to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday night included the American Families Plan, a set of transformative programs, amounting to almost two trillion dollars, largely directed at children. With that move, Biden launched his next major legislative fight. In the months to come, the child wars are likely to grow more intense and, in some quarters, more detached from reality.

Bidens proposals include one that would make pre-kindergarten programs for three- and four-year-olds universally available. You know who else liked universal day care, Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted, before the speech was over. She linked to a Times story from 1974 about state-run nurseries in what was then the Soviet Union. Of course, our Western European NATO allies tend to like universal pre-K, too, and, in any event, nobody would force parents here to take advantage of the option. The question is not whether people will be allowed to raise their children as they wish, rather than handing them over to the commissars, but whether the U.S. will invest in children in the same way that other wealthy countries have.

The pandemic has made this a brutally hard year for American children, in large part because their situation was already precarious. One in every six children lives below the federal poverty level, which is an income of $27,501 for a family of four. For Black children, the rate is thirty per cent; for Latinx children, twenty-four per cent, according to the Childrens Defense Fund. (For adults, the rate is just under eleven per cent.) Biden said that his proposal to extend and increase the pandemic-relief child-tax credit to thirty-six hundred dollars for each child younger than six, and three thousand dollars for each child aged six to seventeen, would help more than sixty-five million children and help cut child poverty in half. Big gains like that are possible in a single swoop precisely because the numbers are so bad to begin with.

Children in this country are, in many respects, the focal point in a nexus of poverty. A lack of affordable, high-quality day care keeps women out of the workforce, and many people in the child-care field are also low-wage earners. The Biden plan would insure a fifteen-dollar-per-hour minimum wage for employees of the pre-K programs it envisions. Those programs would be developed in partnership with the states, a detail that does not jibe with Blackburns fears or with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthys warning, after the speech, that Biden wants to control your life. (McCarthy continued, Hes going to control how much meat you can eata reference to an invented claim that Biden will limit Americans to one hamburger a month.) Similarly, Senator Tim Scott, in the official Republican response to the address, complained that Biden wanted to put Washington even more in the middle of your lifefrom the cradle to college.

Biden will have to act quickly. The Democrats control Congress, but just barely, and the task of holding on to the House in the midterm elections became harder, last week, after the reapportionment of seats following the 2020 census. (New York and Pennsylvania each lost a seat; Texas gained two, and Florida one.) Turning the plan into legislation that can pass Congress will require a debate among Democrats about priorities; Biden also has a two-trillion-dollar infrastructure package to get through. Meanwhile, the implications of the conservative shift of the Supreme Court are becoming increasingly clear. Last month, the Court made it easier to sentence children to life without parole, meaning that they could die in prison. (Brett Kavanaugh wrote the 63 decision; Sonya Sotomayor wrote an angry dissent.) Like the discussion around young migrants, that decision alternately reflects a distorted fear of children and an indifference to them. The ruling may also be a harbinger of the Courts stance should elements of the American Families Plan appear before it, as was the case with Obamacare.

The Biden plan, in fact, includes tax credits to help reduce the cost of Obamacare premiums (although not an expansion of Medicare, which Senator Bernie Sanders had sought). There is also an investment of two hundred and twenty-five billion dollars, in the next decade, to build a program that provides twelve weeks of parental and family leave. Indeed, the plan addresses the problems facing children and families from so many directionsa hundred billion dollars to guarantee two years of community college; eighty billion dollars for Pell Grants; forty-five billion dollars to expand school-based anti-hunger programsthat it is hard for Republicans to protest that, while they would like to do something for children, that something isnt in this plan. So they are left with disingenuous attacks and warnings about socialism.

The easy target for Republicans (and some moderate Democrats) is the new taxes that will be needed to pay for the plan, which would fall most heavily on the wealthiest Americans. Its a lot. Its a lot, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat whose vote is crucial, told CNN, speaking of the cost. Its a lot thats worth fighting for. The challenge for the Biden Administration will be keeping the true reality of childrens lives at the center of the fight. Superheroes arent everywhere in Washington.

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Joe Biden, the Republicans, and Kids Stuff - The New Yorker

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday urged the U.S. trade representative to continue opposing a waiver to loosen patent and intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines.

The Biden administration is facing pressure from the international community, drug pricing advocates and congressional Democrats to back a move that would waive an international intellectual property agreement that protects pharmaceutical trade secrets.

The waiver proposal is being spearheaded by India and South Africa,which argue it would enable lower-income countries to manufacture the vaccines themselves, especially in light of the record-breaking wave of COVID-19 infections in India.

The Biden administration is expected to set its position clearly at a World Trade Organization meeting on Wednesday.

In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine TaiKatherine TaiPressure builds for Biden to back vaccine patent waivers The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Biden sales pitch heads to Virginia and Louisiana On The Money: Breaking down Biden's .8T American Families Plan | Powell voices confidence in Fed's handle on inflation | Wall Street basks in 'Biden boom' MORE, the Republicans, led by Reps. Jim JordanJames (Jim) Daniel JordanBiden offers traditional address in eerie setting Britney Spears to discuss conservatorship in court McCarthy unveils House GOP task forces, chairs MORE (Ohio) and Darrell IssaDarrell Edward IssaRepublicans need to stop Joe Biden's progressive assault on America Mellman: Biden's smart bipartisan message Companies sidestep self-imposed bans on GOP donations MORE (Calif.), said the waiver would do little to improve public health.

"The requested waiver is extraordinarily broad and unnecessary to accomplish the goal of giving as many people as possible access to vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including in developing countries," they wrote. "Rather, the waiver would undermine the very innovation that has led to the record-breaking rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines already saving lives around the world, and it would not meaningfully improve vaccine availability."

The lawmakerssaid the international community should instead focus on overcoming "the real obstacles faced by developing countries in accessing vaccines and treatments, which does not require waiving intellectual property (IP) rights."

The Republicans suggested focusing on programs such as COVAX and the ACT Accelerator initiative.

"These efforts are providing real solutions for countries that need access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments without dismantling IP protections, even temporarily," the lawmakers wrote.

Democrats and international advocates argue President BidenJoe BidenGarland to emphasize national security, civil rights in first congressional appearance as attorney general Afghan president: 'Critically important' for US, NATO to fulfill security funding commitments Schumer 'exploring' passing immigration unilaterally if talks unravel MORE has a moral imperative to act and to help the world and that sharingvaccine IP is the best way to do it.

Administration officials have not tipped their hand,butWhite House chief of staff Ron KlainRon KlainPressure builds for Biden to back vaccine patent waivers The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Biden sales pitch heads to Virginia and Louisiana Sunday shows - Biden economic agenda dominates MORE suggestedwhen pressed recently that patents and other IP protections are not the main barriers to increasing global vaccine access.

Some experts similarly caution that simply waiving patents would not solve the problem, given that the vaccines are very difficult to produce. Having the recipe for a vaccine does not necessarily mean a drugmaker could produce it.

In an interview with the Financial Timeson Monday, top infectious diseases expert Anthony FauciAnthony FauciThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Can Cheney defy the odds and survive again? Overnight Health Care: WHO-backed Covax gets a boost from Moderna Experts say that herd immunity is unlikely soon, if ever MORE suggested he was "agnostic" to the idea of an IP waiver but did not want to spend time being tied up in court because of the inevitable pharmaceutical industry lawsuits.

If you take too long, people are going to die, Fauci told the paper. There are other ways to ramp up vaccine production around the world.

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House Republicans urge opposition to vaccine patent waiver | TheHill - The Hill

Republican lawmakers have threatened to crack down on corporate tax cuts and subsidies even as the party mounts a unified front to defend the Trump tax cuts that dramatically slashed the corporate tax rate to its lowest level in decades.

Republicans have railed against President Joe Biden's proposed tax increases on corporations and the wealthy, repeating dubious argumentsthat a slight increase in the corporate tax rate would make the United States less "competitive."But Republicans aren't justbattling the Biden administration. They're also up against a growing majority of Americans demanding big business pay their "fair share."

A Morning Consult polllast month found that 65% of voters, including 42% of Republicans, support a corporate tax hike to fund infrastructure investments. A Pew surveylast week found that 81% of Americans are bothered that "some corporations don't pay their fair share," including 59% who said it bothered them "a lot." An April Quinnipiac poll even found that voters are more likely to supportBiden's infrastructure proposal if it hikes taxes on corporations, putting Republicans who have spent decades defending corporate tax cuts in a bind.

Some Republicans have amped up their newfound anti-corporate rhetoric after former President Donald Trump spent years attacking large corporations, even as he cut their taxes from 35% to 21%. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, lashed out at "woke" corporations in a Wall Street Journal op-edprompted by corporate criticism of a slew of Republican voter restrictions in response to Trump's election lies. Cruz claimed he wouldswearoff corporate PAC money and threatenedbut did not actually promiseto reject future tax cuts.

"When the time comes that you need help with a tax break or a regulatory change, I hope the Democrats take your calls, because we may not," Cruz wrote while criticizing tax breaks for companies like Coca-Cola and Boeing.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., echoed Cruz's callon Twitter and criticized corporate America for putting "Americans last." After last year's election, Hawley tweeted, "we are a working-class party now. That's the future."

Cruz went even further in an interview with The Hillon Friday, acknowledging his shift in response to the "rising populist movement."

"I think the most important political change of the last decade has been a socioeconomic inversion. Historically the caricature, at least, was that Republicans were the party of the rich and Democrats were the party of the poor," he said. "I believe that is precisely opposite to where we are today. Democrats today are the party of rich coastal elites and Republicans are the party of blue-collar workers."

Given the overwhelming poll numbers in favor of taxing corporations, it isn't surprising to see two presidential hopefuls try to latch on to the anti-corporate sentiment that has grown in the Trump era, although there is little evidence to back Cruz's assessment about an"inversion" between the two parties. But their statements are ironic given that both Cruz and Hawley backed Trump's corporate tax giveaway while their party, which has pushed to increase corporate power for decades, rejects any corporate tax increases.

"What Ted Cruz does and says are two very different things," longtime Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told Salon, predicting that "he will continue to take the calls of corporate CEOs, and take their money too, whatever his tweets might say."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Mondaythat there will be "none, zero" support from Republicans for Biden's proposal. "We're not willing to pay for it by undoing the 2017 bill," he added, calling it the Trump era's "most significant domestic accomplishment" even though it failed to meet any of the party's stated goals, such ashigher longterm corporate investments, increasing hiring and wagesor paying for itself.

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the author of the 2017 tax bill, vowed on Mondaythat "there's going to be a real fight over these tax increases" because "we shouldn't be funding infrastructure on the backs of American workers."

But Brady's party is pushing a bill that would shift the entire tax burden of infrastructure investments from corporations to workers, while Biden has so far made good on his promise not to raise taxes on households earning under $400,000 per year. Congressional estimates show that the vast majority of Americans will see a tax cutunder Biden's policies and those making less than$75,000 will, on average, owe no federal income taxes this year. Most of Biden's proposed tax cuts target big businesses, multinational corporationsand those earning over $500,000, although his proposed corporate tax increase to 28% would not even fully reverse Trump's cut.

Republicans, who have long espoused widely-discredited claimsthat their tax cuts boost the middle class, have offered Biden a counterproposal, investing less than a third the amount in Biden's plan, entirelyfunded by "user fees" that would primarily hit lower-income workers.Even Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has backed Republican effortsto reduce Biden's proposed corporate tax hike, slammed the GOP proposal for making it "harder on the working person."

"Hell no, don't raise them!" Manchin told reporters last week, warning that commuters would be hit the hardest.

The Republican plan calls for about $568 billion in spending that would be paid for with fees like gas and mileage taxes, according to Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

"My own view is that the pay-for ought to come from people who are using it," Romney told reporterslast month.

But it's unclear how much new funding the bill actually includes, as opposedto funds it seeks to reallocate from other appropriations and alsounclear how much money these user fees can actually raise, Michael Graetz, a Columbia tax law professor who served as a top Treasury Department official, said in an interview with Salon. A Washington Postanalysis found that the GOP plan may only include about $189 billion in actual new funding.

Graetz said he was skeptical of the Republican proposal because Republicans have opposed gas tax increases for nearly three decades.

"You have to at least question how sincere they are about user charges," said Graetz, the author of "The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It," adding that it would take a long time to raise significant revenues from these fees and they are unlikely to raise significant amounts of money.

While user charges, like tolls to pay for bridge and highway construction, are common and sensible, infrastructure projects are "longterm investments that you can't pay for all at once without overburdening people and then having a project that's not completed," Graetz explained.

"I'm not sure if this is a serious proposal," Graetz added of the GOP plan. "Democrats are likely to oppose it because user charges will affect everyone who drives across the road or the bridge. And to the extent that it increases transportation costs on railroads or airplanes or automobiles, anyone who uses that infrastructure will pay for it. So it's not limited to people of any particular amount of income, andthey pass it on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Consumers will pay for it. The distributional aspects of Biden's plan certainly appears to be significantly more progressive."

It's not clear what the extent of these user fees will be, stressed Zach Liscow, a tax policy expert at Yale Law School, and some can be used to "discourage behavior that is bad for society," such asoverly congested highways.

"However, there is little indication that Republicans intend to target problems like excessive traffic and pollution," he told Salon. "In any case, even if user fees do target social problems, if doing so disproportionately targets the pocketbooks of lower-income families, that needs to be traded off with whatever benefits come from targeting the social problems."

Since corporations stand to benefit the most from improved infrastructure, "it is arguably fair to tax them to pay for it," Liscow said. "Unless the user fees target activities that are bad for society or policymakers actually want to target lower-income parties with their revenue collection, there aren't good reasons to use user fees instead of corporate taxes to fund infrastructure."

Biden defended his proposals on Monday, emphasizing that this spending will go toward investments in fixing bridges and roads, clean waterand green energy, as well as other programs that would fund child care, free community collegeand aid to families.

"I think it's about time we start giving tax breaks and tax credits to working-class families and middle-class families instead of just the very wealthy," Biden said, adding that "trickle-down economics has never worked. For too long, we've added an economy that gives every break in the world to the folks who need it the least. It's time to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. We can choose to invest in our students. We can choose an economy of rewards work, not just wealth."

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Republicans threaten to crack down on "woke" corporations while pushing to keep massive tax cut - Salon

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., argued on Monday that the year 1619, widely thought of as the year the first African slaves were trafficked to what would become the U.S., is not especially noteworthy in the arc of U.S. history.

"I think this is about American history and the most important dates in American history," McConnell said during an event at the University of Louisville, according to The Courier-Journal. "And my view and I think most Americans think dates like 1776, the Declaration of Independence; 1787, the Constitution; 1861-1865, the Civil War, are sort of the basic tenets of American history."The senator added: "There are a lot of exotic notions about what are the most important points in American history. I simply disagree with the notion that The New York Times laid out there that the year 1619 was one of those years."

In 2019, The New York Times launched its seminal "1619 Project," which traces the consequences of slavery from its inception centuries ago to its modern-day implications for Black Americans. The project sets out to "reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation's birth year." Since then, conservatives have not let up their campaign to undermine the project.

McConnell recently led a brigade of about 40 disgruntled Republicans calling on the U.S. Department of Education to cancel a federal plan that would allot grant money to schools that incorporate the New York Times' project into their syllabus. "Americans do not need or want their tax dollars diverted from promoting the principles that unite our nation toward promoting radical ideologies meant to divide us," the Republican cohort wrote in a missive to the department. "Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil."

McConnell's letter comes amid the broader, years-long GOP pushback against the idea that slavery and racial injustice should be acknowledged as a defining elements of American history.

Last year, Salon reported that the White House issued an executive order banning the use of racial sensitivity training and critical race theory in federal agencies in an effort to dispute the notion the "United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil," as a Trump memo put.

That same year, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who encouraged the military to intervene in the George Floyd protests as "an overwhelming show of force," told the Arkansas-Gazette that slavery was a "necessary evil."

"We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country, because otherwise, we can't understand our country," he said in an interview with paper. "As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction." Cotton would later go on to defend these remarks.

Back in 2019, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who holds a Ph.D. in history, called the entire 1619 Project "a lie."

"Look, I think slavery is a terrible thing," he said during an interview with Fox & Friends. "I think putting slavery in context is important. We still have slavery in places around the world today, so we need to recognize this is an ongoing story. I think, certainly, if you are an African-American, slavery is at the center of what you see as the American experience."

Right-wing outrage over critical race theory spans as far back as 2012, in fact, when Breitbart unleashed a fury over former President Barack Obama hugging Harvard professor and critical race theorist Derrick Bell. During an acrimonious interview with CNN host Soledad O'Brien, then Breitbart's Editor-In-Chief, Joel Pollak, exclaimed that "Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia. He passed away last year, but during his lifetime, he developed a theory called critical race theory, which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown."

"Critical race theory is all about white supremacy," Pollack added. "Critical race theory holds that civil rights laws are ineffective, that racial equality is impossible, because the legal and Constitutional in America is white supremacist."

Currently, most scholars define critical race theory as the academic practice of "recognizing race as a social construct embedded in many American institutions throughout history, with implications you can see today," according to KSDK.

"We need to have a critical lens to examine what it means to be a certain group of people and then to also have conversations and dialogs to flesh out what are the biases that could exist in the system so that we can actually create that platform and create the equity that we all long for," Yin Lam Lee-Johnson, chair of the Diversity Advisory Committee at Webster University, told KSDK.

As federal pushback against critical race theory mounts at the federal level, so too does it in state legislatures throughout the country.

On Monday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a law prohibiting state agencies from teaching critical race theory or other "divisive" topics in sensitivity trainings.

On Tuesday, Tennessee Republicans reopened an education committee to regulate what public school teachers can cover in discussions of race and inequality, specifically taking legislative aim at the notion of systemic inequality. "We as legislators and citizens must take a stand against hucksters, charlatans and useful idiots peddling identity politics," Ragan said in a floor speech. Republicans in other states like Idaho, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma are leading similar efforts.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, president of the National Academy of Education, an academic research group told The Washington Post that the conservative backlash against critical race theory has a lot to do with its contradiction of America's "narrative of progress."

"The moment you make racism more than an isolated incident, when you begin to talk about it as systemic, as baked into the way we live our livespeople don't like that," Ladson-Billings said. "It runs counter to a narrative that we want to tell ourselves about who we are. We have a narrative of progress, that we're getting better."

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Why Republicans are so determined to deny the 1619 project - Salon

Hes one of the most decent people you ever want to meet. He and Jill are very good people. And you disagree with people you like. So I dont see where it helps us trying to get into a food fight with him, said Graham, a top Trump ally.

The GOP is more likely to take back the House next fall than the Senate, given the latters staggered map, and Republicans are only starting to chip away at a president who governs in precisely the opposite manner to his incendiary predecessor, Donald Trump. In Orlando, where the House GOP held a three-day retreat to start plotting its path back to the majority, Republicans coalesced around a midterm message that hits Biden on immigration, policing, climate change and raising taxes.

That will have a negative impact on not just his popularity, but on the country's economy, at a time when we're just starting to come out of Covid, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters at the retreat, referring to policy items on Bidens wishlist. As people see what he's doing and it's Nancy Pelosi, it's AOC, it's that socialist wing of the party that's driving the agenda that's not what he ran on.

The GOPs reluctance to make Biden into a bogeyman stems from both a confidence that his policies are unpopular enough on their own and, for some Republicans, a personal relationship with the president. But not taking the opportunity to more concretely define Biden something Trump also struggled to do during the 2020 campaign could backfire for Republicans.

Its also a stark contrast from the GOPs approach toward Obama, who faced racist birtherism accusations and was already grappling with Tea Party demonstrations around the country within his first 100 days in office. And the fixation on Hunter Biden that energized anti-Biden conservatives during last years presidential campaign isn't part of GOP leaders current strategy.

They are having a hell of a time trying to put a negative label on him, said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), of Biden. Its a real dilemma.

Biden is hovering above 50 percent approval, but even that might not be enough to save Pelosis control of the House. A president with an approval rating of more than 50 percent typically loses 14 seats in his partys first midterm, according to Gallup. The GOP only needs to flip five seats to seize back power in 2022, and theyll likely have forthcoming redistricting on their side. If Biden dips below 50 percent, things could get even worse.

So far, Bidens approval ratings are significantly higher than Trumps, but lower than Obamas, according to recent surveys from Pew, the Washington Post and Reuters. His $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid bill has proved popular, and there are early indications that more spending on infrastructure could also win public support. Biden is expected to tout both the Covid and infrastructure plans during his first joint address to Congress on Wednesday night.

Yet senior Republicans arent sweating Bidens job approval ratings. Scalise called them stagnant and argued theres a honeymoon period for any new president. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), head of the House GOPs campaign arm, expressed confidence that the president's numbers would start to deteriorate. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Bidens sub-50-percent approval on handling of the border, as well as his marks on the economy, could spell trouble for the president.

They really ought to be worried, McCarthy said of Democrats in an interview with POLITICO.

Republicans have settled on attacking Biden as a moderate candidate who's now governing as a liberal, led around by progressive senators like Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). But compared with their relatively nuanced criticisms of Biden, House Republicans are far more comfortable going after Pelosi. It's a return to one of the GOPs greatest hits, recalling their Fire Pelosi rallying cry following the 2010 passage of Obamacare a slogan that's getting a reprise.

During a private presentation to the House GOP in Orlando, Emmer revealed internal polling that showed Pelosi is one of the least popular politicians in the country, with her numbers dropping further in the last two months, according to a source in the room. The National Republican Congressional Committee chair noted that her numbers were particularly low in the Midwest, though YouGov data shows Pelosi still polls higher than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, internal polling from the National Republican Senatorial Committee in February showed a narrow majority offering a favorable view of Biden but Schumer and Pelosi underwater. A plurality of respondents in that survey said theyd support a GOP candidate as a check on Bidens agenda over a Democrat who would help approve it. The rest of the polling focused on portraying Bidens policies as unpopular.

Florida politics are complicated. So is the future of the GOP. POLITICOs Sabrina Rodriguez talks with Miamis Republican Mayor Francis Suarez about where Florida fits into that future.

We can have disagreements, but we need to make sure that we're unified and in one place. We're seeing it at this conference, which is: firing Nancy Pelosi and stopping the socialist agenda, Emmer said in an interview. Everybody is unified on that.

The desire to make Hunter Biden a political liability for the president hasnt totally disappeared in the GOP, especially among the Trump wing of the party. On Monday, a group of Republicans called on Bidens ATF nominee to probe reports that the Secret Service intervened in an investigation involving Hunter Bidens gun. But aside from Hunter, Republicans cant seem to find a bad thing to say about the president.

Freshman Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) raved about an exchange he had with Biden over the Floridian's former career as a firefighter during a White House meeting on infrastructure, calling the moment heartfelt. Summarizing Republicans dilemma, another GOP lawmaker said that "its hard to hit someone who reminds you of your grandpa.

Hes likable, hes relatable theyre not having him omnipresent, said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, of the White Houses strategy. Still, Thune added, Biden will be judged by his policies. And I think thats whats going to [happen] eventually, whether people like him personally or not.

Everett reported from Washington. Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.

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Republicans got personal with Obama. Why they won't do the same to Biden. - POLITICO