McConnell’s standing as the longest serving Senate party leader stood in stark contrast to the situation of GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who on the same day failed to attain the necessary votes to become speaker on a first House ballot. McConnell, meanwhile, achieved his record after beating back his first leadership challenge in November. Ten senators instead voted for Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), following a disappointing midterm performance for the GOP.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close McConnell adviser, said Tuesday he’s not “surprised at all” about McConnell breaking Mansfield’s record.
“If you’ve read [McConnell’s] book, ‘The Long Game,’ this is something he’s wanted to do his whole life,” Cornyn said.
McConnell also commemorated other Senate leaders, including former Senate Republican Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, former Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd and former Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. Mansfield succeeded Johnson as Senate leader.
McConnell said under Mansfield’s management of the Senate, “proceedings became more orderly and less theatrical.” And he highlighted Mansfield’s interest in Asia, describing him as a “trusted foreign policy hand.”
“Mansfield was a canny strategist who knew how to rally his conference. He knew when to go to battle, and when to coordinate with his counterpart Everett Dirksen,” McConnell said. “In short, he knew how to work the Senate.”
The 80-year-old McConnell, first elected Senate GOP leader in 2006, was majority leader from 2015 to the beginning of 2021. During that period, McConnell drew Democratic ire for blocking former President Barack Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland from Senate consideration, in addition to Obama’s other judicial nominees. Under former President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans proceeded to confirm three Supreme Court justices, shifting the ideological balance of the court, along with 231 district, circuit court and U.S. Court of International Trade judges.
While McConnell worked closely with the Trump White House on judicial nominees and the 2017 GOP tax cuts, his relationship with the former president soured after the 2020 presidential election. After the Jan. 6 attack, McConnell described Trump as “practically and morally responsible,” but declined to convict him during his second impeachment trial. The Kentucky Republican has since avoided talking about the former president directly.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer congratulated McConnell on breaking the record, during his own floor speech.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us, so I hope we can find some ways to come together and not succumb to gridlock,” Schumer said. “For the good of this chamber and for the good of our country.”
McConnell became the longest serving GOP leader in June 2018, beating out former Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.). He is also the longest serving senator from Kentucky, first elected in 1984.
EU countries are inching toward coordinated travel measures in response to China’s COVID surge, including pre-departure testing, masks on flights and testing wastewater for possible new variants.
At a health security meeting Tuesday of national ministers and representatives from the European Commission, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization, officials moved closer to a consensus on pre-departure testing for travelers from China, stepping up wastewater monitoring from flights, and increased domestic surveillance of the virus, tweeted EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides.
The members “converged” on these measures, she said, adding: “Discussion continues tomorrow in [the integrated political crisis response (IPCR) mechanism meeting].”
A Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that the Commission presented a draft opinion on proposed measures to EU capitals, which will now be “revised and adopted” based on their input.
“The overwhelming majority of countries are in favor of pre-departure testing,” the spokesperson said, adding that such tests “would need to be targeted at the most appropriate flights and airports and carried out in a coordinated way to ensure their effectiveness.”
The draft opinion also includes wearing masks on flights from China, personal hygiene for travelers and increased EU vigilance on testing and vaccination. It includes genomic surveillance at airports to detect new variants, such as testing toilet water, as well as increased monitoring and sequencing. The EU’s crisis response body will take all these measures into consideration when it meets Wednesday.
Many countries in Europe introduced wastewater sampling during the pandemic to identify outbreaks of COVID, but also to genetically sequence samples to monitor for new variants.
Belgium was the first country this week to announce it was testing wastewater samples from two flights a week from China and sequencing for variants.
Countries including the U.K. have said there is a lack of comprehensive health information shared by China, making it difficult to know whether new variants are emerging in the country.
Meanwhile, countries including Italy, France and Spain introduced their own testing measures for travelers from China last week, as well as the U.K.
“We were notified yesterday that the governor of Colorado is now stating that they are going to be sending migrants to places like New York and Chicago,” Adams said during a radio appearance. “This is just unfair for local governments to have to take on this national obligation.”
An aide to Adams said the mayor’s administration was told about the influx Monday evening.
Like many major cities around the country, Denver has been struggling to provide services for a surge of people who have fled their home countries in Central and South America, crossed the southern border and sought asylum in the United States. Over the past month, more than 3,500 migrants have arrived in Denver, according to the city, and each night around 1,800 asylum seekers have sought shelter in the city.
In response, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock declared a state of emergency and later appealed to the local Catholic archdiocese for assistance. He and Polis — both Democrats — also launched a fund to raise money to support services for migrants.
In total, Polis said the state has recently made $5 million available to assist with expenses. And while roughly 70 percent of asylum seekers who arrive in Denver are traveling to other destinations, the cost of helping them purchase bus tickets constitutes a fraction of the overall pot of cash.
In light of the recent winter storm that snarled holiday travel — with Southwest Airlines’ logistical meltdown leading to a rush on bus tickets — the Denver mayor’s office reached out to the Adams administration to let them know that more migrants than usual may be arriving by bus, according to Polis, who expected levels to moderate within a week or two.
“There is a lot of pent-up demand right now and a lot of frustration among our migrants who have been trapped for a week or two in a place they didn’t want to be through no fault of their own,” he said.
On Tuesday, Polis announced a partnership including the state, the city and local nonprofits designed to beef up transportation services for asylum seekers trying to get out of Colorado — an initiative welcomed by Hancock’s office.
“I appreciate [Polis] and the State for leaning in to support those coming to our city to reach their preferred destinations, and to help reduce the number of people in our shelters and more quickly connect them with community supports and other options,” Hancock said in a statement Tuesday. “I’ve talked with other mayors around the country and we’re united in our call for Congress to work with the Biden Administration to provide the assistance we need to manage this situation.”
Thousands of migrants have attempted to cross into the U.S. from the southern border in recent weeks, in part because a Trump administration border policy, known as Title 42, was set to expire in December. The Supreme Court last week blocked the lifting of the policy, which allows the U.S. to expel migrants to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott over the spring and summer bused thousands of migrants from the border to blue strongholds like New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, while Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis flew nearly 50 mostly Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. He claimed it was to bring attention to the border situation.
But in recent weeks, the dilemma at the border has become worse. El Paso’s Democratic mayor, Oscar Leeser, declared a state of emergency in December after migrants began pouring into the city. Abbott also deployed hundreds of Texas national guard and state troopers to the border to stop people from entering the U.S.
The migrants are coming to Colorado on buses from border towns including El Paso, Texas though it’s unclear whether any government officials have paid for those trips north.
A spokesperson for Abbott said in an email, “We are still only busing to DC, NYC, Chicago, and Philadelphia.” The El Paso mayor’s office similarly said they had not coordinated any travel to Denver, though a host of entities, from the county to individual nonprofits, are all involved in assisting migrants with transport out of Texas.
Polis said that most officials dealing with an influx of migrants have been acting in good faith.
“Too many people, in our opinion, view this through a political lens or as playing politics — and it’s terrible that in some places, people have been used as political props,” he said. “But what we are doing here is just honoring our values by treating people with dignity and respect.”
Adams said Tuesday around 30,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since the spring in need of food, shelter and education — a surge that has has stretched the city’s social service infrastructure to the breaking point and opened up huge risks for the municipal budget. Adams, along with the two Colorado leaders, have called on the federal government to provide assistance to localities dealing with the influx.
“No city should have to make a decisions if they’re going to provide for their citizens — particularly coming out of Covid — or if they’re going to deal with an onslaught of migrants and asylum seekers,” he said.
Reversal of course:Twitter Safety’s account announced the changes in a tweet Tuesday evening, saying, “We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we’re relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US.”
The company also announced plans to expand political advertising, but didn’t set a specific time frame beyond “weeks.”
It’s the latest in a series of Musk moves that have reversed policies that were put in place under former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey banned all political ads in November 2019, saying in an October 2019 Twitter thread that paying for political reach “has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.”
Additionally, Twitter’s former Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal tweeted that political advertising accounted for less than $3 million in the 2018 midterm cycle. Twitter’s total revenue was $3 billion in 2018.
Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on why it reversed the policies.
Issue-based ads are OK: Twitter reversed Dorsey’s restrictions on issue-based (or cause-based) ads — set in November 2019 — that banned the promotion of such ads and required advertiser certification for ads that “educate, raise awareness, and/or call for people to take action in connection with civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship, or social equity causes.”
Musk has radically reshaped the platform since he bought it for $44 billion, laying off thousands of employees, overseeing a mass exodus of top executives and earning a sharp warning from the FTC.
Prior to Musk’s takeover, 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue came from advertising, but major advertisers have backed away following Musk’s free-wheeling approach to content moderation. Musk launched a revamped version of a $8 monthly Twitter Blue subscription service late last year, and lifting political and issue-based ad bans could be another source of revenue for the company.
“I’m pulling for Kevin. I hope he makes it,” McConnell said at the time.
Other Senate Republicans slammed the protracted floor fight over the speakership as ultimately harmful for their party.
“I think they’ll eventually elect a speaker but this is not a good start,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “Bottom line is, what’s the end game here? 85 percent of the body wants Kevin, OK, and I voted against Mitch as a protest vote more than anything else. But I accept he’s the leader and I want to work with him. So this idea that 85 percent are going to be told what to do by five percent is not a good formula. And I think Kevin’s already given away too much.”
More counsel for McCarthy came from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a crucial vote for Democrats over the last two years in an evenly split Senate, who urged McCarthy not to cave to all the demands of the conservatives.
“It just looks like a hostage standoff over there,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “I just hope he doesn’t surrender to the hostage takers. Don’t pay a ransom.”
McConnell became the longest-serving Senate party leader in history on Tuesday as McCarthy struggles to lock down sufficient support to become speaker of the House.
McConnell is due to appear alongside Biden at an event Wednesday in Kentucky, as McCarthy faces the prospect of a protracted speakership bid in the House.
But building a “super-app” like WeChat is a far more complicated challenge than Twitter, with far more points of conflict with regulators in Washington, California, Brussels and elsewhere. Nothing like it exists yet in the West, and it could create a “regulatory nightmare,” said Caitriona Fitzgerald, the deputy director for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit that advocates for privacy reform.
For all its influence on media and politics, Twitter is a far smaller social platform than Facebook or TikTok, with relatively little exposure to government oversight. Anything that involves payments, health information or deeper uses of consumer data would be a whole different beast. And that’s all without integrating some of Musk’s wider and more futuristic interests, like his brain-computer interface company, his space-launch business, or his network of satellites, all of which draw their own kind of scrutiny.
If Musk tried to launch it, he’d be doing it in amoment when regulators and politicians are increasingly worried about Big Tech’s appetite for data, its impact on consumers’ lives and its unique ability to build monopolies — to say nothing of the political storm Musk has brought down on his own head with his increasingly partisan forays into politics. (Twitter did not reply to a request for comment about Musk’s app plans or regulatory strategy.)
There are plenty of business-world obstacles to the X App, and Musk has had his hands more than full just keeping Twitter afloat. But he’s also seen as ambitious enough to try anyway.
“Twitter is just one end of this future conglomerate app,” said Michael Sayman, a developer who helped create Instagram Stories, speculating that the X App could include finance, commerce, communication, news, entertainment, dating, music — and, of course, transportation, Musk’s chief business interest.
What could a Musk-owned super-app look like, and how would it collide with Washington? There’s no one authoritative answer — and a Twitter collapse would bring a quick end to the vision for now — but from observers and analysts, it’s possible to engineer a kind of preview of the maximal version of what he wants to do, and project just how many corners of Washington could find themselves facing off against one of the wealthiest men on earth.
Financial Services
The first and biggest question hanging over an “everything app” is money — specifically, payments and even banking.
Musk pitched investors on building Twitter into a digital payments behemoth that could generate as much as $1.8 billion by 2028 when he was getting financing for the buyout earlier this year. He hasn’t dropped that ambition: “It’s kind of a no-brainer for Twitter to have payments — in terms of both currency and crypto — and make that simple for people to use,” Musk said in the December Twitter Spaces.
Musk is publicly floating the concept of Twitter offering high-yield money market accounts, debit cards and checks. He has reportedly already filed paperwork to process payments. This clearly takes a page from WeChat’s playbook: The Chinese app created new ways for consumers and businesses to transact without cards or hardware, making money through merchant and withdrawal fees.
He’s not the first tech mogul to dream of an American version. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to launch his own digital currency, the Libra, and failed — but still considers it a missed opportunity.Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey also co-founded the payments company Block (formerly known as Square) and pursued a payments strategy that let Twitter users incorporate their handles for CashApp. The company also partnered with Stripe to let users pay businesses and creative outlets they discover on the social network. Those efforts haven’t transformed Twitter into a payments powerhouse, however.
Musk wouldn’t be coming to this cold: The Tesla CEO has an extensive background at payment-focused fintech startups — he co-founded the online bank X.com, which later merged with a Peter Thiel-led business to form PayPal. And his backers in the buyout include Binance, the global crypto exchange, as well as Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm that’s invested heavily in digital asset startups.
“I think it would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter so that it’s easy to send money back and forth,” Musk said at a Twitter all-hands meeting earlier this year. “Currency as well as crypto.”
But if he tries, he’ll be entering one of the most tightly regulated spaces in American business. Unlike social-media platforms, which only hit Washington’s radar recently, banking and payment companies have been under the microscope for decades, with multiple agencies and vast regulatory requirements to meet — a task that Musk has struggled with, even disdained, as an entrepreneur.
If the X App developed digital wallets for users or a crypto-friendly token for payments, Musk could face opposition from banking regulators like the Federal Reserve and Treasury as well as top lawmakers on the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would likely weigh in on how the social network handled instances of fraud and abuse. And Musk could invite even more scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission if he were to bring crypto trading to the platform.
Zuckerberg’s experience in trying to launch Libra — later rebranded as Diem — in 2019 is a sobering precedent: Despite an aggressive international lobbying campaign, policymakers from both parties — and on the other side of the Atlantic — blasted his far-reaching proposal for being a potential threat to global finance and commerce.
Consumer groups that opposed Meta’s efforts are already bracing for a similar fight if Musk tries to get into the game — possibly even more intense, given Musk’s newly contentious political brand, highly impulsive management style and propensity to tweak Congress and regulators.
“A big part of what really led to the downfall of Diem was the bad press around Mark Zuckerberg and Meta specifically,” said Cheyenne Hunt-Majer, a big tech policy advocate at Public Citizen. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Elon Musk is looking at this and saying, ‘Okay, well, I can do this differently.’”
Privacy
Any successful X App would bring in a massive new haul of consumer data – and would require the company to navigate a complicated, evolving new patchwork of U.S. and EU data-privacy rules.
Musk has already suggested Twitter’s immediate future would include advertisements carefully tailored to individual users — which could mean more sophisticated use of customer data. This data collection would likely only increase with an X App that touched more parts of people’s lives.
Even before Musk took over, however, Twitter struggled to meet basic privacy and data-handling requirements.
The company has been under a consent decree with FTC since 2011 for previously mishandling user data and paid a $150 million fine in May 2022 for breaking its commitment to protect user data again. The FTC is currently investigating allegations made by former Twitter security chief Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, who claims the company intentionally misled the agency and violated the terms of the 2011 settlement, according to a person familiar with the probe who is not authorized to speak publicly.
At Twitter, Musk’s abrupt staff cuts, and the exodus of its top privacy, cybersecurity and compliance executives, have already drawn a rare warning shot from the Federal Trade Commission: The FTC said in a statement in mid-November, “We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern,” adding, “no CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees.”
And Democrats on Capitol Hill are paying attention too — calling on the FTC to enforce its consent decree — which could mean large fines and penalties for Musk’s Twitter if it is found to have violated the settlement terms.
His ambition also arrives amid growing concerns about U.S. consumer data security and privacy protections.Though Congress hasn’t managed to pass a comprehensive data privacy bill, several states are already plowing ahead with their own rules, including California, Virginia and Colorado, creating a complicated patchwork for tech companies to navigate. And any company with a global presence also needs to worry about Europe’s data privacy law — the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which gives consumers the right to opt out of data collection. Some aspects of the X App would also be subject to sectoral federal privacy laws, like in finance and health care.
Musk would also immediately draw a spotlight from privacy advocates, who worry that he’d potentially have access to millions of Americans’ data without any federal law to ensure it’s properly protected.
“As a society, we really have kind of started getting to a point where we feel uncomfortable with the loss of privacy,” said Karan Lala, a software engineer who previously worked at Facebook. “Maybe folks are not fully comfortable with having one person having access to all of that information.”
Health care
In China, people can look up doctors, book them, conduct a telehealth appointment and even manage their medical records inside of WeChat. In other countries, patients can use WhatsApp to book their doctor appointments over text.
In the U.S., that kind of user-friendly approach to health care is largely blocked by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the 1996 patient-protection law setting strict rules around how health care providers share and store data.
So an X App could track your fitness, scrape your data and log your steps, but hit a wall when it comes to the highly regulated world of the American medical system. It doesn’t mean Musk wouldn’t try — but he’d need to find partners willing to test the edges of what’s possible under the law.
Musk does have his own medical venture, though, and that raises another question. Neuralink is a brain-computer interface that allows a person to navigate a computer directly from their brain with an implantable device. Musk says the company has submitted “most” of the paperwork needed to get the FDA go ahead for a clinical trial in 2023 in order to bring that invention to market.
Right now, brain-computer interfaces are being trialed to help people with paralysis, but Neuralink’s website tantalizingly promises a “non-medical application” and says the technology could someday “expand how we interact with each other and experience the world around us.”
If a person used a Neuralink chip to interact with the X App, would the app literally be reading that person’s mind? And what happens to the data? Brain data isn’t necessarily protected by HIPAA, and the issue is not yet on Washington’s radar, but it’s a real concern among policy thinkers; Chile recently became the first country to protect “neurorights.”
At this point, the idea of a neural connection to any app is purely speculative. However, it’s not as sci-fi as it might sound: Synchron, a competing BCI company, which launched an FDA clinical trial earlier this year, already allowed one patient to Tweet directly from their brain.
Transportation
Though Musk is often lumped in with pure tech moguls like Zuckerberg, he’s primarily a transportation mogul — a maker of cars and rockets, with some interest in tunnels.
Musk hasn’t talked specifically about the transportation side of an X App. But WeChat also offers a ride-hailing service, and the X app has a range of potential applications for ride-hailing, transit and more.
Ian Adams, a specialist in the automotive technology practice at the Orrick law firm, envisions an app that offers a “hub of information” for easy access to “hopping on transit, hopping in a rideshare, hailing an automated system — who knows what that will look like, at what point.”
Putting Musk at the center of an identity-verification app with security implications could be problematic, though. Adams said government regulators might be skeptical of the arrangement — to say nothing of any connection to Tesla, whose cars are already software-intensive products that constantly track user behavior. “The big question mark right now is, we’ve got an FTC and a DOJ that takes a really dim view of all kinds of data-sharing arrangements and particularly of consolidation,” Adams said. The FTC is “going to take a fine-tooth comb through everything that they attempt to do.”
Antitrust
Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are looking more and more closely at big tech companies’ anti-competitive behavior. AndWhile Musk’s businesses don’t currently run afoul of monopoly review by either agency, that could easily changeif he were to buy a lot of other apps, said Charlotte Slaiman, the competition policy director at nonprofit Public Knowledge.
She said antitrust regulators may be concerned about a vertical relationship wherein Musk incentivizes his X App offering over competitors. And antitrust regulators may weigh in if Musk purchases another app that competes directly on his platform.
“From a competitive climate, now might not be the best time to even put up the fact that you want an app that does everything,” former Facebook engineer Lala said. “I don’t think Congress is going to take lightly to that, so that might be victim number one.”
There’s a counterargument, though, based on the fact that the X App would be the first of its kind.Graham DuFault, a senior director of public policy at ACT | The App Association, a trade group representing app developers, says that U.S. policies tend to be conducive to new market entrants — at least to start.
“One of the striking things about the U.S. competition, law and policy landscape is that it’s pretty permissive in that it treats a new company’s entry as something that is a benefit to competition and a benefit to consumers unless there really is evidence that is going to harm competition, and then therefore harm consumers,” DuFault said in an interview.
The network in the sky
When it comes to other competitors, Musk has an offering that many others still don’t have — Starlink, the world’s satellite internet constellation company. Operated by his firm SpaceX, it provides service to at least 36 countries, with plans to offer mobile phone service with T-Mobile in 2023.
Depending on how he links up the satellites and the X App, Musk could start to collide with California’s net neutrality law — which says internet service providers are not allowed to slow down or limit services online, especially efforts to advantage their products over competitors. Ever since the Trump administration rescinded the FCC’s net neutrality policy — and Congress has failed to enact it into law — California’s law is the de facto law of the land.
Using Starlink internet, Musk would be able to streamline faster and more efficient access to the X App services — and potentially throttle access to competing mega-apps, Sayman said. This preference of service could potentially run afoul of California’s rules.
It could be worth him testing the waters on that, even if it’s risky: “The level of fundamental dominance that could be achieved — if he’s able to do that well — I think positions his ‘X’ company to be able to do all the rest of this stuff,” Sayman said.
Politics
For the average big tech giant, politics is a third-tier risk at best: The companies and moguls strategically spread out their political donations, and only occasionally do executives run afoul of elected officials, or get hauled in front of Congress.
Musk is different. After being out of the political wind for years, he has jumped full-bore into the American culture wars, attacking Democrats by name, re-platforming Donald Trump and hosting elaborate Twitter threads suggesting collusion between the FBI and his own company. He’s also aligned himself with Republicans, encouraging votes for the GOP in the 2022 midterms and backing a Ron DeSantis run for president in 2024, earning him the kind of support from the GOP that other tech billionaires can only dream of.
However, Congress has failed to pass bipartisan tech legislation — and is unlikely to next year under a split House and Senate — so the action is expected to continue in state capitals where legislatures have passed the most aggressive laws regulating tech platforms to date.
So far, there has been more smoke than fire on the political front. But a bigger consumer platform could easily change that, as activists, think tanks, elected officials and voters increasingly see Musk as a player in American political life – either for better or worse.
Lobbyists also worry they’ll struggle to get traction on any push to make changes to a drug discount program involving pharmaceutical companies and hospitals or revisit association health plans after a Trump-era rule around them was voided.
“This will not be business as usual for K Street. It will be harder for companies to get in and make a case,” said Michaeleen Crowell, a lobbyist at lobbying and public affairs firm S-3 Group who served as Sanders’ chief of staff for more than five years. “The culture in the office is one where lobbyists are mistrusted, and they’re more likely to discount what they hear directly from companies.”
POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen lobbyists and lawyers about having Sanders at the helm of the HELP Committee, some of whom were granted anonymity to talk about the senator’s dynamic with K Street.
Multiple lobbyists representing health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, providers and health systems told POLITICO they’re going to have to “bank shot” their advocacy to get their messages across — lobbying other lawmakers on the committee and getting into the ears of progressive policymakers and left-leaning organizations.
“There are ways to get things passively on his radar if you know him well enough, if you know who he listens to or what he reads,” Crowell said.
Sanders’ office declined to respond to questions from POLITICO, including those about his relationship with lobbyists.
Lobbyists said another strategy could be working to insert favorable provisions into larger bills, lean on the panel’s House counterpart, the Energy and Commerce Committee, or go to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is stepping down as HELP Committee chair to head the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“It’s not status quo … we’re going to have to be creative with patient groups to get him to listen,” said a lobbyist with health system, health insurance and pharmaceutical clients granted anonymity to speak freely. “If I’m going to be completely honest, we’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do.”
Sanders has talked about working to boost access to care, lower drug costs, expand the health care workforce and raise wages, and possibly reach across the aisle. Sanders is also expected to push the jurisdictional bounds of the committee, potentially taking on issues such as the health impacts of climate change.
K Street will likely watch how often Sanderscollaborates with the committee’s incoming ranking member, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), as the two have a history of working across the aisle. Although some lobbyists have floated policies around drug pricing and surprise billing as a possibility for them to find agreement, it’s not entirely clear if they’ll end up on the same page.
“There’s a good chance the committee becomes a one-legged duck, swimming in circles,” said a Republican lobbyist and former HELP Committee staffer granted anonymity to speak freely.
But if the two end up aligning on some issues, that could be a liability for some industry clients on K Street.
Jeff Forbes, co-founder of lobbying and public affairs firm Forbes Tate, said Sanders has a history of bipartisanship, particularly while chairing the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and will work to get stuff done — “the question is going to be what, and at whose expense?”
“Does corporate America have to worry? Of course they do,” he added. “Between a populist Republican like Cassidy and a left-wing chairman like Sanders, they’ll have plenty of anti-corporate areas of mutual interest.”
With the Senate majority comes subpoena power, and it’s almost certain that health executives will be called to testify before the committee — a reputational risk for corporations.
“Subpoena authority is certainly something that gets people paying attention,” said Rafi Prober, co-head of the congressional investigations practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
And conditions are ripe for the HELP Committee to beef up its hearings schedule: The panel has only a few must-do items next session — reauthorizing both pandemic preparedness legislation known as PAHPA and an animal drug user fee bill — and Democratic priorities aren’t expected to move, given the GOP-controlled House. This gives Sanders the runway to dig into any issue he wants.
Most senior members of Congress have relationships with K Street because lobbyists had worked for — or closely with — them while serving as Capitol Hill aides, have donated to their campaigns or otherwise have become close with their staff.
Sanders, meanwhile, isn’t rubbing elbows with executives and lobbyists at fundraisers and doesn’t have a “kitchen cabinet” of donor-advisers he talks with about policy, Crowell and others said. He’s sworn off all money from political action committees — even ones run by other senators and members of Congress — to his Senate campaigns.
Further, most of his staffers have a mix of experience working for him, progressive campaigns and nonprofits and share the aversion to downtown corporate lobbyists.
“The prospects of a Sanders-led HELP committee are refreshing and exciting,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist at Public Citizen who works on money-in-politics and ethics issues.
“The chairman will give everyone their due, including lobbyists representing the public’s interest, without being swayed by campaign cash,” he said. “Sanders’ new leadership position will help build some equity between the influence of the haves and have-nots, of which Public Citizen and other nonprofits more or less qualify as the latter.”
But one Democratic lobbyist who advocates before the HELP Committee, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamic, said Sanders’ staff members rarely take people’s meetings.
“It’s hard to find a lobbyist [who] has had much success working with his staff. If the committee wants to be taken seriously on some very important issues, they’re going to need to be more open to talking with stakeholders — even ones [they] don’t like,” he said.
Not all lobbyists are so down on their prospects. Michael Strazzella, the leader of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney’s federal government relations practice, said he is optimistic about working with Sanders and his staff.
“He can be educated just like every other senator,” Strazzella said. “Influence is a strong word, to be honest, but I do believe that he is open to continuous education and understands the impact of new policies. … I don’t think he’s necessarily set in his ways about everything.”
Aside from his current staff, much of the dynamic with K Street will depend on who he brings in to work on the committee, several lobbyists told POLITICO.
Some hope it will be a departure from his traditional hiring patterns, but one lobbyist who has relationships with Sanders’ health care staff said he wants them to stick around.
“I just hope they stay because we at least know who we will be working with next year and can have conversations with them,” said the lobbyist, who was granted anonymity to speak about the relationship, in an email. “I worry about the staff changing some and not knowing any of the… players coming in and their approach to interacting with downtown.”
It was, in other words, meant to look presidential.
The undeniable backdrop of DeSantis’ second term is his likely 2024 presidential bid, a move that would put him on a collision course with former President Donald Trump, who declared his candidacy in mid-November after Republicans, including his endorsed candidates, underperformed in the midterms. Trump’s endorsement catapulted DeSantis to victory in 2018, but the relationship between the two has soured as the likelihood of a White House-focused collision inches closer to reality.
Much of DeSantis’ 16-minute speech Tuesday focused on juxtaposing Florida during his first term with other states and the federal government. He did not mention President Joe Biden by name, but devoted much of his time criticizing the current president’s policies, including immigration, pandemic restrictions and inflation — themes not often found in state-level inauguration addresses.
“Florida’s success has been made more difficult by the floundering federal establishment in Washington, D.C.,” DeSantis said. “The federal government has gone on an inflationary spending binge that has left our nation weaker and our citizens poorer. It has enacted pandemic restrictions and mandates — based more on ideology and politics than on sound science — and this has eroded freedom and stunted commerce.”
DeSantis did not provide any details on his top priorities for his second term, and he didn’t mention gun rights or increased abortion restrictions, even though he has expressed interest in pushing ahead with legislation in both areas that could bolster a presidential bid.
“If he runs, he’ll be a great alternative, but I’m not going to prejudge whether he’s running or not,” said Jeb Bush, the only former Florida governor to attend the inauguration, and whose 2016 presidential campaign was ended by Trump. “He’s got a proven record as the governor of the greatest state.”
“That’s a great platform to run on,” he added.
For most of 2022, DeSantis was often ahead in early 2024 Republican presidential primary polls or running neck-and-neck with Trump. DeSantis has brushed off questions about whether he plans to run for president, but many Republicans are clamoring for his candidacy, especially those who have grown weary of the constant drama and legal fights surrounding Trump, or those who never supported him from the beginning.
DeSantis’ first term in office was defined, in part, by an evolving governing style. His first two years were marked by policies that earned him cautious bipartisan support and mid-60 percent approval ratings. Over the past few years, however, he has focused on issues that excite his right-wing base such as fighting against Covid-19 mandates or “woke” lessons in K-12 and higher education. Taking on those issues built his reputation nationally and turned him into one of the Democrat’s biggest political boogeymen.
His remarks Tuesday offered little doubt that his second term will be defined by a continued focus on culture war battles as he builds his national resume ahead of announcing a likely presidential bid, with many expecting him to declare sometime in spring.
“We reject this woke ideology. We seek normalcy, not philosophical lunacy. We will not allow reality, facts, and truth to become optional,” DeSantis said, tapping into the sort of partisan rhetoric that has become his calling card. “We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
DeSantis enters his second term with a huge political mandate. He won his reelection bid by a historic 19 points over Democrat Charlie Crist, in the process helping carry the GOP to huge wins up and down the midterm ballot win. It gives DeSantis significant momentum heading into the 2023 Florida legislative session, which functionally begins this month and is expected to set the stage for his presidential announcement.
“The governor’s overwhelming victory on election night combined with his national profile makes him the most powerful elected official in Florida’s history,” said Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist and co-chair for DeSantis’ inaugural committee. “With that much political capital, he is clearly in the driver’s seat to shape policy in Florida during his second term.”
Democrats have decried DeSantis’ rise because it has been fueled in large part by what they see as policies aimed at harming marginalized communities, and a focus and rewiring long-held norms, specifically the state’s education system. DeSantis, for instance, has championed civics training courses that some teachers have criticized as overly conservative-leaning and lacking opposing viewpoints.
“I listened to his speech, and I think we can expect more of the same with greater intensity,” said House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa). “He put out a lot of dog-whistle stuff today. They will just continue to call anyone they don’t like. We heard more about parental rights, which will just be more attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.”
“He did not address any state-specific issues,” she added. “This was aimed at primary voters and donors.”
Administration aides are confident that the president, by focusing on governing and working in a bipartisan manner, is delivering what the public wants — and that Republicans, as long as they’re continually bogged down by intra-party fights, are not.
“The Republican Party is almost non-functional right now,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). “They can’t even agree on who should lead them. It’s not just a matter for the Republicans in Congress. It affects the whole country, and we can’t even take a vote on anything else until they decide who the speaker is.”
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), who contemplated a Snickers bar dinner if voting ran into the late evening, marveled at the absurdity of it all as McCarthy failed to pick up more votes. He quipped that Republicans “should probably nominate Bill Murray at this point.”
“I think we’re kind of enjoying watching this. There’s something about it. It’s interesting,” he said.
While countless House Democrats spent much of the day reveling in the disarray across the aisle, the White House presented more of a straight face, at least publicly. But the administration is wasting no time focusing the country’s attention on this contrast, even if Biden is presenting it implicitly — not by hammering Republicans as extreme but by demonstrating his own ability to deliver on bipartisan legislation.
“Based on what is going on today, their ability to govern and pass legislation on their own, I think is tenuous at best,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). “When you bend everything to an ideological position, as opposed to the work of Congress, this is what you end up with.”
Biden’s first big event of the year Wednesday, a trip to Kentucky to highlight a long-sought bridge repair alongside Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, will typify his approach over the year ahead: focusing on the increasingly tangible benefits from the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure overhaul and last year’s bills to boost semiconductor manufacturing, lower drug costs and hasten the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. Two border-state governors, Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear and Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, will also attend the event, allowing Biden to underline the bipartisan nature of the law responsible for fixing the Brent Spence Bridge.
And on Friday, the president will mark the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection with a speech at the White House. The occasion will provide another chance to articulate a view about the sanctity of American democracy — while reminding the country which party was responsible.
Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say whether this week’s presidential events were orchestrated with an eye on the anticipated messy floor vote in the House, but her emphasis on the bipartisan nature of the work Biden and McConnell planned to highlight was not subtle.
“We can do big profound things for the country when we work together,” she said.
But behind the bromides, there was some bubbling concern about the chaos unfolding on the House floor.
Staffers who spoke more candidly, on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that bipartisan legislation will be more difficult with Republicans controlling the House, however narrow and fractious their majority. Debt ceiling fights become even trickier when there is no order at all.
That said, some aides remain cautiously optimistic that some GOP lawmakers from more competitive districts will be incentivized to work across the aisle. Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a post-election bulletin to reporters that the House Republicans who voted for the president’s infrastructure law in 2021 all won reelection in November.
The president and his aides, in ways public and private, will continue to brand the GOP by highlighting the behavior of its more extreme voices — the “MAGA Republicans,” as Biden has labeled them — while still reaching out to Republicans who might work more constructively with Democrats, White House staffers said. Part of that effort, they noted, will include reminding Republicans of the popularity of Biden’s policy achievements.
If House Republicans follow through on promises to roll-back elements of the Inflation Reduction Act and weaken remaining abortion protections, the White House is confident that those efforts will benefit Democrats politically, not to mention be blocked by a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the hard-liners refusing to back McCarthy, dismissed such actions as “messaging bills” during a press conference Tuesday. And, in a comment sure to be clipped and saved by the White House press shop, belittled the coming GOP investigations of Hunter Biden and other matters as “theater pretending to be oversight.”
And there is no immediate threat of a government shutdown after last month’s passage of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, an achievement propelled in large part by Senate Republicans who foresaw the coming chaos of a GOP-controlled House. In fact, as McCarthy struggled to secure the speaker’s gavel Tuesday, some Senate Republicans expressed vindication about having passed the bipartisan legislation last year, spiking the football on House Republicans harder than anyone at the White House did.
“I’ve been told you shouldn’t vote for the $1.7 trillion spending bill because the House is Republican, they’ll make it better,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I don’t think that theory is holding up too well.”
That includes several big elections — three gubernatorial contests and major American cities electing their mayors — along with the fight around the congressional maps used for 2024 playing out in courts across the country in the upcoming year.
Here are the four big election storylines to follow in 2023:
Kentucky’s wild governor’s race, and two other chief executive contests
The Kentucky gubernatorial contest has already gotten off to a chaotic start, with a slew of prominent Republicans in the state lining up to challenge Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who is seeking a second term.
The crowded Republican field already includes state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — long rumored to be a successor-in-waiting to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — and Kelly Craft, who was then-President Donald Trump’s second and final permanent ambassador to the United Nations. Other notable candidates include state Auditor Mike Harmon and Agricultural Commissioner Ryan Quarles. There are persistent rumblings that former Gov. Matt Bevin might get into the race and even rumors that former pizza magnate “Papa John” Schnatter himself could launch a bid.
Trump has already made an early endorsement in the race, backing Cameron in June.
The GOP senses a real pickup opportunity. Beshear only narrowly defeated Bevin in 2019, and Republicans have been champing at the bit for the opportunity to challenge him since. But Democrats will rally to his defense, with new Democratic Governors Association Chair Phil Murphy saying in an interview with POLITICO late last year that defending Beshear would be “priority number one.”
Two other states will be holding gubernatorial elections this year as well. In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is term-limited in the otherwise red-leaning seat. Only one notable candidate — Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry — has declared their candidacy thus far.
And in Mississippi, GOP Gov. Tate Reeves is expected to seek another term, although at least some other Republicans in the state have been kicking the tires on runs of their own.
All three states will also be holding down-ballot statewide contests as well.
The redistricting battles continue
After a much-delayed redistricting process, states scrambled to lock in their congressional maps ahead of the 2022 election. But those maps are anything but set-in-stone for 2024.
The Supreme Court is poised to issue opinions on a pair of cases about redistricting by the end of June that could dramatically change the landscape. The first, Merrill v. Milligan, concerns Alabama’s map, where challengers sought to have it tossed by alleging it weakened the power of Black voters in the state.
The court — although seemingly chilly to the state’s argument that a key civil rights law needs to be read in a “race neutral” manner — seems likely to rewrite the test used to determine if a minority group’s voting power is being “diluted.” That will likely result in less voting power for minority groups in Congress. Outside of Alabama, ongoing cases in states like Georgia and Louisiana likely hinge on the court’s decision.
The second major Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper, originated in North Carolina. There, the state Supreme Court tossed out the map drawn by Republicans as an illegal partisan gerrymander, with a court-drawn map eventually being used in 2022. Republican legislators sought to have the nation’s highest court negate the state court’s map, advancing a once-fringe legal theory called the “independent state legislature” doctrine that argues that state courts have little to no role in checking state legislatures’ power to set the rules around federal elections.
The Supreme Court seems unlikely to adopt the most muscular version of the theory. But depending on where the justices land, it could reopen the redistricting process both in the Tarheel State and elsewhere where state courts waded into the mapmaking process.
The 2022 elections in a handful of states will also likely have an impact on congressional lines in 2023. Republican-aligned justices won a majority on the North Carolina state Supreme Court — making the court much more likely in the future to back the party’s legislatively drawn lines. And in Ohio, a Republican justice who had repeatedly ruled that the lines there were illegal partisan gerrymanders favoring her party retired and was replaced, also giving GOP mapmakers there more of a free hand in those fights that are expected to continue this year.
A big 2023 election that could have ramifications over future redistricting fights is a Wisconsin state Supreme Court contest in early April. That court currently has a narrow 4-3 conservative majority, with Justice Patience Roggensack’s seat up next year after she opted to not seek another term. She is part of the court’s conservative majority, so a win by a liberal-leaning jurist would flip the balance of the court in a state where Democrats have challenged maps as illegal gerrymanders in the past.
But there is significant uncertainty around the race. Two liberal judges — Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Claire Protasiewicz — are running alongside two conservative judges, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow and former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. All four are competing in a primary (the office is technically nonpartisan) in February, with the top two advancing to the general election.
Pennsylvania will also host a state Supreme Court election in November to fill the seat of the late state Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat who died in September.
Temperature check in Virginia
A handful of states will also hold state legislative races in 2023, with the contests in Virginia as the likely headliners in November.
Both chambers are up in the commonwealth, which will be the only state that has a split Legislature in 2023. Republicans narrowly control the state House, while Democrats have a slim majority in the state Senate. Democrats took control of both chambers during the 2019 elections, only for Republicans — on the coattails of now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win — to flip back the state House in 2021.
The 2023 election should serve as a temperature check heading into 2024. It will also be the first election held under new maplines in the state, after a chaotic redistricting process led to the state House races in 2021 being held under last decade’s lines. (The state Senate was not up in 2021.)
A preview of the battle for control of the chambers will come in January, where there is a special election to fill Republican Jen Kiggans’ state Senate seat. She vacated it to join the House after defeating Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in November, and both parties are competing in the Virginia Beach-area district. President Joe Biden carried the district in 2020, according to data compiled by CNalysis, but Youngkin won the area in 2021. Republican Kevin Adams will face off against Democrat Aaron Rouse on Jan. 10, and the contest will be held under last decade’s lines.
Louisiana, Mississippi and New Jersey will also hold legislative elections next year, but partisan control of the state House is unlikely to flip.
Big city scrambles
Five of the nation’s 10 largest cities — Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Dallas — are holding mayoral elections this year, according to Ballotpedia, setting up battles over local control that will affect millions of Americans.
Chicago’s mayoral election is already incredibly contentious. Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot is facing eight rivals in her bid for a second term. The election is on Feb. 28, but if no candidate receives a majority of the vote — which is likely, given the field — the top two advance to a runoff in early April.
The polling that has been publicly released, although sparse, has shown Democratic Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia with an edge, with Lightfoot and a few other candidates close behind. Crime will likely play an outsize role in debates, and progressive politics and the power of Black and Latino voters in the majority-minority city will come into play, too.
Four years ago, Lightfoot campaigned as a progressive reformer. But in office, she has drawn criticism for opposing an ultimately successful push to elect the city’s school board and her handling of homelessness and crime — which has seeped into the same white enclaves that helped elect her four years ago.
Supporters credit Lightfoot with guiding the city through the pandemic, championing legislation in the city that led to a higher minimum wage, creating the city’s first elected civilian police oversight group and working to pay down the city’s pension debt. And though crime persists, there are declines in some areas, including the homicide rate.
In Philadelphia, 10 Democrats have already jumped into the 2023 election to succeed incumbent Mayor Jim Kenney, who is term-limited. The race will test how residents in Pennsylvania’s biggest city want to handle the homicide rate: More police? More progressive policies? Somewhere in the middle?
With several prominent women in the running, including three former city councilmembers and the city’s former controller, the contest could also give the city its first female mayor. Former City Councilwoman Helen Gym, a progressive who advocated for taking down a statue of the late Mayor Frank Rizzo, is widely viewed as the early frontrunner. The partisan primaries are in mid-May, with the eventual Democratic nominee the heavy favorite in November.
The Texas cities are a grab bag. In Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner is term-limited and a crowded field has already started to form to succeed him. Both Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg plan on running for another term.
All told, Democrats are expected to continue their dominance of the nation’s largest cities. All five cities have an incumbent Democratic mayor, with the exception of Nirenberg, who is an independent but generally considered progressive.
Holly Otterbein and Shia Kapos contributed to this report.
