Democrats seek revenge after Opec+ cuts oil production ahead of midterms – live | US politics

While taking the Senate is a steeper hill to climb, Republicans have a much better shot of winning a majority in the House of Representatives, where they would have the power to launch impeachment proceedings.

The bigger question is: who would they impeach? And what for?

While some Democrats believe they’ll go straight for Biden himself, CNN reports that a campaign has emerged to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom the GOP complains is at fault for not stopping the flow of migrants and asylum seekers across the southern border with Mexico. Indeed, Republican lawmakers have been campaigning on the border issue in the upcoming midterms, and impeaching Mayorkas could give them the ability to say they’ve made good on that promise, though launching the procedure against a cabinet secretary has only been done once before in American history.

However, the strategy is not without risks, and it’s unclear if enough Republican House lawmakers would back it, or if their leader Kevin McCarthy is on board. Here’s what CNN has to say:

GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said Republicans “should focus on policy” and “leave some of the other more emotional topics for another day.”

“The risk is if people lose faith in the ability of Congress to even do its basic function,” Womack said of voter blowback for impeaching Mayorkas. “The people that I talk to from all stripes tell me they want a Congress that works – not a Congress that is preoccupied with kind of revenge-type agendas. Because then a lot of other things (that) need to happen don’t get to happen. And then that hurts the country.”

So far, McCarthy has carefully sidestepped impeachment questions, insisting Republicans are not going to pre-determine the outcome but are willing to go wherever the facts and the law lead them.

Yet McCarthy has not shut the door on the idea either, particularly when it comes to Mayorkas. And when pressed by CNN on whether Mayorkas is vulnerable to impeachment in a GOP-led House, he replied: “What happens at the border is above everything else.”

Back to Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia was on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show today, and responded to reports he paid for an abortion for a woman he also had a child with.

Here’s what he had to say:

The story is particularly worrying for Walker, since he said he would support a national ban on abortion without exceptions, if elected.

The Washington Post has a report out today quantifying the massive number of 2020 election deniers standing as Republicans for state and federal offices nationwide, and concluding that many will win their races in November.

The report finds 299 GOP politicians standing for House, Senate or statewide office who baselessly believe Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election. Of these, 174 are running in seats considers safe for Republicans, while 51 are in close races.

Here’s more from the Post:

The implications will be lasting: If Republicans take control of the House, as many political forecasters predict, election deniers would hold enormous sway over the choice of the nation’s next speaker, who in turn could preside over the House in a future contested presidential election. The winners of all the races examined by The Post — those for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, Senate and House — will hold some measure of power overseeing American elections.

Many of these candidates echo the false claims of former president Donald Trump — claims that have been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by myriad officials and courts. Experts said the insistence on such claims, despite the lack of evidence, reflects a willingness among election-denying candidates to undermine democratic institutions when it benefits their side.

The Post’s count — assembled from public statements, social media posts, and actions taken by the candidates to deny the legitimacy of the last presidential vote — shows how the movement arising from Trump’s thwarted plot to overturn the 2020 election is, in many respects, even stronger two years later. Far from repudiating candidates who embrace Trump’s false fraud claims, GOP primary voters have empowered them.

The issue has dominated in key battlegrounds. In Warren, Mich., on Saturday, Trump campaigned for three statewide candidates, all of them deniers: Tudor Dixon for governor, Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state.

“I don’t believe we’ll ever have a fair election again,” Trump told the crowd. “I don’t believe it.”

The Post’s report characterizes election denying as essentially a form of corruption and a political tactic used to win races. Larry Jacobs, a professor studying legislative politics at the University of Minnesota, warns the proliferation of election deniers in Congress could cause chaos, both for this year’s election and the 2024 presidential race.

“This is no longer about Donald Trump. This is about the entire electoral system and what constitutes legitimate elections. All of that is now up in the air,” Jacobs said.

When it comes to the midterms, one of the most important races is taking place in Georgia, where Democratic senator Raphael Warnock is fighting to keep his seat in a state that only narrowly elected him last year. Herschel Walker is his Republican opponent, but as the Associated Press reports, he’s been engulfed in a scandal over how his personal life has clashed with his stance on abortion:

A woman who said Herschel Walker paid for her abortion in 2009 is the mother of one of his children, according to a new report, undercutting the Georgia Republican Senate candidate’s claims he didn’t know who she was.

The Daily Beast, which first reported the abortion, said it had agreed not to reveal details of the woman’s identity.

Walker, who has expressed support for a national abortion ban without exceptions, called the abortion allegation a “flat-out lie”, threatened a lawsuit against the outlet and said he had no idea who the woman might be.

On Wednesday night, the Beast revealed that the woman – who was not named – was so well known to Walker that, according to her, they conceived another child years after the abortion. She decided to continue with the pregnancy, though she noted that Walker, as during the earlier pregnancy, expressed that it wasn’t a convenient time for him, the outlet reported.

Why are three House Democrats proposing the United States remove its troops and weapons systems from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates? Because those countries are on the side of Russia, they argue.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s drastic cut in oil production, despite President Biden’s overtures to both countries in recent months, is a hostile act against the United States and a clear signal that they have chosen to side with Russia in its war against Ukraine,” Tom Malinowski, Sean Casten and Susan Wild wrote. “Both countries have long relied on an American military presence in the Gulf to protect their security and oil fields. We see no reason why American troops and contractors should continue to provide this service to countries that are actively working against us. If Saudi Arabia and the UAE want to help Putin, they should look to him for their defense.”

Their rhetoric lines up with what White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said yesterday when she declared that the two million barrel per-day cut in oil production makes it “clear that OPEC+ is aligning with Russia.” While she didn’t call for a withdrawal in military aid, she did say that the cut would drive energy prices higher right as many poor countries were struggling with inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The broader political worry for the White House is that it will cause gas prices to spike again at home, an Americans will react by voting against Democrats in the 8 November midterms.

As for the bill’s prospects, consider a similar effort from Republican senator Bill Cassidy introduced shortly after Covid-19 forced the shutdown of the US economy in early 2020. He proposed tariffs on Saudi oil imports and the removal of US troops from the country if Riyadh didn’t back efforts for a deep slash in Opec+ production as global demand collapsed and prices plummeted. While the bill went nowhere, the three Democrats argue it worked in getting the oil cartel to agree to a bigger cut – though then-president Donald Trump also reportedly played a role in convincing the Saudis.

Democrats seek revenge after Saudi-led Opec+ slashes oil production ahead of midterms