THE LIVYJR FILES

THE HILL

"The government is not only spending trillions — it’s losing trillions"

Opinion by Paul Kupiec and Alex J. Pollock, opinion contributors

23 SEPTEMBER 2022

Lately, no matter if the federal government is spending taxpayer dollars or losing them, it doesn’t mess around with small change.

The government allocated $4.6 trillion just in COVID relief spending, tens of billions of which have been siphoned off by fraud.

And when it comes to losing taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars, we’ve calculated that losses tallied at the Federal Reserve and Department of Education together will top $2 trillion.

No telling how much it will cost when the government losses accumulate on the $370 billion green energy loan and loan guarantee programs included in the Inflation Reduction Act, but if Obama-era green energy loan guarantee costs are any guide, they will be large.

Let’s start with Fed.

By the end of May of this year, we estimated that the Fed’s mark-to-market loss on its huge portfolio of Treasury bonds and mortgage securities had grown to the staggering sum of $540 billion.

The Fed’s losses have continued to build and today are, we now estimate, quickly approaching $1 trillion.

Thus the Fed’s investing losses match the estimated loss the Department of Education is about to foist on U.S. taxpayers should President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan survive legal challenges.

The government spends trillions of taxpayer dollars here and loses trillions more there, but it hardly seems to make the news.

Congress has passed so many new giant spending bills in the past three years, much of it financed on the Fed’s balance sheet, that the public has become desensitized to the magnitude of the taxpayer dollars involved.

Consider this: One million seconds is about 11.5 days; a billion seconds is about 32 years; a trillion seconds is 32,000 years!

In the footnotes of the Fed’s recently released financial statement of the combined Federal Reserve Banks for the second quarter of 2022, you can find this startling disclosure: The mark-to-market loss on the Fed’s system open market account portfolio on June 30 reached $720 billion, $180 billion more than our end-of-May estimate.

Since June 30, interest rates have continued rising and the market value of the Fed’s massive investment portfolio has shrunk even more.

Using the interest rate sensitivity that the market value of the Fed’s portfolio displayed over the first six months of 2022, we estimate that the market value loss since June 30 has increased by $275 billion, bringing the Fed’s total investment portfolio mark-to-market loss to about $995 billion, which is 17 times the Federal Reserve System total capital.

If interest rates continue to rise, as we expect they will, Fed market value losses will easily exceed $1 trillion.

The irony, of course, is that the Fed was buying heavily to build its $8.8 trillion portfolio at top-of-the-market prices the Fed itself created with its extended near zero-interest rate monetary policy.

In addition, the Fed is moving toward generating large operating losses, even if it never sells any of its underwater bonds and mortgage securities, because it must finance its long-term fixed rate assets with floating rate liabilities at ever-higher interest rates.

The federal budget deficit will be bigger still, and possibly for a very long time because it will be short the billions of dollars of revenue the Treasury has been receiving from the Federal Reserve System’s remitted profits.

In the very same eventful quarter that Fed losses reached almost $1 trillion, President Biden issued an executive order (of dubious legality) that ordered the government to fully forgive, at taxpayer expense, hundreds of billions of dollars of defaulted student loans it had made, and to partially forgive over time billions more in unpaid student loan balances at taxpayer expense.

Estimates of the cost to the taxpayer of writing off these loans run up to $1 trillion.

Considered as a lending program, as it was enacted to be, the federal student loan program is nothing if not an utter and egregious failure.

The loss is especially ironic since a decade ago it was claimed that student loans would be a big source of profits for the government and help to offset the cost of Obamacare subsidies.

According to a Congressional Budget Office report in March 2010, the federal government takeover of the student loan program would save $68 billion.

These savings, it was claimed, would provide funding for an additional $39 billion of grants and make available the remainder to theoretically pay for Obamacare subsidies.

A dozen years after the CBO produced this wildly overoptimistic estimate, the federal government student loan program is costing taxpayers $1 trillion, not generating $68 billion in additional revenues.

Considering the federal government’s propensity for producing unreliable forecasts, simultaneously authorizing trillions in new spending, and losing trillions of taxpayer dollars in off-budget government loans and investments, it certainly makes one doubt the acumen of the federal government as a financial manager.

Paul H. Kupiec is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Alex J. Pollock is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... ac3150e2d9

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"Washington Post botches a fact-check to cover for Democrats' abortion extremism"

Opinion by Zachary Faria

23 SEPTEMBER 2022

So often, the “fact-checking” industry in the establishment media serves as an organ of the Democratic Party.

Even then, the Washington Post may have made it a bit too obvious.

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post decided to fact-check claims by Republicans that Democrats support abortion “until the moment of birth,” citing comments from both Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, who used that phrase.

It’s not a particularly difficult fact to check, given that Democrats do support keeping abortion legal at any point in pregnancy and frequently decline or refuse to name a single abortion restriction they would ever support.

But Kessler decided instead to fact-check a claim that was never made.

Kessler claims that the “GOP attacks are disingenuous at best” because “they imply that late-term abortions are common."

He then proceeds to “fact check” how many late-term abortions are performed in the U.S.

In his verdict, Kessler concludes, "The campaign rhetoric suggests such late-term abortions happen frequently."

"The truth is that they do not.”

But again, this is the claim he was supposedly “fact-checking.”

Kessler fabricated a strawman claim to give him an article that is more favorable to Democrats.

He knows that Democrats oppose all abortion restrictions — everyone knows it because they keep saying so — and their stance is out-of-touch with most people's views on the issue.

So he decided to make the issue about the frequency of late-term abortions, which he concludes is at least 10,000 per year.

Speaking of which, that 10,000-a-year number also gives the lie to the claim that late-term abortion is “extremely rare."

It is much more common, for example, than deaths from AR-15s or other so-called “assault weapons.”

All rifles combined — AR-15s included — accounted for only 364 gun homicides in 2019.

(There were 10,258 total gun homicides in 2019, which is almost as many late-term abortions as Kessler decided are “extremely rare”).

According to the Washington Post’s own police shooting database, there have been 7,768 people shot and killed by police since 2015.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats and their media allies from claiming that it is an epidemic.

The Black Lives Matter movement is given national reverence by liberals, including Kessler’s paper, even though only 1,689 of those victims were black and, of that group, only 144 in the last eight years were unarmed.

So police misconduct and shootings with so-called "assault weapons" are both considerably rarer than late-term abortions, which Kessler declared “extremely rare” at 10,000 per year.

Would Kessler ever claim that Democrats are out of line on gun control or police shootings?

Of course he wouldn't.

Today's Democratic Party is essentially a political arm of the legacy media corporations.

But abortion is an issue that makes liberals squeamish, so they must distract from the fact that they, and the Democratic politicians they support, want abortion to be legal through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, with no limits or restrictions whatsoever, and also funded by taxpayers.

This was yet another political attack dressed up as a fact check, and a pretty lazy one at that.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... ac3150e2d9

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"President Joe Biden and the Democrats' white supremacy disinformation"

Christopher Tremoglie

23 SEPTEMBER 2022

President Joe Biden and Democrats have long advanced the idea that white supremacy is a severe and imminent security problem in this country.

There is a klansman in every shadow — it's a common scare tactic by Democrats, who deliberately amplify any case of racial strife, assuming the aggressor is white and the victim is not.

But white supremacist violence isn't actually a widespread problem, according to recent reports from FBI agents.

The imminent dangers of white supremacy are essentially an agenda-driven phenomenon that the Biden administration has overblown.

Analysts and top officials at the FBI are allegedly pressuring agents to find security threats attributable to white supremacy in order to meet the bureau's internal quotas, the Washington Times reported.

The problem is that such threats are actually quite scarce, according to some FBI agents.

"The demand for white supremacy vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy," one agent said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"We have more people assigned to investigate white supremacists than we can actually find."

A new protocol at the FBI elevates any alleged racially motivated crime to a priority, the agent said.

FBI leadership has "already determined that white supremacy is a problem," and the agents are just supposed to provide the incidents necessary to support the predetermined conclusion.

This is no way to do law enforcement.

This is actually not much of a surprise — in fact, it makes sense when you think about it.

The FBI is struggling to find enough white supremacists to sustain its own institutional prejudices because there just aren't enough of them.

And sure, there are some, but it's a far cry from being the widespread problem that plagued society 50 or even 30 years ago.

The scarcity of white supremacist incidents is one reason there are so many hate crime hoaxes that fall apart the moment a legitimate investigation is launched.

The most recent Brigham Young University incident is a great example of this.

So is the story of Jussie Smollett, just like the media-driven pseudo-scandal involving students from Covington Catholic High School.

These all fit a clear and distinctive pattern: There is huge demand for false accusations that white people are uttering slurs or committing hate crimes against nonwhite people.

The supply?

Eh, not so much.

It really shouldn't be surprising that the FBI is struggling to find dangerous racists.

We live in the least racist era in the country's history.

We are 60 years past openly government-sanctioned discrimination, and we have been teaching students of all races and ethnicities that racism is wrong for decades at this point.

American society is more racially diverse than ever before, and racial and ethnic intermarriage is more common than ever before.

Nevertheless, this scandalous accusation warrants a full-fledged investigation.

Federal law enforcement has absolutely no business scaring people baselessly and creating a boy-who-cried-wolf situation, where people become skeptical and hardened against those actual white supremacy hate crimes that do occur.

Assuming that these FBI agents are being truthful, it will be the legitimate victims of hate crimes who suffer the most when such tragedies do happen.

And if these agents' claims are true, then there must be accountability for Biden and the Democrats’ white supremacy disinformation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ ... ac3150e2d9

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"Biden tries happy talk about the 'transitory' economy as elections loom"

Opinion by W. James Antle III

24 SEPTEMBER 2022

As rising interest rates join the highest inflation in decades as a pinch on the public’s wallets, President Joe Biden and his team are rolling out a novel response: telling voters less than two months before the midterm elections that everything is pretty good.

“Inflation rate month to month was just an inch, hardly at all,” Biden said when asked about the 8.3% annual inflation rate and what he could “do better and faster” to bring grocery bills down.

“This is one of the strongest job markets that we have seen on record,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday when asked about falling stock markets.

“So, given the encouraging initial signs that we have seen on inflation and the continued strength of growth in the job market — so we believe in — the transition remains possible,” she said when asked about Federal Reserve projections that the economy will grow “just 0.2% for the entirety of this year and then 1.2% for next year.”

First, inflation was supposed to be transitory.

Now the whole economy is in transition.

Given the low unemployment rates seen under Biden since the COVID business closures wound down and under former President Donald Trump before they started in the first place, there is probably some truth to the argument that the natural state of the economy in general and the jobs market in particular is strong when there is neither a virus nor bad government policies mucking it up.

But we do keep ending up with those two factors interrupting economic growth, which is why the RealClearPolitics polling average shows just 38.7% approving of Biden’s stewardship in this area compared to 57.9% who disapprove.

Biden’s economic approval rating is worse than his approval overall.

Inflation is the economic problem that most vexes Biden and his party in the run-up to November.

Its persistence, despite repeated White House assurances the spike in consumer prices would soon run its course, has forced the Federal Reserve into particularly aggressive interest rate hikes.

These moves will surely slow the economy, which has already experienced two quarters of negative growth, and may lead to a recession.

The White House is publicly as confident that a recession will not happen as they were that inflation would be transitory.

Whether that instills much confidence in anyone else remains to be seen.

The markets, majorities in most economic polling, and even larger majorities when polled about the direction of the country do not seem persuaded.

Inflation is much higher than when Biden took office, the stock market somewhat lower, and real wages have barely budged at all.

That’s why polls showed the public souring on the economy long before a recession seemed likely.

Biden and his deputies have understandably concentrated on the low unemployment as gasoline and food prices soared.

But a recession would touch jobs — unemployment ballooned to 10.8% when inflation was last brought to heel in 1982 — and risk reintroducing voters to terms like stagflation and the misery index.

While some of the worst of that post-inflation hangover occurred under Ronald Reagan, who partnered with Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in stabilizing monetary growth and eradicating stagflation, the next time Biden goes down to Georgia — perhaps to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams — he should stop in to ask Jimmy Carter for a refresher course on what those economic phenomena did to Democrats’ electoral prospects.

All presidents talk up positive economic numbers and downplay negative ones.

Trump certainly did.

But when a president tries to paint a picture of the economy that ordinary voters and consumers do not recognize, it can quickly become untenable.

Ask Dan Quayle how invoking the National Bureau of Economic Research’s conclusion that the 1990-91 recession had ended by the time of the 1992 worked out for the Republican ticket.

Then again, why ask Carter and Quayle?

Biden lived through all this history.

Yet he seems doomed to repeat it.

While the general public experiences some of the highest prices they have endured in 40 years, Biden is talking about inches and “zero” inflation.

An unfamiliar grocery store scanner, or an odd fixation with crudites, is not the only way to appear out of touch.

Biden could luck out, as he once thought he might do on inflation as gas prices began to drop steadily.

A recession isn’t inevitable.

Trust the transition.

Unfortunately, when the White House is talking about soft landings while the Federal Reserve chairman is using the word “pain,” that’s not always the way to bet.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 81a2f265e5

ABC NEWS

"Biden struggles, as does his party, as most Democrats look elsewhere for 2024: POLL"

25 SEPTEMBER 2022

With his party struggling in the midterms, his economic stewardship under fire and his overall job approval under 40%, a clear majority of Democrats in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the party should replace Joe Biden as its nominee for president in 2024.

In the November midterm election ahead, registered voters divide 47%-46% between the Republican and the Democratic candidate in their House district, historically not enough to prevent typical first-midterm losses.

And one likely voter model has a 51%-46% Republican-Democratic split.

Looking two years off, just 35% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favor Biden for the 2024 nomination; 56% want the party to pick someone else.

Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, for their part, split 47%-46% on whether Donald Trump should be their 2024 nominee -- a 20-point drop for Trump compared with his 2020 nomination.

The unpopularity of both figures may encourage third-party hopefuls, though they rarely do well.

In a head-to-head rematch, the poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds a 48%-46% Biden-Trump contest, essentially tied.

Among registered voters, the numbers reverse to 46%-48%.

That’s even while 52% of Americans say Trump should be charged with a crime in any of the matters in which he’s under federal investigation, similar to views after the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

On issues, the survey finds broad opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling eliminating a constitutional right to abortion and a big Democratic advantage in trust to handle the issue.

But there's no sign it's impacting propensity to vote in comparison with other issues: four rank higher in importance and two of them -- the economy, overall, and inflation, specifically -- work strongly in the GOP's favor.

Biden and the midterms

The president's standing customarily is critical to his party's fortunes in midterms -- and Biden is well under water.

Thirty-nine percent of Americans approve of his job performance while 53% disapprove, about where he's been steadily the past year.

Specifically on the economy, with inflation near a 40-year high, his approval rating is 36% while 57% disapprove -- a 21-point deficit.

Each election has its own dynamic but in midterm elections since 1946, when a president has had more than 50% job approval, his party has lost an average of 14 seats.

When the president's approval has been less than 50% -- as Biden's is by a considerable margin now -- his party has lost an average of 37 seats.

There's one slightly better result for Biden: 40% say he's accomplished a great deal or a good amount as president, up from 35% last fall.

This usually is a tepid measure; it's averaged 43% across four presidents in 11 previous polls since 1993.

There's something else the Democrats can hang on to; their current results are better than last November, when the Republicans led in national House vote preferences by 10 percentage points, 51%-41% -- the largest midterm Republican lead in ABC/Post polls dating back 40 years.

It's true, too, that national House vote polling offers only a rough gauge of ultimate seats won or lost, in what, after all, are local races, influenced by incumbency, gerrymandering, candidate attributes and local as well as national issues.

The Democrats are not without ammunition in midterm campaigning: As noted, Americans broadly reject the U.S. Supreme Court ruling eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion -- 29% support it, with 64% opposed.

(Indeed, 53% strongly oppose it, compared with 21% strongly in support.)

And the public trusts the Democratic Party over the Republican Party to handle abortion by a wide 20 points.

In another measure, while 31% say the Democratic Party is too permissive on abortion, many more, 50%, say the GOP is too restrictive.

But if abortion keeps the Republicans from entirely nationalizing the election around the economy, it doesn't defang the public's economic discontent.

Seventy-four percent say the economy is in bad shape, up from 58% in the spring after Biden took office.

The GOP leads the Democrats by 16 points in trust to handle the economy overall and by 19 points in trust to handle inflation.

Equally important, 84% call the economy a top issue in their vote for Congress and 76% say the same about inflation.

Many fewer, 62%, call abortion a top issue.

Other issues also differentiate the parties.

In addition to the economy, the Republicans can be expected to focus on crime in the campaigns' closing weeks; they lead by 14 points in trust to handle it, and it's highly important to 69%.

Democrats, in return, hold a wide 23-point advantage in trust to handle climate change, though it's highly important to far fewer, 50%.

The parties run closely on two other issues -- education and schools, Democrats +6, highly important to 77%; and immigration, essentially an even division, highly important to 61%.

When these are assessed as a combination of importance and party preference, inflation and the economy top the list, followed by abortion, then climate change, crime, education and immigration.

While inflation, the economy and abortion are marquee issues, one stands out for another reason: The Republicans' 14-point advantage in trust to handle crime matches its largest since 1991.

Among independents, it's a whopping 34-point GOP lead.

More broadly, Americans divide evenly, 42-42%, on which party they trust more to cope with the main problems the country faces in the next few years.

This compares with an average 5-point Democratic advantage on this question in more than 100 ABC/Post surveys since 1982.

A comparison with the 2018 midterms is instructive: Then, the public by 55-39% preferred to see Congress controlled by the Democrats, to act as a check on Trump, than by the Republicans, to support Trump's agenda.

Today, 48% prefer a Republican Congress, to act as a check on Biden; 45%, a Democratic one, to support his agenda.

The fact that the Democrats don't trail significantly in views on party control offers them some hope, as does their lead on the abortion issue.

Historically, though, given lower turnout, the Democrats need an advantage, not just parity, in pre-election estimates.

Turnout

Seventy-two percent of registered voters say they're certain to vote in the congressional election in their district; slightly more, 76%, said so in October 2018, a year in which turnout hit a postwar high for a midterm.

In another gauge, 66% say voting in this election is more important to them than in past midterms, the same as in 2018.

Issues don't substantively differentiate intended turnout.

For example, among registered voters who call abortion a top issue, 75% say they're certain to vote, while among those who call the economy a top issue, an almost-identical 74% say they'll vote.

Indeed, on abortion, supporters of the Supreme Court ruling are more apt than its critics to say voting is more important to them in this election than in previous midterms, 73% vs. 64%.

Also, 76% of the ruling's supporters say they're certain to vote, as are 70% of its opponents.

Intention to turn out is influenced by other factors.

Among all adults, it's considerably higher among whites -- 72% certain to vote -- than among Black people (55%) or Hispanics (46%) -- a result that advantages Republicans, whose support is strongest by far among whites.

Groups

Beyond differential turnout, weakness in midterm vote preference among Black and Hispanic voters may compound Democratic concerns.

While Democratic House candidates lead their Republican opponents by 61 points among Black adults who are registered to vote, that compares with at least 79-point margins in exit polls in the past four midterms.

This survey's sample of Hispanics who are registered to vote is too small for reliable analysis, but the contest among them looks much closer than recent Democratic margins -- 40 points in 2018, 27 points in 2014 and 22 points in 2010.

Republican candidates, meanwhile, show some strength among registered voters who don't have a college degree, +11 points in vote preference compared with an even split in the 2018 ABC News exit poll.

A factor: Non-college adults are 8 points more likely than those with four-year degrees to say they're not just concerned but upset about the current inflation rate.

Results among other groups don't provide evidence for the hypothesis that the abortion ruling might boost the Democrats, compared with past years, among some women.

Women younger than 40 support the Democratic candidate in their district by 19 points, but did so by 43 points in the 2018 exit poll.

Suburban women split about evenly between the parties (44-47% Democratic-Republican), about the same as among suburban men (45-50% Democratic-Republican).

Independent women are +5 GOP in vote preference; independent men, essentially the same, +3.

Independents overall -- often a swing voter group -- divide 42-47% between Democratic and Republican candidates.

This is a group that voted Democratic by 12 points in 2018 -- but Republican by 14 points in 2014 (when the GOP won 13 House seats) and by 19 points in 2010 (when the GOP won 63 seats).

Lastly, there are some milestones in Biden's approval rating.

He's at new lows in approval among liberals (68%), Southerners (33%) and people in the middle- to upper-middle income range (34%).

And his strong approval among Black adults -- among the most stalwart Democratic groups -- is at a career-low 31%.

Methodology

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Sept. 18-21, 2022, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults, including 908 registered voters.

Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect.

Partisan divisions in the full sample are 28%-24%-41%, Democrats-Republicans-independents, and 27%-26%-40% among registered voters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 81a2f265e5

YAHOO Finance

"Housing expert: Home sale cancellations 'have spiked tremendously'"

Dani Romero

24 SEPTEMBER 2022

Home sales have been falling through for many sellers since the beginning of the summer, according to one analyst, as many homebuyers are retreating from the housing market.

"June is when many builders will tell you they have seen an inflection in the housing market," Deepa Raghavan, senior equity analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, told Yahoo Finance Live.

"Their metrics started going down from June."

"What we will tell you is July and August, those metrics actually took a turn for the worse."

"In talking to people on the field, it feels like cancellation rates have spiked tremendously."

With the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates up another 75 basis points and fears of a recession on the horizon, more and more homebuyers have become hesitant about purchasing a new home.

New listings of homes for sale slid 15% in the four weeks ending Aug. 21, marking the biggest decline since the start of the pandemic, Redfin reported.

Consequently, that's pushed supply for homes down, as for-sale homes dropped to 0.6% from the previous four-week period.

Sellers are trying boost sales by luring hesitant homebuyers by mortgage rate buydowns, free amenities, and price reductions.

"The builders have just now started to get on the price competition bandwagon," Raghavan said.

"Incentives or discounting have increased tremendously..."

"In some communities, builders are incentivizing or discounting to the tune of 15% of list prices."

"Now in some communities, although it's still at the margins, it could be as high as 25%."

Almost 1 in 4 home builders reported reducing their price this month, up from 19% in August, according to a monthly survey and index from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

Home builder confidence fell three points to its lowest level since May 2014.

Still, the median home sales price for an existing house ticked up 7.7% year over year in August to $389,500, though down from the record high of $413,800 in June.

Meanwhile, all four NAHB regions posted a drop in builder confidence.

Regionally, the decline was led by the West, which saw a 10-point drop, followed by the South, the index slipped 7 points.

The Northeast and Midwest saw a 5-point drop.

Raghavan isn't optimistic that things will improve for homebuyers any time soon, especially due to expectations of more interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

"The buyers definitely have been hurt," Raghavan said.

"The mortgage rates are actually trending higher."

"There's a lot more pressure coming in from the Fed — granted, some of it is priced in."

"But I don't know how we get to see any respite between now and Super Bowl."

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @daniromerotv

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realest ... d8cecbae10

ABC NEWS

"Next Jan. 6 hearing may be 'more sweeping' as members weigh criminal referral: Schiff"

25 SEPTEMBER 2022

Ahead of what could be their final investigative hearing, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, members of the House Jan. 6 committee on Sunday offered a small preview of what is to come as they rapidly approach the end of their timeline.

“We're not disclosing yet what the focus will be."

"I can say that, as this may be the last hearing of this nature -- that is, one that is focused on sort of the factual record -- I think it'll be potentially more sweeping than some of the other hearings," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on CNN’s "State of the Union."

"But it too will be in very thematic," he said of the hearing.

"It will tell the story about a key element of Donald Trump's plot to overturn the election."

"And the public will certainly learn things it hasn't seen before, but it will also understand information it already has in a different context by seeing how it relates to other elements of this plot."

After the committee's vice-chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, said Saturday that she believes the group will move forward unanimously, Schiff agreed and went a bit further when asked if there was going to be an unanimous criminal referral made about the former president's conduct.

(Trump has repeatedly said he did nothing wrong and cast the committee, which includes two Republicans, as partisan.)

“It will be ... my recommendation, my feeling, that we should make referrals," Schiff said.

"But we will get to a decision as a committee, and we will all abide by that decision, and I will join our committee members if they feel differently."

Cheney has also said the committee received around 800,000 pages of communications from the Secret Service in response to a subpoena.

Members of the committee said Sunday they are still going through that information.

While the provided materials are not a substitute for the Jan. 6-related messages that were deleted, they offer some additional context, according to Schiff.

“We are still investigating how that came about [the deleted messages] and why that came about."

"And I hope and believe the Justice Department, on that issue, is also looking at whether laws were broken in the destruction of that evidence," Schiff said on CNN.

"But we do have a mountain of information that we need to go through."

"But I think it's fair to say that it won't be a complete substitute for some of the most important evidence, which would have been on those phones."

Asked about former committee adviser Denver Riggleman’s recent suggestion that “the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter's phone” during the attack on the Capitol last year -- and if he viewed such a development as significant to the investigation -- Schiff downplayed the comment.

"I can't comment on the particulars."

"I can say that each of the issues that Mr. Riggleman raised during the period he was with the committee, which ended quite some time ago, we looked into."

"And one of the things that has given our committee credibility is we've been very careful about what we say, not to overstate matters,” Schiff said, adding, "Without the advantage of the additional information we've gathered since he left the committee, it poses real risks to be suggesting things."

"So, we have looked into all of these issues."

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and was asked about the likelihood that the Jan. 6 committee will have testimony from Ginni Thomas and Newt Gingrich before Wednesday’s hearing.

“I doubt that."

"But I think that there is an agreement in place with Ginni Thomas to come and talk and I know the committee is very interested,” Raskin said, referring to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, a noted conservative activist who was in touch with Trump's team as he pushed to overturn the 2020 results.

Raskin said that those testimonies -- once they are given -- will be included in the committee's final report if the hearings have already concluded.

He was also asked if that report will be finished by the midterm elections.

“I don't know whether it will be done then, but our commitment is to get it done by the end of this Congress [by January]," Raskin said.

"The House of Representatives, unlike the Senate, ends every two years."

"A completely new Congress comes in."

"So that’s the end of our lease on life and we have to get it out to the people.”

Pressed further on the amount of work still left for them to do, Raskin pledged that the committee will “make sure our materials are made public and available for the future, and we're going to preserve them."

"We're not going to allow them to be destroyed.”

The committee chair, Bennie Thompson, told reporters last week that the hearings were wrapping up.

"Unless something else develops, this hearing, at this point, is the final hearing."

"But it's not in stone because things happen," Thompson, D-Miss., said then.

He promised "substantial footage" of the riot and "significant witness testimony" that hadn't previously been released.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... b9b7a40c7e

FOX NEWS

"Jen Psaki says Democrats know 'they will lose' if midterms are a referendum on President Biden"

Hanna Panreck

25 SEPTEMBER 2022

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that the Democrats know "they will lose" if the midterm elections end up being a referendum on President Biden.

While discussing Democratic and Republican midterm messaging, NBC's Chuck Todd played an ad by the Arizona Democratic Party focused on Kari Lake that tied together abortion rights and crime.

Todd said that he wasn't sure if the ad was really effective or if they were trying too hard to tie the two issues together.

"Look, I think that Democrats, if the election is about who is the most extreme, as we saw, you know Kevin McCarthy touch on there with Marjorie Taylor Greene, I’ll say her name, sitting over his left side, then they're going to win."

"If it is a referendum on the president, they will lose, and they know that," Psaki said.

She added that Democrats also know that they are vulnerable when it comes to crime.

Psaki said Republicans were throwing a lot of money behind ads focusing on crime and Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman.

"That’s where they see his vulnerability," Psaki, who stepped down as White House press secretary in May, said.

"So yes, the economy is hanging over everything, but you have do have look at state-by-state factors and crime is a huge issue in the Pennsylvania race," she said.

Later in the episode, Todd asked Psaki about being in the White House and about how Biden and others purposefully did not say former President Donald Trump's name.

"You don't say their names, it's like Beetlejuice, somehow it won't show up if you don't say their name."

"Now he leans into it more."

"Why?" Todd asked.

Psaki said that while she didn't work for Biden's campaign, Biden ran "aggressively" on the claim that Trump wasn't fit for office.

She added that there was a "strategic decision" made when he came into office and that was no longer "what the public wanted."

"But now it’s election season again."

"He did a lot of what he wanted to do, much of it in a bipartisan way, getting legislation done."

"And now the gloves are off."

"He's got to maintain control of at least one House of Congress," Psaki said.

House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy. R-Calif., unveiled the GOP's "Commitment to America" plan on Friday, which includes policies focused on combating inflation and illegal immigration.

Democrats, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, criticized the agenda.

"House Republicans are doubling down on an extreme MAGA agenda: to criminalize women’s health care, to slash seniors’ Medicare (including with the repeal of the lower drug prices for seniors in the Inflation Reduction Act), and to attack our democracy," Pelosi wrote in a press release.

Biden said the GOP's plan was "a series of policy goals with little or no detail."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... b9b7a40c7e

THE WASHINGTON POST

"Ian strengthens on perilous path toward Florida"

Matthew Cappucci, Hamza Shaban, Jason Samenow, Dan Diamond

25 SEPTEMBER 2022

Tropical Storm Ian is gaining strength as it continues to churn through the northwestern Caribbean.

It is set to slam western Cuba before turning north and aiming toward Florida later this week.

Ian is now forecast to become a hurricane by early Monday and a major hurricane on Tuesday as the tropical storm enters the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.

The storm is projected to approach the coast of Florida as a hurricane late Thursday into early Friday, although its landfall location, strength and timing are still uncertain.

Florida is under a state of emergency, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) expanded from two dozen counties to the entire state Saturday afternoon, highlighting the sense of danger and potential for destruction.

“The impacts will be broad throughout the state of Florida,” DeSantis said during a briefing on Sunday morning.

“Expect heavy rains, strong winds, flash flooding, storm surge, and even isolated tornadoes,” the governor added, saying that residents in the hardest-hit areas should brace for fuel disruptions, power outages and even evacuation orders.

The Florida National Guard has also activated 2,500 Guard members, DeSantis said, adding that “if there’s a need for more, then we can do more.”

While the storm is most likely to hit Florida’s west coast or Panhandle regions, the state’s east coast could see flooding, DeSantis said, although he cautioned that models were still predicting a range of scenarios.

Some areas are already taking precautions.

In the Tampa Bay region, officials announced that schools would begin shutting down Monday and stay closed through at least Thursday.

Officials in both Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, and Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, ordered the closures because some school buildings would be converted into emergency shelters if evacuation orders are issued.

Pinellas County said all of its schools would be closed on Tuesday, with some schools releasing students early on Monday.

What to know about the latest hurricane threat to Florida

Computer models are divided on whether Ian will come ashore along Florida’s west coast Wednesday into Thursday or nearer the Panhandle on Thursday into Friday.

Uncertainty “in the long-term track and intensity forecast is higher than usual,” the National Hurricane Center wrote Sunday.

“Regardless of Ian’s exact track and intensity, there is a risk of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, and heavy rainfall along the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle by the middle of the week.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) said his state will activate its emergency operations center Monday, and he encouraged residents to take precautions if the storm continues to intensify.

“Though models suggest it will weaken before making landfall on Thursday, and its ultimate route is still undetermined, Ian could result in severe weather damage for large parts of Georgia,” Kemp’s office said in a release on Sunday.

Tropical storm conditions could reach South Florida as soon as early Wednesday and northern Florida by Thursday morning.

Ian is predicted to peak as a 130-mph Category 4 hurricane west of the Florida Straits on Tuesday, which would make it the strongest September hurricane to pass through the Gulf of Mexico since Rita in 2005.

But the storm’s track and intensity are uncertain as it approaches the U.S. mainland.

Tropical storm warnings were issued Sunday night for the lower Florida Keys.

President Biden on Saturday approved an emergency declaration for the state, which authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster-relief efforts and provided more federal funding.

DeSantis said that he was “thankful” for the Biden administration’s early response.

Status of Ian on Sunday

At 11 p.m. Sunday, Ian was centered 140 miles south of Grand Cayman, while churning to the northwest at 13 mph.

Its peak winds were 65 mph, a 20 mph increase since Sunday afternoon.

The storm will be moving over exceptionally warm waters, which are expected to fuel its intensification.

Hurricane warnings are up in Grand Cayman and western Cuba as the storm progresses to the west and northwest.

The greater Havana area is under a tropical storm warning.

Forecast for Ian through Tuesday

The storm is expected to become a hurricane by Monday and reach major hurricane strength by Tuesday as it approaches western Cuba, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Major hurricanes are Category 3 or above storms, packing sustained winds above 111 mph.

At greatest risk will be Cuba’s Guanahacabibes Peninsula, a roughly 60-mile-long sparsely populated strip of land at the western tip of the island nation.

The Roncali Lighthouse, dating to 1849, has stood sentry at the peninsula’s westernmost point and weathered dozens of hurricanes.

The NHC estimates that a 9- to 14-foot storm surge could sweep ashore, primarily near and east of the center, where onshore winds push water against the coast.

The surge represents a storm-driven increase in water levels above ordinarily dry ground.

Western Cuba also faces 6 to 10 inches of rain and locally as much as 16 inches, potentially triggering flash flooding and mudslides.

Heavy rainfall is also forecast over Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

Forecast for Ian beyond Tuesday

The storm’s path is still uncertain, but it appears headed to make landfall between the west coast of Florida and the Panhandle region between late Wednesday and early Friday.

Even before then, the Florida Keys and southern and western Florida are expected to get 2 to 4 inches of rain, with up to 6 inches possible through Wednesday evening.

The uncertainty in the forecast stems from an approaching trough, or dip in the jet stream, over the northern United States.

Ian may or may not hitch a ride.

If it does, it would be scooped north and east more quickly and come ashore as a more serious hurricane in the Florida peninsula on Wednesday.

If it “misses” its ride, so to speak, it will meander northward, probably arriving in the northern Gulf of Mexico, when there will be an uptick in disruptive wind shear, or changing winds with height, and dry air.

In that scenario, weakening would occur before the storm makes landfall closer to Friday morning, but Ian could still come ashore as a Category 1 hurricane.

In this case, its greatest hazard would shift from destructive winds and more toward storm surge.

Because of the shape of the sea floor in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, even low-end hurricanes can bring a dangerous storm surge.

As the storm is drawn north late in the week into the weekend, the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic may also see heavy rainfall, along with a few tornadoes as the high-altitude spin of the storm passes, even after it loses hurricane status.

Sudden uptick in Atlantic storm activity

Ian is the sixth named storm to form this month, coming on the heels of a record-quiet August, during which not a single named storm formed.

According to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Philip Klotzbach, only eight other Atlantic hurricane seasons, including each year between 2018 and 2021, have featured the formation of six or more named September storms.

Atmospheric scientists note that there does not exist a link between the number of named storms and human-induced climate change.

However, those that form are expected to be wetter and more intense, and will be more prone to rapid intensification, because of rising ocean temperatures.

Tim Craig contributed to this report.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topst ... b9b7a40c7e

BUSINESS INSIDER

"Gavin Newsom says he is definitely not running for president in 2024 after his 'vulnerable' 2021 recall"

kbalevic@insider.com (Katie Balevic)

25 SEPTEMBER 2022

* California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he won't run for president in 2024, despite rumors.

* Newsom survived a recall election in 2021 when over 60% of voters chose not to recall him.

* At the Texas Tribune Festival, Newsom said the recall was a "sobering" experience.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom insisted he will not run for president in 2024, in part due to his close recall election last year.

Newsom was asked if he was considering running for president in the next election during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday.

"Not happening, no, no, not at all," Newsom said.

"I've said it in French, Italian."

"I don't know German."

"I mean, I cannot say it enough."

"But thank you."

"It's humbling."

"It is sweet."

"It's a nice thing to be asked."

"I mean it, and I never trust politicians, so I get why you keep asking."

Rumors have swirled over who could be the potential Democratic presidential nominee in the event that President Joe Biden does not seek reelection.

As a leading Democrat known for his sharp criticisms of Republicans, Newsom has been considered by others as a presidential contender.

"California, I mean, what a gift," Newsom said Saturday.

"Forty million Americans strong."

"We talk about laboratories of democracy, and we're able to scale ideas that have impact all across this country and around the world."

"I'm very proud of that privilege, and I don't take it for granted one day."

The first-term governor survived a recall election in 2021 when over 60% of voters opted not to recall him, Business Insider previously reported.

He is expected to win his reelection this November against Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle.

"I was almost recalled last year."

"They went after me hard."

"That's sobering, and that wakes you up."

"How vulnerable, how fast this is, how people come and go, and you know, people cut you off," Newsom said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... b9b7a40c7e