Tag: Fani T. Willis

Q3 GDP Up 2.6%

Gross Domestic Product Swings Positive – After two negative GDP quarters in a row for the first half of 2022, GDP was on the rise again for the third quarter, up 2.6% according to the Commerce Department’s advanced estimate. This “primarily reflected increases in exports,” (bolstered by the strength of the U.S. dollar due to high inflation) “and consumer spending that were partially offset by a decrease in housing investment,” according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Second-quarter GDP was off 0.6%.

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Big Early Voter Turnout -- As of October 26, georgiavoters.com has counted 1,123,329 early ballots for the November 8 midterm elections, compared with 743,772 at this same time in 2018, a 51% increase. According to The Washington Post mail-in ballots have “fallen off significantly,” per the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. 

WaPo cites the Virginia Public Access Office that 411,000 voters have cast ballots early, more than the total number who voted there in 2018. But in North Carolina, the state’s 530,000 ballots cast is 60,000 fewer than this same point in 2018, while just 550,000 Texans have voted early, down from 695,000 by this time in ’18.

Elsewhere in Georgia: Ex-President Trump’s ultimate chief of staff, Mark Meadows (pictured), has been ordered by a South Carolina judge to travel to Atlanta to testify in Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis’ investigation into election interference by Trump and his allies (per The New York Times). Meadows’ attorney James Bannister is said to be preparing an appeal on grounds the Fulton County grand jury behind the investigation does not have indictment authority.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Liz Cheney and The Great Task

(WED 8/17/22)

Expected defeat…Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman beat incumbent Liz Cheney, 65.8% to 29.5% in Tuesday’s Wyoming GOP primary election. That’s 106,322 votes for Hageman to Cheney’s 47,615 in a state with about 580,000 residents. 

Cheney will continue to fight to keep former President Donald J. Trump from retaking the White House by running for the 2024 nomination for president, Politico, which reported those numbers above, speculates Wednesday. The three-term congresswoman, who now leaves the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection by January whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes speaker and gets a chance to dismantle and investigate it or not, has launched The Great Task, a political action committee devoted to keeping Trump out of office, NPR reports. 

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 75% of the vote,” Cheney said in her concession speech Tuesday night (per The Guardian video). “I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. …

“It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundation of our republic. That is a path I could not and would not take.

“No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles we were all sworn to protect and I well understood the political consequences of abiding by my duty. The primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”

Irony alert: Hageman, for her part, also nationalized the Wyoming primary for the House seat (as recorded by NBC News). 

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone across this great country who believes in the American Dream … who believes in liberty and recognizes that our natural rights; Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection and due process come from God.” 

They do not come from politicians, she said, “and the government cannot take them away."

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone who is concerned that the game is becoming more and more rigged against them," she continued. "And what Wyoming has shown today is that while it cannot be easy, we can dislodge entrenched politicians who believe they have risen above the people they are supposed to represent.”

Meanwhile, in Georgia: Former Trump attorney and America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to testify Wednesday before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. Giuliani is a target of the investigation.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire: Attending a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast in the state holding the first presidential primary again in 2024, ex-Vice President Mike Pence said he would testify before the House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, MSNBC’s Morning Joe reports Wednesday. His statement came in the form of an answer to a question posed at the event. 

The count, so far: Of 10 House Republicans who voted for then-President Trump’s second impeachment after the January 6 Capitol attacks, four have lost their primaries this season to pro-Trump candidates and two have won, according to the Associated Press. Three, including Cheney’s only fellow Republican on the House Select Committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose not to run for re-election. One primary race is still to be determined; Rep. John Katko’s New York seat.

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Alaska’s non-partisan ranked-preference primary … Preternatural MAGA politician and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s shot at the state’s single, at-large House seat remains alive. Palin came in second with 32.2%, to Democrat Mary Peltola’s 34.5% and ahead of Republican Nicholas Begich’s 27.1%. A third Republican, Tara Sweeney, also advances to the general election, with her 3.2% of the vote.

Because of the ranked-preference vote, a candidate who gets more second-place votes could beat the first-place candidate. 

Alaska will determine the winner among these three for the special election to serve out the remainder of Republican Don Young’s seat, by the end of August, NPR says. (Young died in office earlier this year). Peltola, Palin, Begich and Sweeney face off in the ranked-preference general election November 8.

For U.S. Senate: Moderate Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski edged Trump-endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka, 42.% to 41.8%, and Democrat Patricia Chesbro at 6.2%, and Republican Buzz Kelley at 2.3% to advance to the general election. The four beat 15 other candidates for the chance to compete in another ranked-preference race for the Senate seat November 8.

--Todd Lassa

...meanwhile... (TUE 8/16/22)

Tuesday’s primaries… Wyoming’s and Alaska’s primaries are quite probably Donald J. Trump’s most important so far and coincide with a resurgence of support for the former president coming a week after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Politico calls the Wyoming primary “Liz Cheney’s day of reckoning” as she faces Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman for the state’s at-large House seat. Cheney is about 30 points behind in the polls thanks to her voting for ex-President Trump’s second impeachment and sitting as vice chairwoman of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, though there has been some hope that she would make up that deficit with sympathetic Democratic and independent voters in the open primary. There will not be enough.

In Alaska, preternatural Trumpian Republican Sarah Palin faces Democrat Mary Petola and Republican scion of prominent state Democratic family Nicholas Begich in a special election to replace Don Young, who died in office earlier this year. Alaska has a new ranked-preference system, which means that if no candidate gets at least 50% of the vote for the at-large House seat, the second and third rounds are counted. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also faces Democratic and Republican challengers in the non-partisan primary for her seat (per Ballotpedia).

Upshot: Cheney could flip Tuesday’s likely loss into a serious challenge to Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

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Biden to sign Inflation Reduction Act… President Biden is scheduled to sign the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the sweeping climate change, health care and tax bill at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. While the Congressional Budget Office estimates no effect on inflation – why should it? – for 2022 and ’23, its scoring says the reconciliation bill will reduce the federal deficit by $300 billion, NPR reports.

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Giuliani a ‘target’ in Georgia probe… Prosecutors in Georgia have informed former America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani he is a ‘target’ in its “wide-ranging” criminal investigation into election interference involving his former client as attorney, ex-President Trump, in the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reports. A federal judge in Atlanta also has rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) efforts to avoid testifying in the investigation being led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis. Graham’s attorneys say the senator has been informed he is a witness, not a target.

--Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news