Voted against Sandy aid

DeSantis voted against Sandy aid a decade ago. Now his state needs the help.

Florida’s Republicans have a complicated relationship with disaster aid.

By EMMA DUMAIN

Ron DeSantis had just been sworn in as a member of the House in 2013 when he voted against sending $9.7 billion in disaster relief to New York and New Jersey, two states still reeling from the damage of Hurricane Sandy.

“I sympathize with the victims,” the Florida Republican said at the time, but objected to what he called Congress’ “put it on the credit card mentality” when it came to government spending.

Now, a day after Hurricane Idalia pummeled Florida less than a year since Hurricane Ian’s destruction, DeSantis is not objecting to federal borrowing when it’ll help his disaster-stricken state. As Florida’s governor — and a 2024 White House contender — he is in regular contact with President Joe Biden as the state seeks dollars from Washington to rebuild from the storm wreckage, assist rescue efforts and aid displaced residents.

This is part of a tradition: Florida Republicans have a history of supporting government assistance for their state’s natural disasters while frequently rejecting broader packages designed to lessen the impact of these emergencies — torn between their constituents’ priorities and their party’s position on reining in the federal debt.

DeSantis’ vote a decade ago was based on his opposition to the Sandy package’s “additional pork spending,” a spokesperson for his presidential campaign said Thursday. Florida GOP lawmakers in both chambers frequently release similar statements after voting against disaster money, citing the country’s sky-high deficit as the determining factor.

But one Florida Republican calls that position increasingly untenable in a state that so frequently finds itself at ground zero for catastrophic hurricanes, just one of the litany of disasters that scientists expect to become worse as the planet warms.

“It’s always understandable why people, in theory, would vote against federal aid when it doesn’t affect them,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Miami-area GOP member of Congress. “But when you live in Florida, that position is unsustainable.”

DeSantis probably “regrets” taking that vote on Sandy, he added. “He is now in a position of requesting federal aid for hurricane relief for the second year in a row. And these are major asks. These are billions upon billions of dollars.”

It’s been almost 11 years since then-New York Republican Rep. Peter King dared his GOP colleagues to meet their “moral obligation” to help natural disaster-torn communities — a plea that 179 House Republicans, including DeSantis, ultimately rejected.

But DeSantis — as a Republican and a Floridian — is not unique in his relationship to federal disaster spending. The state’s congressional delegation has a history of idiosyncratic voting patterns on legislation that would seek to respond to, or mitigate the impacts of, extreme weather events that are direct results of the worsening climate crisis.

Republicans from Florida have repeatedly voted to send federal disaster relief to their own state, at times vocally pushing for it.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), for instance, has said he will demand “an immediate vote” next week on a bill to refill the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s coffers.

“I will not allow Washington to continue playing games with disaster aid and the lives of those needing our help,” Scott said in a statement.

More broadly, Florida Republicans in Congress have for the last decade largely toed the party line on climate politics, refusing to support legislation that could be perceived as hostile to the oil and gas industry while embracing measures that would help their state in more immediate and tangible ways respond to climate change.

Curbelo predicts it will soon become harder for Florida Republicans to cherry-pick what they are willing to accept and sacrifice.

While Florida has always experienced dangerous hurricanes, he said, it has become especially vulnerable to violent storms, sea-level rise, coastal erosion and heat waves.

“The state is under a lot of stress in terms of insurance issues,” said Curbelo, who spent his two terms in Congress working to push his party to acknowledge the climate crisis.

“Markets are not forgiving; they expose risk and weakness. … With every storm, with every major flooding event, the pressure on Florida members to support a broad climate policy agenda is going to grow.”

Lost ‘bipartisan tradition’

The fight over Sandy funding marked a shift in the debate over what responsibility members of Congress owe one another when faced with natural disasters.

As lawmakers were preparing to adjourn the 112th Congress in the first days of January 2013 after an extended legislative session to address the “fiscal cliff,” House GOP leaders abruptly canceled a vote on Sandy aid amid outcry from conservatives who didn’t want to spend more government money.

After King and other Republicans revolted — and shamed their leadership — a vote was convened swiftly upon reconvening for the 113th Congress on Jan. 15.

The relief bill was passed, 241-180. All but three Florida Republicans voted “no” on the grounds it spent too much money — also DeSantis’ argument at that time.

Jeremy Redfern, a DeSantis press secretary, told POLITICO’s E&E News that “we have no time for politics or pettiness” when asked if the governor wishes he had voted differently in 2013.

“As a member of Congress, DeSantis supported emergency disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy, but he did not support the additional pork spending that ended up in the final relief bill,” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for DeSantis’ presidential campaign, added in a separate statement. (Republicans at the time complained that the Sandy package continued to fund a depleted National Flood Insurance Program with money the government didn’t have.)

“As governor,” Griffin said, “DeSantis will of course marshal all available resources (state and federal) to aid those in need during recovery.”

Dan Weiss, a veteran climate advocate, observed that “Sandy was the turning point” in what came next for how congressional Republicans have since approached disaster relief funding votes.

“It used to be extremely bipartisan, like so many other things involving money,” he said. “Peter King came from the bipartisan tradition of providing disaster relief to states based on need.”

Florida Republicans have, by and large, gone on to support sending money to avert weather catastrophes, but typically only if their own state was included — and only as stand-alone propositions, not as part of larger spending packages.

The state’s House GOP delegation, for example, unanimously supported an $81 billion disaster aid package in December 2017 to help Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and California rebuild after a series of natural disasters that year, including Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria.

But the delegation split in February 2018, when that disaster money was folded into a larger government spending bill then-President Donald Trump eventually signed into law.

At that point, five Florida Republicans in the House voted against the bill while 11 supported it, siding with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and then-Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in the other chamber.

In 2019, all but two Florida Republicans in the House backed legislation that would, among other things, mitigate the damage done to their state from Hurricane Michael. In the Senate, Rubio and Scott, who had by then unseated Nelson, voted “yes,” too.

Then came Hurricane Ian in 2022. Congress included language in the bill allowing FEMA to tap $19 billion to respond to a slew of natural disasters, including Ian. Every Florida Republican in the House voted against it. Scott opposed it in the Senate; Rubio didn’t vote.

Looming ‘political liability’

Florida Republicans have rallied around other policies to protect their state’s specific environmental interests.

They have continued a time-honored tradition of joining with Democrats to oppose oil drilling in their state’s portion of the Gulf of Mexico, an activity some of them argue could hamper activities at nearby military bases and which all of them see as a risk to the peace, health and safety of Florida communities. But they’ve also criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to limit the practice in other states.

GOP members of the Florida congressional delegation have also typically supported major federal investments to restore the Everglades, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States.

At the same time, they have not fought back against specific development and mining projects in the area that the Environmental Protection Agency and Florida conservation groups say could threaten endangered species and fragile ecosystems.

Ultimately, said League of Conservation Voters vice president of political affairs Craig Auster, these positions won’t make a difference if Congress isn’t supporting policies to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’re not going to protect Florida coastal communities, and we’re not going to protect the Everglades, if we aren’t addressing climate change,” Auster said, “because climate change is the biggest threat to both of those things.”

There have been some occasions since 2013 when Florida Republicans in Congress engaged with Democrats on legislation that would have made targeted, long-lasting contributions to disaster preparedness and resiliency.

In 2019, the House passed the “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act,” which would have required that all post-disaster rebuilding projects funded by certain federal dollars comply with the newest construction codes, which account for the realities of climate change — elevating buildings and designing structures to withstand intense winds, for instance.

The measure advanced in a 290-118 vote, with five of the 71 Republicans favoring it hailing from the Florida delegation. But it has since languished after the Senate failed to take it up.

Yet in the fall of 2013, the Obama administration got little GOP buy-in when it established the Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience to advise on how the federal government could respond to the needs of communities at the forefront of the climate crisis.

Supporters had hoped Republicans would get involved, but not a single GOP federal or statewide elected official joined — not even then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Weiss noted, “even though his state suffered extensive damage due to Superstorm Sandy.”

Auster, the League of Conservation Voters vice president, sided with Curbelo: For Florida Republicans, and DeSantis, it’s going to become harder to stay on the sidelines.

“It’s all well and good to say, ‘the government shouldn’t be fighting climate change,’ until your big insurance companies are going to stop providing insurance for unsafe places, and if people can’t get help when their homes are destroyed, and when people are losing their lives to wildfires and floods and hurricanes,” Auster said.

Paralyzed

Why Is Nobody Doing Anything About Mitch McConnell?

Washington is paralyzed as the Senate minority leader freezes up.

By JACK SHAFER

For the second time in about a month, the heavy gears and winches that drive Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s brain seized up in front of news cameras. While taking questions from reporters on Wednesday in Covington, Ky., and asked about running for reelection in 2026, the top Republican powered down for 30 seconds as if an unseen hand had removed the lithium ion battery from his chassis. Attempts by an aide to reboot him seemed to succeed as he muttered, “OK,” and gave brief answers before retiring from the scene.

Mitch McConnell

The incident paralleled a similar one on Capitol Hill at a late July presser when discussing legislation. Without warning or punctuation, the scaffolding of speech collapsed on the senator, forcing him to abandon the podium. To be clear, neither of these shutdowns were like the ones we all experience — the loss of a conversation thread, the failure to find the right word or term of art to express an idea. In both cases, McConnell simply went offline, requiring rescue by his supporters. His aides told the press Wednesday that the senator had “felt momentarily lightheaded,” mirroring Mitch’s own postmortem to his July fade-to-black when he returned to face reporters and said, “I’m fine.”

If McConnell were a bus driver or broadcaster or teacher engaged in any other occupation that, like serving as a legislative leader, demands real-time responses, he would have been benched pending a medical examination. Instead, Mitch’s verbal stoppage has been met with paralysis by the political order, which seems incapacitated by his condition. The president and others have voiced their “concerns” for McConnell’s episodes, offering verbal placeholders for the stark questions that demand answers. Instead, apart from the barest of acknowledgments that McConnell will consult a physician, and the prospect of an internal Senate GOP discussion, it’s the Washington establishment that is acting lightheaded and professing that things are fine.

These aren’t the 81-year-old senator’s only recent medical misadventures. He suffered a fall and concussion in March that sent him to the hospital for treatment. In a 2019 tumble at his Louisville, Ky., home, he fractured his shoulder. In October 2020, when reporters noticed his bruised and bandaged hands, he fended off their questions with what has become his boilerplate. “I can just tell you that I’m just fine,” he said. At that time, McConnell aides, aware of the senator’s perambulatory instability, were warning journalists not to get underfoot of the GOP leader as he walked the halls of the Senate lest they prompt another spill.

Older people fall. It’s a fact. President Joe Biden, 80, tripped on a sandbag in June. Older people experience mental lapses. That’s a fact, too. Neither a fall nor a lapse in isolation constitutes a crisis. But McConnell is not your standard-issue example of a stumbling elder who can be patched up and returned to service with little inconvenience to his peers. He’s a leader of the U.S. Senate — brokering judicial and Cabinet appointments, stewarding legislation, mobilizing his party to compete in the 2024 elections, not to mention representing Kentucky. Even a layman could assert McConnell needs advanced treatment and rest without being accused of practicing medicine without a license. And yet, only muffled words of interest in McConnell’s health by other senators have been sounded, mostly upbeat. “After he fell, obviously he was a little bit groggy when he first got back. But he’s picked up a lot more energy since then,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in July.

McConnell isn’t even the leading example of an aged legislator whose diminished capacity is ignored by the Senate so he can maintain his plush seat of power. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) appears to be in rapid physical and mental decline — and her supporters have, at least initially, concealed the severity of her health battles. In July, the 90-year-old was so out of it she had to be coached by Democratic colleague Sen. Patty Murray to say “aye” in a committee meeting. Feinstein’s condition has received more attention than McConnell’s, with a half-dozen members of the House calling on her to resign. But for senators, the Feinstein story is like a reel from the black comedy The Death of Stalin, as the senators remain as timid as the Politburo members gathered around Joseph Stalin’s deathbed who refused to replace him until he was absolutely cold.

What the Senate needs is not a legal measure like the 25th Amendment, which governs the replacement of a mentally or physically faltering president. Nor would age limits for senators, which would reduce the body’s gerontological problem, automatically remedy the current state. People under 65 can have debilitating strokes or other mentally sapping medical problems. Neither would a medical board empowered to certify the mental and physical health of legislators do the trick. Some of us barely want to heed our doctors’ advice. Who wants to assign them to review who can serve in Congress?

What the Senate needs is some spine. Instead of playing the supportive colleague for other legislators who struggle to do their jobs or otherwise turn their backs on the infirm and doddering, senators need to use their powers of persuasion, their parliamentary skills at replacing leadership and old-fashioned jawboning to persuade the mentally muddled or seriously ill to remove themselves from the pinnacles of power and even, if necessary, to resign.

Things aren’t fine in the U.S. Senate. Nobody should be considered irreplaceable, even if it causes a political mess. And the preferred means of departing the Senate shouldn’t be feet first. To insist otherwise is yet another symptom of lightheadedness.

Split House and Senate

Schumer moves to split House and Senate Republicans ahead of potential shutdown

“We cannot afford the brinkmanship or hostage-taking we saw from House Republicans earlier this year,” Schumer wrote.

By RACHAEL BADE and MATT BERG

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he’d blame House Republicans for any government shutdown if they fail to pass spending legislation by the end of the month.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent Friday morning, Schumer sought to drive a wedge between House and Senate Republicans — offering praise for both Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and ranking Republican Susan Collins (R-Maine), a lawmaker with whom Schumer is often at loggerheads.

“We cannot afford the brinkmanship or hostage-taking we saw from House Republicans earlier this year when they pushed our country to the brink of default to appease the most extreme members of their party,” Schumer wrote.

The chamber passed all 12 appropriations bills out of committee on a bipartisan basis, he boasts. That drew an implicit contrast to the House, where Speaker Kevin McCarthy has broken faith on his spending caps deal with President Joe Biden, and is instead pushing partisan proposals that don’t have a prayer of becoming law.

“The only way to avoid a shutdown is through bipartisanship, so I have urged House Republican leadership to follow the Senate’s lead and pass bipartisan appropriations bills,” the majority leader continued.

Schumer’s letter comes just a day after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell underscored the need for bipartisanship to keep the government open in a Kentucky speech that was quickly overshadowed by the Republican’s health scare.

“The speaker and the president reached an agreement, which I supported, in connection with raising the debt ceiling, to set the spending levels for next year,” McConnell said. “The House then turned around and passed spending levels that were below that level. … [T]hat’s not going to be replicated in the Senate.”

Who???

Barbie and Oppenheimer don’t live up to our values, Russia says

Forget Margot Robbie — watch Cheburashka instead, Kremlin tells citizens.

BY GABRIEL GAVIN

Western blockbuster movies fly in the face of Russian values and aren’t worth showing in the country’s cinemas, Moscow’s Ministry of Culture has insisted, amid calls for the government to allow bootleg screenings in spite of a Hollywood embargo.

The vice-speaker of Russia’s parliament, Vladislav Davankov, wrote to officials asking them to launch a pilot scheme where theaters could show popular new releases, including Barbie and Oppenheimer, even if studios have refused to license them in the country.

However, in a response seen by state news agency TASS on Thursday, Deputy Culture Minister Andrei Malyshev rejected the appeal based on his choice of movies.

“We believe that the films you have proposed for viewing by the citizens of our country — Barbie and Oppenheimer — do not meet the aims and objectives set out by the head of state, to preserve and strengthen traditional Russian spiritual and moral values,” he said.

It’s not the first time that Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar grossing feature film has faced a tough crowd in Russia, with one review for state-run RIA Novosti warning that it “distorts feminism” by portraying “strong men without children” and “stupid men.”

Instead, Malyshev believes Russians are well-served by domestic productions, like animated children’s film Cheburashka — about a mischievous furry-eared creature that gets into comical scrapes with authority. The Challenge, a Russian state-backed film shot on the International Space Station, is also more suitable viewing, he went on.

According to the minister, making up for the lack of foreign content in the wake of Western firms’ exit from the country has stimulated the country’s own industry. Cheburashka, however, has an average rating of 7.2 out of 10 on Russian film website Kinopoisk.

Meanwhile, there are warnings that Russian cinemas face unprecedentedly tough times with a lack of customers following a decision from Western studios not to export their films to the country in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Fell to His Death

A Putin Critic Fell to His Death in Washington. We Still Don’t Know Why.

Police don’t suspect foul play killed Dan Rapoport. Some friends aren’t so sure.

By MICHAEL SCHAFFER

Almost exactly a year before the plane crash that killed mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, local police in D.C. were called to investigate the case of another former Moscow businessperson who also fell from the sky.

Twelve months later, the plunge from an M Street apartment building of Dan Rapoport, a Soviet-born U.S. citizen who made a mint in post-communist Russia before souring on the regime, remains unexplained.

Tellingly, it’s been largely forgotten in Washington.

Though international media gave the story a lot of ink, the city had paid little attention — even though it involved a ghastly local death of a man who once moved in elite circles and owned the house that later became the Kalorama residence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Now, with the Prigozhin crash focusing new attention on murky Kremlin-adjacent deaths, some allies of Rapoport are speaking up about their unhappiness with Washington’s investigation of his demise, something city police almost immediately said likely didn’t involve foul play.

“There’s something here that doesn’t add up for me,” says Jason Jay Smart, a Kyiv-based American political consultant and outspoken pro-Ukraine media figure who was close with Rapoport. “Those who knew him — I’ve talked to a lot of venture capitalists — nobody is convinced he just up and decided to jump.”

“The main thing that’s happened is something that hasn’t happened: It’s that the law enforcement authorities in Washington, D.C. have not come up with anything more conclusive about what took place,” says another longtime associate, Bill Browder, the onetime Moscow financier turned bestselling Kremlin antagonist. “This is a very serious issue. He’s an American citizen who was an enemy of Vladimir Putin who came to an untimely death. That warrants a serious investigation.”

Confounding critics is the tight-lipped public posture adopted by the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department in the days after Rapoport’s death — and still evident today, even as tallies of dubious Russian-insider suicides add up around the world.

According to an incident report from last August 14, officers responding to a call about a jumper found Rapoport’s body on the sidewalk outside a luxury building at 24th and M Street, in the West End neighborhood. The 52-year-old was wearing flip flops and a black hat; he was found with a cracked cell phone, headphones and $2,620 in cash, but no wallet.

Though police said they didn’t suspect foul play, the body was sent to the medical examiner, which is standard practice for suspected suicides. The resulting autopsy could, in theory, determine more about the death via a toxicology screen (which might indicate that a fall was accidental) or evidence of struggle or injury before the fall (which could suggest homicide).

But when the report finally came back in November, it was inconclusive. The terse details released by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner revealed that the cause of death was “multiple blunt force injuries due to fall from height” but listed the manner of death as “undetermined.”

At the time, a police spokesperson said that there was no ongoing investigation into the death but said that could change as new facts emerged.

Over the months that followed, I checked back from time to time to see if anything changed. “At this time, there is no ongoing investigation into this death,” a public affairs specialist responded in January, adding this Twilight Zone bureaucratic sentence about the state of play: “The OCME determined that that manner of death is undetermined.”

This week, Paris Lewbel, the deputy director of the department’s communications office, said that the case actually remains open and ongoing insofar as no cause has been assigned so it can’t technically be closed. But he indicated that the department is not actively investigating it barring new information. “As with all cases, we interview and collect multiple pieces of evidence, and we’ve done that in this case and every other case,” Lewbel told me.

Rapoport’s widow, Olena, has not spoken out publicly about the case since telling a Russian-language outlet last August that the reporting about a suicide was wrong. In a brief exchange this week, she did not elaborate, but indicated that the family was seeking an independent blood test.

“She wants to carry out a private investigation without publicity,” says David Satter, a friend of the Rapoports and a former Moscow correspondent who, in 2013, became the first American reporter kicked out of Moscow since the Cold War. “I don’t see any indication that [D.C. police are] making a serious effort.”

The opacity of the official response is what drives critics nuts — and makes some wonder whether local detectives, who are accustomed to murders involving gangland feuds or jealous spouses or botched robberies, might be less eager to wade into a thicket of alleged foreign intrigues.

Browder suspects the same dynamic was on display in 2015, when Mikhail Lesin, a former Putin aide, died in a Dupont Circle hotel room of what was initially reported to be a heart attack. The medical examiner later determined that blunt force trauma killed him. But local prosecutors closed the case after the report was amended to say the blunt force was an accident, possibly the result of falling off a bed while drunk.

Donell Harvin, who oversaw forensics as administrator of the city medical examiner’s office before becoming the District’s homeland security chief, says that critics might be misreading the situation. Absent evidence of violence on one hand or something like a suicide note on the other, he says, it’s not unusual that an autopsy would classify manner of death as “undertermined.” He thinks the occasional international-media interest in the case may actually be keeping it from being completely deep-sixed.

“If it was just a normal slob like you or me, they probably would have closed that case 11 months ago,” Harvin, now an MSNBC homeland security analyst, tells me. “The only thing the officials are guilty of is not clearly articulating why it has not taken so long.”

In fact, unlike after the death of Prigozhin, a number of friends accepted the official version of what happened to Rapoport, a comparative small fry. When I reported on his death in 2022, several friends said he’d been in a rough spot at the time, and they found the idea of self-inflicted harm plausible. (Some also noted that even a foul-play death might have involved sketchy post-Soviet business stuff, not secret-agent skulduggery.)

“Given Dan’s character and the pressures that he was under, either of the explanations could be true,” says Satter, who is now a Washington-based author and Wall Street Journal contributor. “But my feeling about it is that there is a serious possibility that he was the victim of an assassination, or at least it cannot be ruled out. … Even the possibility that they’re carrying out these crimes here in the capital of the U.S. is something that warrants the highest level of attention.”

A few impassioned sentences from local officialdom — something along the lines of, we take this really seriously, we won’t rest until we find out everything we can, etc — would go a long way.

To my mind, the strange absence of Beltway interest in the Rapoport case also says a lot about Washington’s news culture.

Consider: Browder is the man who helped turn the Magnitsky Act into U.S. law, punishing Russian officials who were involved in the death of Browder’s crusading anti-fraud attorney. He was the author of a national bestseller about his tangles with the Kremlin. He’s a big shot in this world. And he’s implying that a foreign power might have killed an American citizen in the heart of the nation’s capital. Yet the story is largely unknown.

The victim also wasn’t just some stranger passing through. Born in Soviet Latvia before emigrating to Texas, he moved to Moscow after the fall of Communism, then relocated to Washington in 2012 as Putin returned to power. With a child in a top local private school and a big house in Kalorama, he lived in Beltway society. After a divorce, he moved to Kyiv in 2016, marrying a Ukrainian doctor, becoming a frequent contact of visiting American reporters and an online antagonist of the Russian regime. He returned to Washington a few months after the invasion.

In a city with a robust tabloid media, the questions around his death would have made for weeks or months of tantalizing headlines, leading to the sort of water-cooler conversations that can turn the players in a mystery into household names. For better and occasionally for worse, that’s not how Washington operates. With scant new details emerging from responsible sources, there weren’t a lot of proper news hooks for salacious articles that might, for all their tawdriness, have kept the case top of mind.

“How many Putin enemies have to be killed before people take this seriously?,” says Browder.

Make a Living

Chris Christie is Trying to Make a Living Off the Past. So is New Hampshire.

His campaign is a tale of chances not taken, and things that might have been.

By DANTE J. SCALA

Chris Christie couldn’t have asked for more from New Hampshire.

A warm August evening, free of the monsoons of early summer. A full, friendly audience, seated outdoors at the Elks Lodge in Salem. An aide handing out signs and water bottles. A glowing introduction from the state’s popular Republican governor. Even the pro-Trump heckler, parked down the hill on the roadside, gave Christie’s sharp tongue an easy target.

It all looked perfect, but it was a lot less than that, because it was all a reminder of glory days.

“Glory days,” sings Christie’s hero, “well they’ll pass you by.”

Nowhere is that truer than in the Granite State, where the former New Jersey governor has always gravitated in pursuit of his presidential ambitions, and where his fate will be decided again. Ideology and geography always made Christie and New Hampshire a natural pair. This time, they are an especially fitting match: Both find themselves trying to make a living off the past.

As a presidential candidate, Christie is a Bruce Springsteen song, but not one of the upbeat anthems campaigns play before the candidate takes the stage. He’s one of The Boss’s sad, cautionary tales about chances not taken, and things that might have been. Passing on a 2012 run seemed only prudent back in the day. But a decade later, every flash of his once-formidable political skills is a reminder that lightning doesn’t linger in the bottle. You hope that Christie doesn’t sit around thinking about it, but Bruce would tell you that he probably does.

So why is Christie here in New Hampshire, in 2024? The harder you look, the less that meets the eye. Back in June, in a sparsely populated room at the Derry VFW, he tried out a line to explain his candidacy. Presidents go big, he said. But the candidate’s specific ideas — tackling budget deficits, reforming entitlements, avoiding isolationist foreign policy — didn’t sound like the work of a man who’s been thinking big. At one point, Christie gave a shout out to former President George W. Bush, which seemed only appropriate for a politician avoiding the hard realities of where his party has gone since the last time he tried to lead it.

A couple months later in Salem, N.H., though, the candidate had dropped the “going big” schtick. He knew the audience doesn’t come to hear about a Christie presidency. These days, instead of a campaign for office, Christie has a role, and a racket: the crusade against former President Donald Trump.

The role is a time-honored one in New Hampshire presidential politics: The fearless truth teller, the candidate brave enough to tell voters what they don’t want to hear. And it’s true, Christie channels the ghost of John McCain better than any other Never Trumper could. But the harder truth is that these days, people go to see Christie because he will tell them exactly what they want to hear about Trump; he’s not persuading anybody who’s not already convinced. Those other Republicans in need of persuasion? They’re unlikely to check out a candidate so deeply disliked by his fellow partisans. They’re more likely to be heckling him from the street.

The racket, given Christie’s dire circumstances, is not a half-bad scheme. It’s a remarkable thing, how long he has dined out on a debate moment that happened almost eight years ago, when he left Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) gasping for political oxygen the weekend before the New Hampshire primary. This cycle, Christie bills himself not so much as a candidate, but a pinch-hitter. He may not be able to field or throw the speedball anymore, but if you send him to the plate in the ninth, he can still deliver. It’s a comforting thought for those who still think some magical moment will derail Trump.

That’s what made last week’s debate so disheartening for those who enjoy The Christie Show. Not only was he denied the much-anticipated confrontation with The Donald, but when he tried to take down the next best thing to Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy just shrugged him off. The political novice retorted that Christie would be a more convincing truth teller if his entire campaign wasn’t motivated by vengeance and grievance against the man he once served and supported. It was an obnoxious line, in large part because it had the ring of truth. Springsteen teaches that the young owe little respect to what has been, and so it is in presidential politics.

Back in New Hampshire, it’s starting to get dark earlier. And for local activists and close observers, it’s hard to shake that twilight feeling about the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Granted, the locals habitually compare the present unfavorably to the hallowed days of yore, whether their tastes run to McCain or Eugene McCarthy. But this time, they seem to be confronting some uncomfortable facts.

On the Democratic side, voters seem ambivalent about President Joe Biden’s demotion of their quadrennial event from its traditional first-in-the-nation perch, and elites float the notion of writing in Biden’s name on primary day in the likely event he won’t put his name on the ballot.

The Republican action around the state, such as it is, carries its own set of worries. True, candidates are here frequently, and voters still go to see them. But in between the visits, there’s a blank space that campaigns used to fill. The Christie signs being passed out in Salem, N.H., didn’t actually belong to the campaign. The fine print shows they were bought and paid for by Tell It Like It Is, the super PAC doing the heavy lifting for his bid.

Christie is hardly the only one playing this shell game. It’s exceedingly difficult to find a campaign here trying to build something that connects with citizens and makes its presence known in communities. Smart young embeds looking for grassroots action don’t follow campaigns, they tag along with Americans for Prosperity, or try to figure out exactly what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has offshored. It’s not the Democratic Party’s nomination calendar that’s the culprit. It’s the nagging sense that the nationalization of the nomination process is reducing New Hampshire to a pretty backdrop, not a battleground. That’s good enough to attract the media and political tourists, come January. But this year, something feels like it’s slipping away. Just like Christie, New Hampshire’s hoping that maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

Close loophole

Biden administration proposes to close loophole on background checks

The DOJ proposal comes days after the latest series of mass shootings.

By MYAH WARD

The Biden administration on Thursday moved to expand background checks for gun purchases, a step toward fulfilling a key ask from gun safety groups.

The new rule, submitted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to the Federal Register, would clarify who qualifies as a firearms dealer, and therefore, who would have to conduct background checks on gun buyers. The measure comes after the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act updated federal law more than a year ago, requiring anyone who sells guns for profit to be licensed.

For months, gun safety groups have repeatedly called on the White House to address a background check loophole by clarifying who is considered “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.

“The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was passed by Congress to reduce gun violence, including by expanding the background checks that keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “This proposed rule implements Congress’s mandate to expand the definition of who must obtain a license and conduct a background check before selling firearms.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described the DOJ measure as “life saving action” that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, have sought.

“It’s just common sense,” she said during Thursday’s briefing, later adding: “This administration respects the right of responsible gun owners, while also believing Americans have the right to live free from gun violence as well. Those two things can exist.”

Once published on the Federal Register, the rule will undergo a 90-day public comment period before being finalized. The measure would go beyond brick-and-mortar stores and affect the sale of firearms at gun shows, flea markets, over the internet and through mail orders. It also provides examples of actions that would likely qualify as engaging in the business of selling firearms and also clarifies when the sale of firearms would not require the seller to have a license.

“The whole goal here is to provide, again, concrete, common sense guidance and information to the public on the application of the new provisions in the statute,” a senior Department of Justice official told reporters in a press call on Thursday.

Gun safety groups welcomed the proposal, which comes as the nation has been rocked within the past week by multiple shootings. President Joe Biden has addressed several of them — including a racist shooting in Jacksonville, Fla., that left three dead, and a campus shooting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where a faculty member was killed.

“Today, more than 1 in 5 gun sales in the U.S. are conducted without a background check, amounting to millions of guns per year ending up in the hands of people who aren’t allowed to buy them. This rule expands requirements for gun dealers to become licensed and conduct background checks, closing a massive loophole in our live-saving background checks system,” Brady president Kris Brown said in a statement. “It is past time to ensure that anyone who sells firearms for profits is required to be licensed and that their sales of firearms are subject to a Brady Background Check.”

Stand trial for shooting Black teen

Missouri judge rules white man will stand trial for shooting Black teen who went to wrong house

Andrew Lester told authorities that he shot Ralph Yarl through the door without warning because he was “scared to death” he was about to be robbed.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Missouri judge ruled Thursday that the 84-year-old white homeowner who shot a Black teenager after he mistakenly went to the man’s house must stand trial.

Clay County Judge Louis Angles issued the ruling after hearing from several witnesses at a preliminary hearing, including Ralph Yarl, the teenager who was shot by Andrew Lester on April 13 when Yarl went to the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers.

Lester, a retired aircraft mechanic, is charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. He previously pleaded not guilty in the shooting that shocked the country and renewed national debates about gun policies and race in America.

Kansas City Officer Larry Dunaway described Lester as “an elderly guy who was scared” after the shooting. Another officer, James Gale, said Lester was clearly worried.

“He said he hoped he didn’t kill anybody,” Gale testified.

A handful of people wearing shirts that said “Justice for Ralph” were seen entering the courthouse. Others wore shirts that read “Ringing a doorbell is not a crime.”

Yarl continues to heal from the traumatic brain injury he suffered but was able to complete an engineering internship this summer and just started his senior year in high school. The 17-year-old is planning to major in engineering when he graduates, with several college visits planned for the fall.

Yarl was supposed to pick up his younger brothers but went to the wrong block and mistakenly ended up at Lester’s house. Lester told authorities that he shot Yarl through the door without warning because he was “scared to death” he was about to be robbed.

No words were exchanged before the shooting, but as Yarl got up to run, he heard Lester yell, “Don’t come around here,” the probable cause statement said.

Initially turned away while seeking help at neighboring homes, Yarl stumbled to the street. Neighbor Carol Conrad testified that she was offering words of comfort through her window — a dispatcher had warned that neighbors should stay inside. At one point, he yelled, “I’ve been shot.”

When Yarl crumpled to the ground, three neighbors rushed to help. Jodi Dovel testified that there was a trail of blood, which pooled under his head. But Yarl was able to talk, telling her he went to ring the doorbell and was shot.

“I thought, ‘Oh no, he went to the wrong house,’” Dovel said.

Lester also called 911. On the recording played in court he could be heard telling a dispatcher, “I shot him. He was at my door trying to get in and I shot him.”

Clay County prosecuting attorney Zachary Thompson has said there was a “racial component” to the case but has not elaborated.

Lester’s attorney, Steven Brett Salmon, suggested in earlier court filings that he planned to argue that Lester acted in self-defense, citing Missouri’s “stand your ground” law. Missouri is one of about 30 states with laws that say people can respond with physical force when they are threatened.

Salmon has said that Lester’s home was egged and spray-painted after the shooting. He said Lester has sought law enforcement assistance when traveling, and his wife had to be moved from her nursing home.

Support for Yarl and his family poured in over the past few months. A GoFundMe set up on the family’s behalf raised nearly $3.5 million.

Crawling out of his hole....

Kremlin says Putin will meet Erdoğan on Monday in Sochi

Russian and Turkish leaders are expected to discuss the Black Sea grain deal and energy exports.

BY GABRIEL GAVIN

Russian President Vladimir Putin will host a summit with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Russia on Monday, the Kremlin has said.

“The talks will take place on Monday and will be held in Sochi,” Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters today.

The meeting marks a rare visit to Russia from the leader of a NATO member country since the start of Moscow's all-out war in Ukraine. Ankara is yet to confirm the date of the summit.

Turkey is expected to push for the restoration of the U.N.-backed Black Sea grain deal, which Moscow withdrew from unilaterally in July, as well as access to cheap supplies of natural gas.

187,000 jobs

U.S. employers added a solid 187,000 jobs in August in sign of a still-resilient labor market

The unemployment rate rose from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent, the highest level since February 2022 though still low by historical standards.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

The nation’s employers added a solid 187,000 jobs in August in a sign of a still-resilient labor market despite the high interest rates the Federal Reserve has imposed.

The job growth marked an increase from July’s revised gain of 157,000 but still pointed to a moderating pace of hiring compared with earlier this year. The unemployment rate rose from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent, the highest level since February 2022 though still low by historical standards.

A decelerating job market could help shift the economy into a slower gear and reassure the Fed that inflation will continue to decelerate. The Fed’s streak of 11 interest rate hikes have helped slow inflation from a peak of 9.1 percent last year to 3.2 percent now. Given signs that inflation has continued to ease, many economists think the Fed may decide no further rate hikes are necessary.

The Fed wants to see hiring slow because intense demand for labor tends to inflate wages and feed inflation. The central bank hopes to achieve a rare “soft landing,” in which its rate hikes would manage to slow hiring, borrowing and spending enough to curb high inflation without causing a deep recession.

Optimism about a soft landing has been growing. The economy, though growing more slowly than it did in the boom that followed the pandemic recession of 2020, has defied the squeeze of increasingly high borrowing costs. The gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — rose at a respectable 2.1 percent annual rate from April to June. Consumers continued to spend, and businesses increased their investments.

The Fed wants to see hiring decelerate because strong demand for workers tends to inflate wages and feed inflation.

So far, the job market has been cooling in the least painful way possible — with few layoffs. The unemployment rate is expected to have stayed at 3.5 percent in August, barely above a 50-year low. And the Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits — a proxy for job cuts — fell for a third straight week.

Instead of slashing jobs, companies are posting fewer openings — 8.8 million in July, the fewest since March 2021. And American workers are less likely to leave their jobs in search of better pay, benefits and working conditions elsewhere: 3.5 million people quit their jobs in July, the fewest since February 2021. A lower pace of quits tends to ease pressure on companies to raise pay to keep their existing employees or to attract new ones.

Economists and financial market analysts increasingly think the Fed may be done raising interest rates: Nearly nine in 10 analysts surveyed by the CME Group expect the Fed to leave rates unchanged at its next meeting, Sept. 19-20.

Despite what appears to be a clear trend toward slower hiring, Friday’s jobs report could get complicated. The reopening of school can cause problems for the Labor Department’s attempts to adjust hiring numbers for seasonal fluctuations: Many teachers are leaving temporary summer jobs to return to the classroom.

And the shutdown of the big trucking firm Yellow and the strike by Hollywood actors and writers are thought to have kept a lid on August job growth.