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AP-NORC Poll: Most Say Voting Vital Despite Dour US Outlook

From his home in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Graeme Dean says there’s plenty that’s disheartening about the state of the country and politics these days. At the center of one of this year’s most competitive U.S. Senate races, he’s on the receiving end of a constant barrage of vitriolic advertising that makes it easy to focus on what’s going wrong. 

But the 40-year-old English teacher has no intention of disengaging from the democratic process. In fact, he believes that the first national election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is “more significant” than in years past. 

“This could very well sway the country in one direction or another,” the Democratic-leaning independent said. 

Dean is hardly alone in feeling the weight of this election. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center of Public Affairs Research finds 71% of registered voters think the very future of the U.S. is at stake when they vote this year. That’s true of voters who prefer Republicans win majorities in Congress, and those who want to see Democrats remain in control, though likely for different reasons. 

While about two-thirds of voters say they are pessimistic about politics, overwhelming majorities across party lines — about 8 in 10 — say casting their ballot this year is extremely or very important. 

The findings demonstrate how this year’s midterms are playing out in a unique environment, with voters both exhausted by the political process and determined to participate in shaping it. That could result in high turnout for a midterm election. 

In the politically divided state of Michigan, for instance, over 150,000 voters have already cast absentee ballots. A total of 1.6 million people have requested absentee ballots so far, surpassing the 1.16 million who chose the option in the 2018 midterm election. 

In follow-up interviews, poll respondents reported distinct concerns about the country’s direction despite agreement that things are not working. 

Rick Moore, a 67-year-old writer and musician in Las Vegas, said he’s dissatisfied with President Joe Biden, and “not just because I’m a Republican.” Moore called him “more of a puppet” than any other president in his lifetime. 

“It’s important to me that Republicans are in control of as much as possible because we’re not going to get rid of the Democratic president anytime soon,” Moore said. 

In general, Moore said, he doesn’t like the way Democratic politicians run their states, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, adding that Democrats are “using the word democracy to make all of us do what they want.” 

“I would just like to see my voice more represented,” he said. 

Since the last midterm elections, voters have grown more negative about the country and people’s rights: 70% say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., up from 58% in October 2018. 

Republicans have become enormously dissatisfied with a Democrat in the White House. While Democrats have become less negative since Donald Trump left office, they remain largely sour on the way things are going. 

Fifty-eight percent of voters also say they are dissatisfied with the state of individual rights and freedoms in the U.S., up from 42% in 2018. About two-thirds of Republicans are now dissatisfied, after about half said they were satisfied when Trump was in office. Among Democrats, views have stayed largely the same, with about half dissatisfied. 

Shawn Hartlage, 41, doesn’t think her views as a Christian are well represented, lamenting that she’d love to vote “for someone that really stood for what you believe,” but that it’s very important to her to vote anyway. 

The Republican stay-at-home mother of two in Washington Township, Ohio, said the direction of the country is “devastating,” noting both inflation and a decline in moral values. 

“I’m scared for my children’s future,” Hartlage said. “You always want to leave things better for them than what you had, but it’s definitely not moving in that direction.” 

Teanne Townsend of Redford, Michigan, agrees that things are moving backward. But the 28-year-old called out abortion, health care and police brutality as especially concerning areas in which rights are being threatened. 

“We have minimum progression in the right direction for a lot of areas, especially for people of minority [groups]. Their rights are not the same as those of other races and cultures,” said the Democrat, who is African American. 

A children’s health and mental health specialist, Townsend said she’s voting for her constitutional right to an abortion this year. If passed, the state’s ballot initiative would guarantee abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution. 

“I feel like it’s just a lot that’s at stake,” Townsend said, adding that she’s both “optimistic and nervous” about the outcome but that it’s “the right thing” for people to be able to vote on it. 

The poll showed majorities of voters overall say the outcome of the midterms will have a significant impact on abortion policy, with Democratic voters more likely than Republican voters to say so. Most voters across party lines say the outcome will have a lot of impact on the economy. 

More voters say they trust the Republican Party to handle the economy (39% vs. 29%), as well as crime (38% vs. 23%). Republicans also have a slight advantage on immigration (38% vs. 33%). The Democratic Party is seen as better able to handle abortion policy (45% vs. 22%), health care (42% vs. 25%) and voting laws (39% vs. 29%). 

Despite the uncertainty in the outcome, Dean in Pennsylvania has faith in the American system to work for the will of the people. 

“I think it’s important that our representatives represent what the majority of people want,” Dean said. “That’s what we claim we do in this country and it feels like it is what should happen. And I am hopeful.” 
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US Urges 6-Month Sentence for Ex-Trump Adviser Bannon Over Contempt Conviction

The U.S. Justice Department on Monday asked a federal judge to sentence former President Donald Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon to six months behind bars, saying he pursued a “bad faith strategy defiance and contempt” against the congressional committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. 

Bannon, an influential far-right political figure, was convicted in July on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. 

Each count is punishable by between 30 days to one year in prison and a fine ranging between $100 to $100,000. 

He is due to be sentenced before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols on Friday morning. 

Prosecutors told Nichols in their sentencing recommendation on Monday that Bannon’s actions, including his refusal to this day to produce “a single document” to the congressional committee, led them to recommend a prison sentence at the top of the guidelines range. 

They also urged the judge to impose the maximum fine of $200,000, which they said they based on Bannon’s “insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation.” 

“Throughout the pendency of this case, the Defendant has exploited his notoriety — through courthouse press conferences and his War Room podcast — to display to the public the source of his bad-faith refusal to comply with the committee’s subpoena: a total disregard for government processes and the law,” prosecutors wrote in their filing. 

“The defendant’s statements prove that his contempt was not aimed at protecting executive privilege or the Constitution, rather it was aimed at undermining the committee’s efforts to investigate an historic attack on government.” 

 
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US Justice Department Seeks End of Review of Documents Seized From Trump Home 

The U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal appeals court Friday to end a special third-party review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida, arguing that a district court should not have appointed a “special master” in the case. 

In a petition to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Justice Department prosecutors argued that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon exceeded her authority when she paused a criminal investigation to allow the special master to review more than 11,000 seized records. 

“It follows that the district court erred in requiring the government to submit any of the seized materials for the special-master review process,” prosecutors said in the court papers. 

The Justice Department is investigating whether Trump broke the law by taking government records, including about 100 classified documents, to his Florida estate after leaving office in January 2021. 

The department also is looking into whether Trump or his team obstructed justice when the FBI sent agents to search his home and has warned that more classified documents may still be missing.
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Congressional January 6 Panel Wrapping Up Case Against Trump

The congressional panel investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 of last year is wrapping up its public hearings Thursday, pledging to present new evidence to show the scope of former president Donald Trump’s connection to the violence that day as he tried to upend his 2020 election defeat and stay in power for another four years.

The House of Representatives Select Committee’s hearing is expected to be its first without live testimony from new witnesses. But the panel’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said the nine-member committee plans to reveal “significant information that we’ve not shown to the public.”

Another committee member, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California, told CNN, “We discovered through our work through this summer what the president’s intentions were, what he knew, what he did, what others did.”

The hearing is unfolding less than a month before crucial nationwide congressional elections on November 8 in which the narrow Democratic political control of Congress is at stake and two years ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with Trump, a Republican, signaling he is likely to mount a new run for the White House against the Democrat who defeated him in 2020, President Joe Biden.

To this day, Trump falsely claims he was cheated out of a second four-year term in the 2020 election because of voting irregularities in several states he narrowly lost to Biden.

He has called the nine-member committee – seven Democrats and two vocal anti-Trump Republicans – “political thugs and scoundrels.”

During earlier hearings, several aides to Trump and officials in his administration testified at the House panel’s eight public hearings in June and July that they directly told the then-president he had lost and that there was not any significant fraud that would have upended his defeat.

Nonetheless, the witnesses said that Trump repeatedly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to block Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, from certifying the Electoral College vote that Biden had won the election. Pence refused to acquiesce to Trump’s demand, drawing Trump’s ire as Trump-supporting rioters stormed the Capitol.

Some of the rioters, more than 800 of whom have been arrested in the 21 months since then, shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” a suggestion one Trump aide said the president thought was appropriate. Gallows had been erected on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol.

Trump, witnesses said, also considered sending the names of fake, Trump-supporting electors to the Capitol for the official Electoral College vote count to replace the official Biden electors in states Trump lost by narrow margins.

Trump is facing several criminal investigations stemming from his actions as he tried to remain in power, including a sweeping Justice Department probe into whether he helped foment the Capitol riot by urging his supporters to go there and “fight like hell” as lawmakers were certifying his Electoral College loss.

In the southern state of Georgia, a prosecutor in Atlanta, the state capital, is investigating Trump’s request to the top state elections official to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than he needed to overturn his 11,779-vote loss to Biden.

The state-by-state vote counts are essential in U.S. presidential elections because the country’s leader is not elected by the national popular vote count, which Biden won by more than 7 million votes. Rather, the overall outcome is effectively determined in the Electoral College through state-by-state elections, with each state’s number of electors roughly determined by its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway.

The House investigative panel is expected Thursday to try to make the case that Trump remains a threat to American democracy because of his actions after the 2020 election leading up to the riot, when about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol, clashed with law enforcement, injured 140 police officers and ransacked congressional offices.

The committee has no power to bring criminal charges against Trump but could make a criminal case referral to the Justice Department in a final report it expects to complete before the end of this year. If Republicans succeed in taking control of the House starting in January, they would almost certainly disband the committee if it does not finish a report by then.

Since the last public hearings, the committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents and communications from the Secret Service, the presidential security agency, that include details of how agents blocked Trump’s attempts to join his supporters at the Capitol even after their assault on the national seat of government had already erupted.

Trump, after rallying his supporters near the White House to “stop the steal” of the election, angrily berated a Secret Service agent when he realized his security detail was taking him back to the White House, where witnesses say he watched on television for more than three hours as the riot unfolded.

Late on the afternoon of January 6, he told his supporters in the Capitol to leave.

“I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace,” he said. “I know you’re in pain. I know you’re hurt.

“We had an election that was stolen from us,” he claimed. “It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace.”
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Here’s What to Expect From Final January 6 Panel Hearing

The congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol is set to hold what will likely be its final public hearing on Thursday, with members pledging new revelations about former President Donald Trump’s role in the events that led up to the attack.

The televised hearing, House of Representatives committee members say, will be sweeping and thematic, offering a broad overview of the panel’s findings to date while airing recently unearthed evidence tying Trump and his associates to the far-right groups that plotted the riot.

“We’re going to be going through really some of what we’ve already found but augmenting [it] with new material that we discovered through our work throughout this summer — what the president’s intentions were, what he knew, what he did, what others did,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, one of the committee’s seven Democratic members, said in a CNN interview on Tuesday.

“Obviously, there’s close ties between people in Trumpworld and some of these extremist groups. We will touch upon that,” Lofgren said, declining to say whom the circle encompassed. “There is some new material that I found, as we got into it, pretty surprising.”

The hearing was initially scheduled for September 29 before Congress recessed for the midterm elections, but it was canceled as Hurricane Ian smashed into Florida and South Carolina.

To date, the panel has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and reviewed over 130,000 documents as part of its investigation.

While the investigation will not stop after Thursday’s hearing, the committee’s focus will shift over the coming months to completing a report of its findings and recommendations for policy changes to Congress by the end of the year.

Trump has called the congressional investigation “a unilateral, completely partisan, political witch hunt.”

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, both of whom are ardent Trump critics and won’t be returning to Congress next term.

Here is what you need to know about the investigation and the committee’s last hearing.

What the hearing will showcase 

The bipartisan panel held eight televised public hearings in June and July. With the exception of the first hearing, each had a thematic focus.

The eighth hearing, held on July 21, focused on Trump’s “dereliction of duty” — the 187 minutes on the afternoon of January 6, during which he allegedly refused to condemn the riot or ask his supporters to go home.

Thursday’s hearing, set for 1 p.m. EDT, will continue in that vein, according to Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the panel.

“It will be the usual mix of information in the public domain and new information woven to tell the story about one key thematic element of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election,” Schiff said September 25 on CNN.

Declining to be more specific, Schiff added that as the last hearing of its kind, Thursday’s session “will be potentially more sweeping than some of the other hearings, but it, too, will be very thematic.”

The committee will also likely air some of the previously unused “substantial footage” and “significant witness testimony” it has gathered, according to Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, committee chairman.

“So, this is an opportunity to use some of that material,” Thompson said last month.

Witness testimony  

In the two months since its last hearing in July, the committee has interviewed several high-profile witnesses, including Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state for period during the Trump administration, and Elaine Chao, Trump’s secretary of transportation.

While the panel is likely to air excerpts of those interviews, it’s not clear if it will feature testimony from another sought-after witness: Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a Republican activist and wife of conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Earlier this year, Ginni Thomas disclosed that she had attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol but said she “played no role with those who were planning and leading the January 6 events.”

It was later revealed that the January 6 committee had obtained text messages between Ginni Thomas and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which she wrote that Trump should not “concede” his loss in the presidential election to Joe Biden.

“The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” Ginni Thomas texted on November 10, 2020.

Last month, the panel interviewed Ginni Thomas, whom Lofgren said was “not a key figure” in the events leading up to January 6.

Though the interview was not videotaped, Lofgren told MSNBC on Sunday that the committee “may” use a transcript, “but we have plenty of other information, as well.”

Secret Service communications

Among the new information the committee will be showcasing is a massive cache of Secret Service communications it recently received.

Last month, Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chair, disclosed that the panel had obtained about 800,000 pages of communications material from the Secret Service.

The presidential protection service has come under scrutiny ever since information emerged this summer that text messages exchanged between agents had been erased.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified in June that Trump knew his supporters gathered in Washington were armed and that he was so intent on joining them at the Capitol that he lunged at the head of his security detail in the presidential vehicle when they instead drove him to the White House.

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival last month, Cheney said that while Secret Service agents “were playing a hugely important and very courageous role” on January 6, “there are some that have not been forthcoming with the committee, and you’ll hear more about that.”

What’s next for the committee? 

As a House “select” committee, the January 6 panel is set to expire at the end of the current congressional term on January 3, 2023. But before its term ends, the panel is mandated to present a report of its findings and policy recommendations to Congress. That report is expected to be released by the end of the year, according to committee members.

One legislative proposal the panel was expected to recommend has already been pushed through Congress.

The proposed legislation seeks to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, a 19th-century law that Republican supporters of Trump argued gave Vice President Mike Pence the power to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral victory.

Last month, the House passed a version of the legislation. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has thrown his support behind a Senate version, raising the prospects of its enactment into law.

Will there be any consequences for Trump? 

While the committee does not have the power to bring criminal charges, it can refer Trump and others to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Justice Department has been investigating the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the investigation will continue, regardless of a congressional referral.

Still, on the question of whether to make any criminal referrals to the Justice Department, committee members appear divided.

While some members such as Schiff favor making criminal referrals, others such as Thompson have said the panel lacks the authority to do so.

Among Trump’s actions in the lead-up to January 6, Democrats say his pressure on Pence to overturn the electoral count was both “illegal and unconstitutional.”
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Pressure Grows for Congressional Action on US-Saudi Relationship  

The Biden administration and U.S. lawmakers are pushing this week for longtime ally Saudi Arabia to face consequences for agreeing to reduce oil production.

OPEC+, which includes Saudi Arabia, the 12 other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and 10 other oil-exporting nations, announced last week that it would cut its oil production target by 2 million barrels a day, despite U.S. objections.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the decision was unanimous and based on economic considerations.

Some members of Congress are calling for an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia. U.S. President Joe Biden signaled Wednesday he was willing to consider that proposal when Congress returns from a recess next month.

“We’re going to react to Saudi Arabia and we’re doing consultation when they come back. We will take action,” Biden told reporters.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said in a statement Monday that the Saudi decision was tantamount to underwriting Russia’s war in Ukraine. The United States has been working to sanction Russian oil exports as punishment for the unprovoked February invasion.

“There simply is no room to play both sides of this conflict – either you support the rest of the free world in trying to stop a war criminal from violently wiping an entire country off of the map, or you support him. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia chose the latter in a terrible decision driven by economic self-interest,” Menendez said.

Menendez proposed that Congress freeze all aspects of the U.S.-Saudi security relationship, including arms sales and security cooperation. Senate and House Democrats introduced a proposal late Tuesday that would halt all sales for one year.

“Saudi Arabia is clearly the driving force in this decision. It’s the dominant power in OPEC+, it has been for years and so singling out Saudi Arabia makes the most sense,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told reporters Wednesday.

“I believe the Saudis have consistently been miscalculating in the past couple years, and it’s probably because [former U.S. President Donald] Trump candidly gave them carte blanche. A lot of the deals that were taking place over the previous administration gave them a sense of security, and what President Biden is trying to do is just return to the proper balance,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, another co-sponsor, told reporters.

Blumenthal and Khanna wrote Sunday in an editorial in American political publication Politico that Saudi Arabia does not have other good options for arms purchases, giving the U.S. leverage.

“Make no mistake, this is a move on oil prices that was designed,” Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator, told VOA.

The decision to cut production comes ahead of midterm elections in the United States November 8.

“What the Saudi crown did [was] to literally undermine the president’s political position, certainly with respect to oil prices, weeks before the midterms and at the same time undermine the president’s position, the international community’s position, in an effort to isolate [Russian President] Vladimir Putin in terms of his aggression against Ukraine by supporting him politically and economically,” Miller said.

Congressional Republicans have been less vocal about what consequences Saudi Arabia should face for the oil production target cut but have criticized the kingdom for human rights violations and other concerns in the past.

“Some of the senators from gas-producing states in the United States were deeply concerned about two years ago when Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ [countries] took certain decisions that led to a severe drop in the price of oil. I think the broader picture is that from a bipartisan basis, the U.S.-Saudi relationship is not on a stable foundation,” Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute, told VOA.

Blumenthal told reporters he was in talks with Republicans about his legislation. Lawmakers are due to return to Washington after the midterm elections.

Cindy Spang contributed to this report.
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