by tyler | Jan 31, 2024 | CNN, politics
The homes are nearly identical, dotting both sides of the curvy road in a middle-class subdivision. But one stands out: 10 solar panels newly attached to its sloping roof as the crew links the system to the electric meter. The finishing touch: a new Midwest Solar magnet attached to the junction box.
Chris Mudd is the hands-on founder and CEO. He checked in with the crew, made a point of thanking the homeowner for her business and then took a moment to reflect on Midwest Solar’s swift progress.
“Our first 12 months I think we averaged three or four systems a month. … It was tough. Today, we are doing 15-20 systems a month,” Mudd says. “We lost money the first year we were in business and we’re going to make money our second year. I think that’s good. Starting a business from scratch is very difficult.”
Yes, he says, some of the credit goes to President Joe Biden’s clean energy initiatives – particularly tax incentives for solar systems.
“Absolutely,” Mudd says. “There are lots of grants available to business owners. The tax credit is at that 30%. Absolutely.”
But Mudd is a lifelong Republican, would prefer that tax credit money instead be spent on a border wall and is rooting for a Donald Trump comeback – beginning here in Iowa – to make that happen.
“Do I think Donald Trump’s perfect? No,” Mudd says. “Personally, I’m not a big fan of who he is and what he does and how he lives. But I think the decisions and things that he did for the country were good.”
Our conversation was the day after the former president was indicted again by a special counsel, this time on charges stemming from Trump’s effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
My visit to Iowa was part of a new project designed to build relationships with voters and to see the 2024 campaign through their eyes and their experiences as the cycle unfolds. The first-in-the-nation GOP caucus state is our first foray for the obvious reason: Trump at the moment is the formidable favorite to win the Republican nomination and, if he is to be stopped or even stalled, it would likely have to come early in the process.
“I think he’s the best guy for the job,” Mudd tells us. “I wonder why they are attacking him so hard. Why are they going after this guy so hard? Does everybody really believe what happened was exactly the way that the government is laying it out today? I don’t.”
Mudd’s distrust runs deep, and like many Republicans, still includes the 2020 presidential vote count – even though there is no evidence of widespread election fraud that would have affected the outcome.
“Did something happen to that election?” Mudd asks. “You know, we have six states change late at night, from the trajectory of where they are going.”
I remind him that this was because some states counted early ballots first, and others counted the ballots cast on Election Day first. Biden, for example, had a big lead in the early hours of the count in Ohio and Texas, because they counted early ballots first, but he ultimately lost both by wide margins as all ballots were counted. Pennsylvania and Georgia were among the states where Election Day votes were counted first, and Trump led in early returns but faded as the counting turned to votes cast early.
Mudd does not dispute this but says he would have more confidence if states followed the same procedures.
Families like the Mudds, to borrow a phrase, are what makes America great.
Jim Mudd Sr. was an AM radio voice, who started a small advertising business in Cedar Falls in 1981 at the suggestion of a local Iowa car dealer. Mudd Advertising now employs 85 people and has clients from coast to coast.
This American Dream family is also living America’s political divide.
Dad and three sons are loyal Republicans; two daughters are Democrats.
The Republicans don’t watch and don’t trust CNN. But they are beyond gracious and kind to CNN visitors. They revere former President Ronald Reagan, yet the Trump effect – and the Fox effect – on today’s Republican Party is abundantly clear in an hour-plus conversation around a Mudd Advertising conference table.
“Nothing about that deal is the American way, I don’t think,” Mudd Sr. says of the latest Trump indictment.
Of the eight family and friends around the table, only one voices opposition to Trump. Tracey Mudd, Chris’ wife, says she does back most Trump policies.
“It is more of his tone,” she says. “He kind of rubs me the wrong way sometimes.”
No one at the table raises a hand when asked if anyone supports US financial and military assistance to Ukraine.
The explanation from Rob Mudd is stunning, and no one at the table disputes it. “I don’t believe what we are being told about Ukraine,” he says. “You don’t have to be smart to connect the dots, right. And so, is the war to cover up sins committed so that you can cover your tracks? Too much money that’s been thrown over there.”
The unfounded allegation that Biden’s support for Ukraine is somehow linked to his son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings sounds like an old Tucker Carlson show open.
So, I try this question: “You think all the NATO countries would do what Biden told them to do to cover up some Hunter Biden business deal?”
Rob Mudd doesn’t hesitate.
“It all depends on (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky and how much dirt he has on Biden to keep the money coming.”
When I suggest “that’s out there,” there is laughter around the table.
One big goal of this project is to better understand America’s divide, and this is just the beginning. The kindness and goodwill around the table – despite clear disagreements over what is true – are an encouraging first step.
Jim Mudd Jr. is for Trump, but says he is also impressed with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s promise to slash the federal bureaucracy.
Beyond those two, the 2024 candidate who has piqued his interest the most is Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“I think he is a really good guy,” Mudd Jr. says. His father agrees: “He sounds like a real genuine individual to me. He’s smart and he’s even minded. He’s open minded, I should say.”
CNN reminds the group RFK Jr.’s family is unhappy with his primary challenge to Biden. And that he has pushed views on vaccines and other issues that reputable scientists consider conspiracy theories and dangerous.
The conversation is polite, cordial. And it vividly captures the country’s red state-blue state divide, which includes what you think of Trump and where you get your news.
“I think it’s nearly impossible to know what is true,” Chris Mudd says. “Because there’s so many – there’s a little bit of truth in every lie. … It’s hard to distinguish what’s really true and what’s not because there is a little bit of truth in everybody’s angle.”
Another takeaway of the conversation is that the roughly half of likely GOP voters who are backing Trump are a loyal group, to say the least.
There is that other half to consider, of course.
Sioux City is 212 miles west of Cedar Falls and was a Trump stronghold in the 2016 caucuses.
Attorney Priscilla Forsyth was raised Republican but switched to the Democrats while in law school. Her caucus experience includes backing Howard Dean in 2004 and John Edwards in 2008.
But she attended a small Trump event in 2016 and liked what she heard.
“He does have charisma, I mean, whether you like him or not, he does,” Forsyth says in an interview at the Woodbury County courthouse. “I liked his policies.”
She’s attended three Trump rallies and, for the most part, isn’t bothered by his aggressive language and attacks. But his effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election was a turning point.
“You have to respect the system,” Forsyth says. “Otherwise, the system falls apart.”
While she doesn’t flatly rule out voting for Trump again, Forsyth is shopping for a new candidate.
“I think the country needs to move on,” she says. “I think we need to get rid of Biden. I think we need to get rid of Trump. I think we need to move on.”
So there’s at least modest evidence some past Trump supporters are looking elsewhere.
But beating him here, or wounding him here, would require a giant change in the current GOP math.
Watch the booming Des Moines suburbs over the next five months to see if there is any evidence that is happening. The population in Metro Des Moines is up about 60,000 voters just from 2016, and the suburbs are Trump’s kryptonite.
“I don’t appreciate the negativity, the character,” says Jaclyn Taylor, a single mother and entrepreneur who lives in suburban Waukee.
Taylor supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 caucuses, but voted for Trump in November 2016 and again in 2020.
She sighs when asked how she would vote if there is a Biden-Trump rematch.
“I don’t know. It’s very difficult. I really can’t answer that question.”
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott intrigues Taylor. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley does, too. Sometimes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as well.
Betsy Sarcone is also a single mom and a real estate agent who lives in nearby Urbandale.
DeSantis tops her list at the moment, but she, too, wants to take her time and is not a fan of the six-week abortion ban signed by the Florida governor.
“I don’t feel it is my place to judge,” Sarcone says. “I think that is up to them.”
Sarcone was a Florida Sen. Marco Rubio supporter in the 2016 caucuses and, like Taylor, voted for Trump against Hillary Clinton and again against Biden.
But if 2024 is a 2020 rematch, Sarcone says she would back Biden – because she would feel abandoned by the GOP.
“I think the victim mentality has run its course,” Sarcone said of Trump. “I see the party as the party of personal responsibility and for this man to still be on the national stage representing the Republican Party is very troubling to me.”
Both suburban mothers are feeling 2016 déjà vu five months before Iowa casts the first 2024 votes.
Shopping around is an Iowa tradition, but both understand that a splintered field eventually helps Trump, as it did in 2016. And both say their goal is to talk to friends as the January caucuses approach, with the hope they can agree on one Trump alternative.
“I think the moderates need to band together,” Sarcone says. “We’ve got to find one that works.”
Taylor says she is having the same conversations, because “it’s a no-brainer, right?”
by tyler | Jan 31, 2024 | CNN, politics
First mate Andrew Konchek uses a dockside crane to lower the last giant chest of ice onto the stern of the Alanna Renee. Moments later, the fishing boat eases off the dock and heads out of Portsmouth Harbor in the moonlight.
This is a two-day trip, and a storm is coming. Konchek often spends 80 hours a week on the water, sometimes more. It is grueling work – and it shapes his politics.
“I’m a Republican,” the 38-year-old commercial fisherman said last week. “You know, they are for the working man. … I believe Republicans stand for us. So yeah, when it comes to gas prices and everything else, the economy feels better run by Republicans.”
In 2016, Donald Trump captured Konchek’s attention, and he was among those who helped the first-time candidate to his game-changing initial win in the New Hampshire primary. Now, Trump again tops Konchek’s list as he looks over another crowded Republican field.
“Donald Trump as of right now but I’m going to keep it open so I can make an educated decision,” Konchek said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is his second choice.
“You know [Trump] does a bunch of negative things and a lot of things I don’t agree with,” Konchek said. “But as a businessman he can run the country as a business that way.”
Konchek is among a group of New Hampshire residents CNN contacted as part of a 2024 reporting project aimed at tracking the presidential campaign through the eyes – and the life experiences – of voters who live in key battlegrounds or are members of critical voting blocs.
New Hampshire’s 2024 primary will be a crucial early test of Trump’s comeback bid. The state also could be a general election battleground. New Hampshire and national Democrats are still at odds over scheduling the presidential primary, and the state could forfeit some convention delegates if it ignores the Democratic National Committees rules. Still, the Democratic primary, whenever it is held, would be a test of President Joe Biden at a time even many Democrats say they would prefer a younger candidate.
A common complaint from the fishermen CNN spoke to is that they are left out of the state and national post-pandemic recovery and get double hit by inflation because it increases the cost of fuel, bait and other things they must buy for work in addition to thumping them, like everyone else, at the grocery store or the gas pump.
The commercial fishing industry, which has a 400-year history in Portsmouth, is struggling. Workers like Konchek say they feel ignored and disrespected by the regulators who write the rules and set the fishing quotas and by politicians who believe one piece of moving to a cleaner energy infrastructure is to dot the seacoast here with wind turbines.
“That’s going to completely destroy our fishing industry,” Konchek said. He believes digging trenches for construction and cables to bring power on shore will damage already fragile habitats.
Konchek makes clear he sees the climate crisis and understands it could require sacrifice for commercial fishermen.
A handful of fishermen CNN chatted with at the docks in Portsmouth or the Rye Harbor a few miles down the road said similar things. The water is warmer. The storms are more severe. The fish are different. They understand the need for quotas and regulations but say their input is almost always ignored.
“Definitely harder,” Konchek said when asked about making a living now compared to five or 10 years ago. The Alanna Renee is a gillnetting boat – designed to get a large catch by draping nets in the water. Konchek also owns a 22-foot boat and in past years has dropped lobster traps to supplement his income. But he skipped that this year.
“Fuel prices are a lot higher,” he said. “The bait price is higher, and the price of lobster stayed the same.”
Konchek believes things would be better with a Republican as president because they generally favor lower regulation. Plus, Trump is a fierce critic of the wind energy farms.
Friend and fellow fisherman Lucas Raymond once agreed. He, too, helped Trump to his 2016 primary win here in New Hampshire – and supported him against Hillary Clinton that November.
But the chaos and coarseness of Trump turned him off, and he voted third party in 2020.
This cycle, Raymond is drawn to a new insurgent – so much so he is poised to support a Democrat for president for the first time.
“I am extremely likely to vote for Robert Kennedy,” Raymond told us in Rye, where his fishing boat is moored in the harbor.
Why?
Raymond cites Kennedy’s years of work as an environmental lawyer, including helping fishermen hurt by industrial pollution.
“I also believe there’s a little more honesty to him than our average politician,” Raymond said. “He is willing to say that we should not blindly trust corporations or our government.”
Raymond said he was first drawn to Kennedy after a crewmate shared an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He says other Republican leaning fisherman also are considering backing Kennedy.
Raymond is registered as undeclared – an Independent – and New Hampshire allows such voters to cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican primary. Raymond has already moved on from Trump, so his decision alone wouldn’t make much of a difference. But if he is correct about other former GOP voters crossing over and voting for Kennedy – a Democrat – it could be a dynamic worth tracking.
“I’ve come to this place of distrust out of watching the regulations do the exact opposite of what they claim to do,” Raymond said. “I felt stuck in, I still feel stuck in the two-party system.”
Stanley Tremblay represents another piece of the New Hampshire political math test.
Like Raymond, he is listed on the voting rolls as undeclared. Like Raymond, he is disgusted with national politics.
“There are so many politicians that have been in power for so long,” Tremblay told us at his Nashua brewpub, Liquid Therapy. “The same stagnant pool continues to exist.”
Tremblay’s father was a Vietnam veteran and some of his military patches hang on the brewery walls. It is in a former fire station, and patches and other memorabilia left by firefighters also dot the walls. Tremblay says service and patriotism run deep in him, but he can’t stomach the tone of national politics anymore and voted third party for president in 2016 and 2020.
“What if you get Biden-Trump again?” CNN asked.
“Probably not vote,” Tremblay said.
Tremblay leans Republican but is no fan of Trump. So, you could argue not participating in the Republican primary helps the former president.
Pete Burdett’s change of heart, on the other hand, hurts Trump.
Burdett is a 21-year Navy veteran. The former helicopter pilot and flight instructor met Trump at a veteran’s event in 2016 and was won over. “He’s a pretty smart guy,” Burdett said of the Trump he met at that event. “We had this great discussion.”
But Burdett said 2024 Trump is a far cry from 2016 Trump.
“He talks about himself,” Burdett says. “He’s not focusing on the issues going forward. He seems to be focusing on the issues of the past. I’m done with the past.”
A Nikki Haley sign stands at the end of Burdett’s driveway.
“She hit all my hot buttons,” Burdett said. “She’s got the international chops with her time at the UN to really kind of understand the whole global idea of what is going on in the world. You got to have that. And she also has a husband who is currently deployed, so she gets that.”
Burdett says he would support Trump if he were the Republican nominee next November but hopes the state that helped launch Trump in 2016 turns to someone new for 2024.
New Hampshire’s primary date has not been set but will be early next year, most likely in January. But as summer prepares to give way to fall, signs of Trump’s advantage here are easy to come by.
“It’s definitely very much pro-Donald Trump,” Natalya Orlando from Londonderry said.
She was a Rand Paul supporter back in 2016 but voted for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections and is “pretty much” locked in for Trump in the 2024 primary. “From what I see here on grassroots, on the ground, it’s very much pro Donald Trump.”
Still, Orlando adds a caveat worth keeping an eye on.
“I personally don’t think he is as strong as he was in 2015. I have people argue with me about that and tell me I am wrong and get mad that I am saying this, but I am going to be honest. … I just don’t see the same enthusiasm that I did in 2016 behind him. … I just don’t see it day in, day out, like I did. I’m hoping I’m wrong,” she said.
Orlando loved when Trump dominated the political conversation with provocative and controversial tweets and sees him as more cautious in the 2024 campaign: “I wish Donald Trump would go back to being Donald Trump.”
Konchek also sees “less now” when asked to compare enthusiasm for Trump compared to the 2016 primary. “All the legal cases,” he says. “Yeah, it did impact him around here.”
Still, Trump remains his faraway first choice for now. Konchek expects to be on the water for the second GOP debate next week and hopes he can catch it on satellite TV. Sometimes, during a work lull, he does check the news.
“I’ll turn on Fox and CNN. … I flip and I watch the football games,” Konchek said. “I watch the weather to tell you the truth. It’s my job – pay attention to the weather.”
CNN’s conversations with voters are anecdotal reporting. But what New Hampshire voters said last week tracks closely with a new survey released by CNN on Wednesdaay.
The CNN/University of New Hampshire poll found Trump with a comfortable lead – winning support from 39% of voters who said they were planning to vote in the GOP primary next year. Vivek Ramaswamy was a distant second at 12%. Other candidates with double-digit support were Haley at 12 %, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 11% and DeSantis at 10 %.
Trump runs strongest in the poll among voters registered as Republicans, while the race is far more competitive among undeclared voters who plan to participate in the GOP primary. But the opposition to Trump is split across the crowded field – the very dynamic that helped him to his New Hampshire win in 2016.
The numbers reinforce two big questions from CNN’s voter conversations.
First, do Trump supporters like Konchek and Orlando stay put? Both said they were strong for Trump but listed DeSantis as a second choice.
And second, does the anti-Trump vote consolidate in any significant way? Burdett, for example, said he hoped to win over fellow veterans to Haley as the primary draws closer. But he acknowledged it’s a tall order.
by tyler | Nov 30, 2023 | CNN, politics
For nearly a decade, US Coast Guard leaders have concealed a critical report that exposed racism, hazing, discrimination and sexual assault across the agency.
The 2015 “Culture of Respect” study, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, documented how employees complained of a “boys will be boys” and “I got through it so can you” culture. Many said they feared they would be ostracized and retaliated against for reporting abuse and that those who did come forward often had their complaints dismissed by supervisors.
Some of the report’s core findings mirrored those of another secret investigation into rapes and sexual assaults at the Coast Guard’s academy. The existence of that probe, which was dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor and completed in 2019, was revealed by CNN earlier this year. That investigation found that serious misconduct had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials, allowing alleged offenders to rise within the ranks of the Coast Guard and other military branches.
Following CNN’s stories on the Fouled Anchor investigation and subsequent Congressional outrage, the Coast Guard’s commandant, Linda Fagan, apologized to cadets and the workforce, and acknowledged that the Coast Guard needed to be more transparent to service members, Congress and the public about such matters.
“Trust and respect thrive in transparency but are shattered by silence,” she wrote.
But under her watch, the Coast Guard continued to keep the report hidden from the public even though she had been asked to release it long before the Fouled Anchor controversy unfolded this summer. And although the Culture of Respect study is more than eight years old, more than a dozen current and recent Coast Guard employees and academy cadets told CNN many of the problems that were identified continue to plague the agency.
In response to questions from CNN this week, a spokesman for Fagan said the commandant plans to make the report public next week as part of her “commitment to transparency,” alongside the findings from a 90-day internal study of sexual assault and harassment within the agency, prompted by the Fouled Anchor reporting.
Coast Guard officials further said in a statement that the Culture of Respect report was not originally intended to be released widely to the workforce, but rather was to be used by senior leaders to inform policy decisions. Officials, however, did not explain why Fagan had not found a way to release the report sooner, particularly since alleged victims or perpetrators were not named in the report.
The document has long been shrouded in secrecy. The copy of the report obtained by CNN states that it was to be stored in “a locked container or area offering sufficient protection against theft, compromise, inadvertent access and unauthorized disclosure.” It was to be distributed only to people on a “need to know basis” and should not be released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, the report stated.
The study, which was conducted internally and included interviews from nearly 300 people from across the organization, highlighted concerns that “blatant sexual harassment of women” and hazing were regularly accepted as just part of the culture. Those accused of discrimination, assault and other misconduct, were allowed to “escape accountability and instead resign, retire, or transfer,” the report found, with some offenders getting rehired by the Coast Guard in civil service positions even after being forced to retire or otherwise leave military service. “We are allowing potentially dangerous members back into society with no punishment,” stated one employee. Others said leaders brushed serious problems ‘under the rug,” and that “senior leaders care about themselves and their careers” instead of “the folks that work for them.”
Authors of the report also noted a common concern among victims of misconduct, who said they believed coming forward would mean putting their careers on the line with little hope of their alleged perpetrators facing serious consequences. “Victims are ostracized, there is a stigma,” one person told interviewers. “No one believes them, no one helps them.”
Even seeking mental health treatment could prove risky, they said, with one interviewee bringing up how the Coast Guard could “involuntarily discharge” employees diagnosed with a mental health condition in the wake of an assault or other traumatic experience on the job.
Examples cited in the report reveal a culture in which service members faced pervasive assault, harassment, sexism, racism and other discrimination. In one case, multiple witnesses saw a supervisor striking a subordinate but nobody came forward to report it because of fear of retaliation.
Improving the Coast Guard’s culture would in some cases require “fundamentally different approaches,” the report concluded. The Coast Guard said this week it had enacted or partially enacted 60 of 129 recommendations, including additional training and additional support services for victims. Nine more are in the works, according to the Coast Guard’s statement agency, and the it “found better ways to achieve the desired result” for 20 others.
The original report had also recommended that a new review be conducted every four years, but that did not happen. The Coast Guard said other studies of the workforce culture have been conducted instead.
Recent government data and records, meanwhile, show that dangerous and discriminatory behavior is still rarely punished at the agency.
Almost half of female service members who reported a case of sexual harassment said the person they complained to took no action, according to a 2021 military survey. Nearly a third said they were punished for bringing up the harassment. Meanwhile, the vast majority of women who allegedly experienced “unwanted sexual contact” said they chose not to report it, often citing concerns about negative consequences or that the process wouldn’t be fair and that nothing would end up coming of their allegations.
Instead, records show how employees found to have committed serious wrongdoing have escaped court martial proceedings or military discharge. As a result, alleged perpetrators avoided criminal records and their retirement benefits were not affected.
A cadet at the Coast Guard Academy accused of sexual assault by two different classmates in the 2019-20 school year, for example, was kicked out of the academy but allowed to enlist in the Coast Guard to pay back the cost of the schooling he had received. Around the same time, a lieutenant commander was allowed to resign in lieu of going to trial for military crimes including sexual assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. Even when another officer was found guilty at a court martial of abusing his seniority to “obtain sexual favors with a subordinate,” he received only a letter of reprimand.
The Coast Guard did not comment on concerns that problems remain at the agency, or the statistics or examples cited by CNN.
The limited access to the Culture of Respect has been a topic of contention for years within the workforce and even Congress.
Fagan was asked about the report last year by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman in a list of questions submitted as part of Congressional testimony. She criticized the agency for not releasing it publicly, saying this was “limiting the workforce and the public’s visibility into the problems that were identified and the recommended solutions.”
Watson Coleman also pushed Fagan, who took the helm of the Coast Guard in June of 2022, to commit to completing a new study and releasing it to the public this time, but Fagan did not directly answer the question – instead citing other recent studies.
More recently, Fagan was asked about releasing the report while attending a faculty meeting at the Coast Guard Academy. She was there following the Fouled Anchor debacle, promising more transparency when a captain who taught at the school called upon her to release the Culture of Respect report, according to multiple people who attended the meeting.
Retired Coast Guard Commander Kimberly Young-McLear, who is a Black lesbian woman, has been perhaps the most vocal in requesting that the report be released.
Her efforts to get the report disseminated stem from her own complaints about “severe and pervasive bullying, harassing, and discriminating behavior” based on her race, gender, sexual orientation and advocacy for equal opportunity in the Coast Guard.
After filing a whistleblower complaint in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General found that she had indeed faced unlawful retaliation. Yet to this day, none of the accused service members from her case have faced any consequences. Young-McLear said she has never received a written apology from Coast Guard leaders despite requests from Congress, and that the years of harassment and lack of accountability have taken a significant mental toll on her.
She said she learned about the existence of the Culture of Respect report while she worked at the Coast Guard’s academy and that she was able to read it when she attended a small summit discussing its findings in 2019. She was outraged when she saw that it exposed the same issues she had reported.
“Had the Coast Guard actually taken the 2015 Culture of Respect report results seriously… then perhaps the years of bullying, harassment, intimidation, and retaliation I endured could have been prevented altogether,” Young-McLear said in Congressional testimony at 2021 hearing on diversity and accountability within the Coast Guard, questioning why the report still hadn’t been made public.
In the last four years, Young-McLear said she has asked for the report to be released more than two dozen times, to various admirals and to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard. A handful of other academy employees have made similar pleas at faculty meetings with the school’s superintendent, she said. “We’ve been saying it until we’ve been blue in the face.”
The Coast Guard’s secrecy and inaction, she says, speak to the very same issues the Culture of Respect report and other examinations have repeatedly raised and show that the agency has failed to hold itself to task in the same way perpetrators have been let off the hook.
“If we don’t hold individuals and institutions accountable,” said Young-McLear, “it is providing a safe haven for abusers and allowing them to rise through the ranks.”
Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.
by tyler | Nov 28, 2023 | CNN, politics
Weeks after the Biden administration laid out the details of a $105 billion national security package that includes funding for both Israel and Ukraine, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would bring the supplemental request to the floor as soon as next week.
But the effort faces steep hurdles in getting through Congress. Among them: The House and Senate are divided over whether to continue sending aid to Ukraine, and Republican lawmakers want to tie the funding to tightening immigration laws.
The supplemental package would provide security support to Israel, bolster Israeli efforts to secure the release of hostages and extend humanitarian aid to civilians affected by the war in Israel and Gaza, according to a White House fact sheet released in October.
It would also provide training, equipment and weapons to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s invasion and to recapture its territory, as well as to protect Ukrainians from Russian aggression, the fact sheet said.
The package would also include additional funds to support US-Mexico border security, including more patrol agents, machines to detect fentanyl, asylum officers and immigration judge teams. Plus, it would provide funding to strengthen security in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan.
President Joe Biden pushed for the funding request in a prime-time Oval Office address to the nation in October. The administration’s prior request for $24 billion in Ukraine aid was not included in a stopgap government funding measure Congress approved in late September.
Here’s what’s in the package, according to the White House:
RELATED: Ukraine aid: Where the money is coming from, in 4 charts
$7.4 billion for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region
This story has been updated with additional information.
by tyler | Nov 21, 2023 | CNN, politics
The first presidential debate is set for mid-September 2024, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Monday, setting up the earliest ever start to the presidential debate schedule.
The bipartisan commission, which has sponsored every general election presidential debate since its founding in 1987, will host three next year, with the first on September 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.
The second debate will be on October 1 at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, and the third will be on October 9 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
There will also be one vice presidential debate on September 25 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Typically, the first debate has been in late September or early October. In 2020, the first debate was on September 29, but amid an uptick in pandemic-era early voting, the Trump campaign called for an additional early September debate.
The schedule tweak also means that the debates will end earlier than they ever have. There will be 27 days between the last debate and Election Day on November 5. That’s compared to 12 days in 2020 and 20 days in 2016.
However, it’s not certain the debates will actually happen.
Last year, the Republican National Committee voted to withdraw from its participation in the commission, with RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saying at the time that commission is “biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms.”
The scheduling change could make it more likely that the eventual Republican nominee participates in the debates, as the lack of a debate before voting started was one of McDaniel’s specific criticisms.
In 2020, the second scheduled presidential debate was canceled after then-President Donald Trump refused to take part in the event when the commission proposed doing it virtually because of coronavirus concerns. Instead, Trump and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden participated in dueling town halls.
While the University of Utah hosted the 2020 vice presidential debate, the other three schools will host debates for the first time, with the commission’s co-chairs noting that Virginia State University will be the first historically Black college or university to host a general election debate.
All of the debates will start at 9 p.m. ET and will run for 90 minutes without commercial breaks, according to the commission’s statement, but details about format and moderators will be announced next year.
To receive an invitation to the debate, candidates need to be constitutionally eligible to serve as president, to be on the ballot on enough states to win a majority of the electoral votes, and to register at least 15% in polls from organizations selected by the commission.
by tyler | Nov 10, 2023 | CNN, politics
They called it “The Signing.” Eleven fake electors for President Donald Trump convened at the state Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 14, 2020. They broadcast themselves preparing to sign the documents, allegedly provided by a Trump campaign attorney, claiming that they were the legitimate representatives of the state’s electoral votes.
By that time, Trump’s loss in the state – by less than 11,000 votes – had already been certified by the state’s Republican governor affirming that Joe Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.
But in the weeks that followed, five of Arizona’s 11 “Republican electors,” as they called themselves, pushed an unusually vocal campaign, compared to other fake electors from states across the country, for Vice President Mike Pence to reject the legitimate Democratic slate of electors.
Instead, they called on Pence to accept them or no electors at all, according to a CNN KFile review of their interviews, actions and comments on social media.
Much attention has been drawn to the fake elector schemes in Georgia and Michigan where local and state authorities charged some participants for election crimes this past summer. But in no other state were there fake electors more active in publicly promoting the scheme than in Arizona.
Now those fake electors find themselves under new legal scrutiny as the Arizona attorney general announced a broad investigation into their actions and their public campaign that could open the electors up to increased legal liability, according to experts who spoke with CNN.
“They were more brazen,” Anthony Michael Kreis, an expert on constitutional law at Georgia State University told CNN. “There is no difficulty trying to piece together their unlawful, corrupt intent because they publicly documented their stream of consciousness bread trail for prosecutors to follow.”
Attorney General Kris Mayes, in an interview with CNN, said she has been in contact with investigators in Michigan and Georgia and the Department of Justice.
“It’s robust. It’s a serious matter,” Mayes, a Democrat, said of her ongoing investigation. “We’re going to make sure that we do it on our timetable, applying the resources that it requires to make sure that justice is done, for not only Arizonans, but for the entire country.”
All 11 electors took part in multiple failed legal challenges, first asking a judge to invalidate the state’s results in a conspiracy theory-laden court case and then taking part in a last-ditch, desperate plea seeking to force Pence to help throw the election to Trump. The cases were dismissed.
Of the 11 fake electors in Arizona, five were the most publicly vocal members advocating the scheme in the state: Kelli Ward, the chairperson of the state party and her spouse, Michael Ward; state Rep. Anthony Kern, then a sitting lawmaker; Jake Hoffman, a newly elected member of the Arizona House; and Tyler Bowyer, a top state official with the Republican National Committee.
Each of these five publicly pushed for the legitimate electors to be discarded by Pence on January 6, 2021. One of the fake electors, Kern, took part in “Stop the Steal” rallies and was photographed in a restricted area on the Capitol steps during the riot at the Capitol.
“The Arizona false electors left a trail here that will surely interest prosecutors,” Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who previously served as the special counsel to the general counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN.
Electors, a part of the Electoral College system, represent the popular vote in each state. When a candidate wins a state, the party’s designated slate of electors gets to participate in the Electoral College process. The electors meet in a ceremonial process and sign certificates, officially casting their vote for president.
CNN reached out to all of the electors, but only received comment from two of them.
The most publicly vocal of the fake electors, Kelli Ward called the group the “true electors,” and provided play-by-play updates on the Arizona Republican Party’s YouTube. Falsely saying the state’s electoral votes were “contested,” even though legal challenges to the count had been dismissed, she urged supporters to call on Arizona’s state legislature to decertify the state’s results.
“We believe our votes are the ones that will count on January 6th,” she said in one interview on conservative talk radio, two days after signing the fake documents.
Ward’s comments were echoed in tweets by her husband, Michael, also an elector and a gadfly in Arizona politics known for spreading conspiracy theories. In a post sharing a White House memo that urged Pence to reject the results from states that submitted fake electors, Michael Ward hinted at retribution for Republicans who failed to act.
“My Holiday prayer is that every backstabbing ‘Republican’ gets paid back for their failure to act come Jan 20th!” he wrote in a tweet on December 22.
Another prominent elector was the RNC Committeeman Bowyer, who on his Twitter account pushed false election claims and conspiracies.
“It will be up to the President of the Senate and congress to decide,” Bowyer tweeted after signing the fake electors documents.
In repeated comments Bowyer declared the decision would come down to Pence.
“It’s pretty simple: The President of the United States Senate (VP) has the awesome power of acknowledging a specific envelope of electoral votes when there are two competing slates— or none at all,” wrote Bowyer in a December 28 tweet.
“We don’t live in a Democracy. The presidential election isn’t democratic,” he added when receiving pushback.
A spokesperson for Bowyer said that he was simply responding to a question from a user on what next steps looked like and maintained that there was precedent for a competing slate of electors.
Bowyer urged action in the lead up to the joint session of Congress on January 6.
“Be a modern Son of Liberty today,” he said late in the morning of January 6 – a post he deleted following the riot at the Capitol.
The spokesperson for Bowyer said he had not directly been contacted by Mayes’s office or the DOJ.
Newly elected state representative Hoffman sent a two-page letter to Pence on January 5, 2021, asking the vice president to order that Arizona’s electors not be decided by the popular vote of the citizens, but instead by the members of the state legislature.
“It is in this late hour, with urgency, that I respectfully ask that you delay the certification of election results for Arizona during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, and seek clarification from the Arizona state legislature as to which slate of electors are proper and accurate,” wrote Hoffman.
In interviews, Hoffman repeatedly argued no electors be sent at all because “we don’t have certainty in the outcome of our election,” and to contest Democrat electors if they were sent.
Then-state Rep. Kern, who lost his seat in the 2020 election, spent his final weeks in office sharing “stop the steal” content and participating in their rallies. He said he was “honored” to be a Trump elector.
“On January 6th, vice President Mike Pence gets a choice on which electors he’s going to choose,” Kern told the Epoch Times in an interview in December.
“There is no president elect until January 6th,” he added.
Kern hadn’t changed his tune in an interview with CNN.
“Why, why would you think alternate electors are a lie?,” Kern said.
Kern repeatedly promoted the January 6, 2021, rally preceding the Capitol riot. Kern was in DC that day and shared a photo from the Capitol grounds as rioters gathered on the steps of the Capitol.
“In DC supporting @realDonaldTrump and @CNN @FoxNews @MSNBC are spewing lies again. #truth,” he wrote in a tweet.
Later Kern was seen in a restricted area of the Capitol steps during the riot. There is no indication he was violent, and he has not been charged with any crime.
