Sen. Joe Manchin says Donald Trump would destroy US democracy if he wins second term as president

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, days removed from announcing he won’t seek reelection, said Wednesday that if the nation’s voters give former President Donald Trump another term in the White House, “he will destroy democracy in America.”

Manchin, whose home state voters overwhelmingly backed Trump in the last two presidential elections, made the comment on a press call with West Virginia-based reporters amid speculation that Manchin himself might be weighing a third-party run for president.

The moderate West Virginia Democrat said Wednesday that he would never want to be a “spoiler” who contributed to getting any other candidate elected. But he said he would do what he had to in order to save the country.

“If they said, ‘You’re the only person to do it,’ I’ll do whatever I can to save this nation,” he said.

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Manchin had harsh words for how the two-party system is currently functioning.

“These parties have taken over to where they weaponized us against each other,” he said. “And that’s wrong.”

But Manchin reserved his harshest comments for Trump, who won every one of West Virginia’s 55 counties in both 2016 and 2020, making it one of the former president’s most loyal states. Manchin said it would be “dangerous” to give Trump another term.

“You can’t have this visceral hatred spewing out of every time you give a speech, denigrating Americans,” he said. “And the only good American is the one that likes you and supports you; the only fair election is the one you win; the only laws pertain to everybody but you.”

Manchin also critiqued Democratic President Joe Biden on Wednesday, saying he has been pushed too far to the left during his term in office.

After Manchin announced his decision last week not to seek another term, Trump took to social media to take credit for nudging him out of the race by endorsing the current West Virginia governor’s bid for Manchin’s Senate seat next year.

“Because I Endorsed Big Jim Justice of West Virginia for the U.S. Senate, and he has taken a commanding lead, Democrat Joe Manchin has decided not to seek re-election. Looking good for Big Jim!” the former president said on his Truth Social internet site.

Manchin’s condemnation of Trump came less than a week after the senator, who was a state lawmaker, secretary of state and governor of once-deep-blue West Virginia before being elected to the Senate in 2010, announced he would not pursue another term because of frustration with the political divide in U.S. politics.

Manchin would have had a difficult path to reelection as the only remaining Democratic statewide officeholder in West Virginia, likely running against either GOP U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney or Gov. Jim Justice, both loyal Trump supporters.

Since his decision not to run for reelection next week, political pundits have speculated that Manchin might be eyeing a potential presidential run as a candidate with No Labels. Manchin has long been friendly with No Labels, which has already begun holding private conversations with potential presidential nominees, Manchin among them.

A group pushing for Manchin to partner with retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney to seek a third-party presidential bid independently filed paperwork to form a formal draft committee with the Federal Election Commission on the same day Manchin announced he wouldn’t vie to return to the Senate.

Manchin said he has yet to make any decision about his next steps, but repeated his vow to travel the country to gauge interest in a centrist political movement.

“I’ve done everything I can to try to change the political dysfunction and political divisions that we have in Washington, and I’ve come to the conclusion, it can’t be done here in Washington,” he said.

Manchin’s remarks came a day after a congressional hearing devolved into an angry confrontation between a Republican senator and a witness in which Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a fight.

Manchin said he was “ashamed” of the testy exchange as a member of Congress and cited it as the latest example of the rise of extremism in the U.S. political system. He said Trump has contributed to and taken advantage of that.

“The normal procedures in the political arena today, from Donald Trump’s point of view, is attack, attack, attack, insinuate, and then basically invigorate hatred, spew, call you names, wants to get a reaction, wants a fight,” he said. “It’s not who we are. We didn’t become this country like that.”

Manchin said when Trump was elected in 2016, he tried to work with him, but that the president’s approach to politics goes against “every grain I understood of what we’re supposed to do in public service.”

“You can’t say, ‘I’m going to take the most powerful office in the world and use it for vengeful purposes,’” he said.

Manchin has played a key role in the closely divided Senate, helping to pass the bipartisan infrastructure law and crafting the inflation reduction act, which lowered prescription drug prices, provided health care subsidies and invested heavily in clean energy projects, as well as embracing support for carbon sequestration and storage and other projects to support the fossil fuel industry.

He said it had been one of the most productive congresses in U.S. history because Democrats and Republicans were forced to work together.

“There were people upset thinking I had this power. I said, ‘I don’t have any more power than any of the other senators,’” he said. “I can’t figure out why you all won’t use it to do something good for our country and our states we represent.”

Manchin is the last in a line of powerful West Virginia Democrats who advocated for coal interests in Washington, something that has become untenable as the progressive party has embraced clean energy and the transition away from fossil fuels.

He said when he first came to the Senate, he was asked, “What happened to the West Virginia Democrat?”

“I said, ‘They want to know what happened to the Washington Democrat,’’’ Manchin said. ”The West Virginia Democrats still worked hard, they mined the coal, made the steel, built the guns and ships, they gave everything they have, shed more blood, lost more lives for the cause of freedom than most any state, but all of a sudden, we’re not good enough, green enough, clean enough or smart enough. And they got sick and tired of it.”

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By LEAH WILLINGHAM Associated Press

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Fair winds and following seas for lawmakers considering Oklahoma, Mariana Islands district court nominees

WASHINGTON (CN) — Just a week after the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican threatened to torpedo regular business over Democrats’ Supreme Court ethics inquiry, members of the upper chamber’s legal affairs panel met in the middle Wednesday to consider a group of district court nominees.

The Judiciary Committee was a battleground last week as Republicans raged against a Democrat-led effort to issue subpoenas for a pair of influential conservatives, who they contend had improper financial relationships with Supreme Court justices. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the panel’s ranking member, has suggested that GOP lawmakers would gum up the panel in retaliation to Democrats’ effort.

Despite that, things were somewhat subdued on the Judiciary Committee Wednesday, as lawmakers questioned a trio of White House district court nominees.

Among those were Sara Hill and John Russell, two appointments for vacancies on the Northern District of Oklahoma. Both nominees had the written support of the Sooner State’s all-Republican Senate delegation.

Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, introducing the nominees, thanked the Biden administration for reaching across the aisle to find consensus candidates.

“Oklahoma and the White House don’t agree on a lot of things,” he said, “but we can find common ground and we are able to work on things together. We have gone through a rigorous process over the course of the last year to have two incredibly well-qualified candidates.”

Lankford said that both of the Oklahoma district court nominees would “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon them as a judge of the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

Hill, a member of the Cherokee Nation and the tribe’s former attorney general, would also be the first Indigenous woman to serve on the federal bench in Oklahoma, Lankford added.

Chair Durbin, meanwhile, thanked Lankford and fellow Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin for their cooperation and extended his gratitude for other committee Republicans doing similar work.

“We’re seeing some progress in many states,” the Illinois Democrat said, “and it’s encouraging.”

Durbin has long been a proponent of the age-old Senate tradition of blue slipping, which allows lawmakers to support or object to judicial nominees in their states. While the Judiciary Committee chair has held up blue slips as a vestige of bipartisanship in a divided Congress, critics say that the process gives senators an avenue to unfairly obstruct the White House’s judicial agenda.

While it was mostly smooth sailing Wednesday for the trio of nominees, some lawmakers had questions about Hill’s time as the Cherokee Nation’s secretary of natural resources, a position she held from 2015 to 2019.

Graham needled the nominee about her participation in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline — Hill in 2016 was a member of the Cherokee Nation’s delegation to the Standing Rock Reservation, where the controversial oil line was rerouted.

Asked whether her work related to the Dakota pipeline biased her against fossil fuels, Hill argued that her record includes work with fossil fuel companies.

“When they’re putting in infrastructure, things like pipelines, one of the things they have to deal with is making sure they don’t affect various sites where there might be tribal interest,” she told Graham. “Working directly with those pipeline companies to make sure that they’re in compliance with the law is something that I’ve done.”

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley pressed Hill about reports that Cherokee Federal, an independent contracting company made up of Cherokee Nation businesses, had negotiated a contract with the federal government to operate an intake facility for migrant youth.

Hill argued that she had not been involved in any of those discussions in her capacity as the Nation’s attorney general, pointing out that Cherokee Federal operates independently of the tribal government and that the facility in question wasn’t located within the Nation’s jurisdiction.

The nominee said that her office had not received any complaints related to Cherokee Federal or any other tribal entity managing migrant facilities. “I do recall there being a bit of a controversy about it,” she said, “bit it was not as if I had a formal request for review or anything like that on my desk.”

Lawmakers also questioned Ramona Manglona, renominated by the White House to serve as a judge for the District Court of the Northern Mariana Islands. Manglona detailed her experience managing the federal courthouse serving the Pacific Island chain, including the court’s response to a severe typhoon the islands weathered in 2015.

“I believe all this experience is going to ensure that, should there be another disaster or calamity, I would be somewhat prepared to keep the courthouse doors open to ensure that people’s constitutional rights are still addressed,” she said.

Lawmakers were curious about Manglona’s island-hopping casework, which she explained sometimes requires her to fly from the Northern Mariana island of Saipan to the nearby U.S. territory of Guam. At one point, she was flying three to five times a day, she said.

Graham was particularly taken aback when Manglona noted that it took her 24 hours to fly to Washington from Saipan. “Is there anything the committee can do,” the lawmaker said, “to make your job easier?”

“Confirm me,” Manglona replied.

The Senate, tasked with approving the Biden administration’s federal court nominees, is slowly working its way through a backlog of appointments on the chamber floor. Lawmakers last week confirmed the White House’s 150^th nominee, marking a major milestone that could put the administration on track to surpass the more than 200 federal judges approved under the Trump administration.

from Courthouse News

Oklahoma abortions

Read the ruling here.

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Owners of ‘green’ funeral home arrested for fraud, abuse of almost 200 corpses

COLORADO SPRINGS (CN) — The owners of a green funeral home were arrested in Wagoner, Oklahoma, on Wednesday after law enforcement discovered 188 improperly stored bodies decomposing in a warehouse in Penrose, Colorado.

Jon and Carie Hallford, who own Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, were arrested on suspicion of several felonies, including abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery. The court sealed the couple’s probable cause affidavit.

In October, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office discovered the decomposing bodies when officers investigated a foul odor coming from the funeral home’s facility in Penrose, a town of 3,000 approximately two hours south of Denver.

The business’s website, which is no longer active, had advertised green and natural burials free of embalming chemicals. Colorado law allows for natural burials, but requires bodies to be refrigerated within 24 hours if they are not preserved. 

When questioned by law enforcement, Jon Hallford initially attributed the smell to his taxidermy hobby.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a mass casualty team to help identify the remains. The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office is also asking potential victims who patronized the funeral home between September 2019 and September 2023 to come forward and help identify bodies.

To date, families who entrusted the funeral home to cremate deceased loved ones have filed two civil actions for negligence and fraud.

“For these plaintiffs this was a real-life nightmare,” says a 26-page lawsuit filed in the District Court of El Paso County on Nov. 2. “After weeks of worry, sleepless nights and gut-wrenching anguish those fears were confirmed. They were among the almost 200 families whose beloved family members had been discarded in an empty building to decompose, the ashes were fake and they now had to start grieving all over again.”

The civil complaints claim the Hallfords gave families crushed concrete instead of ashes.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, issued a statement on the couple’s arrest.

“I am relieved that criminal charges have been brought against the funeral home owner and a criminal investigation is proceeding,” Polis said in a statement. “I know this will not bring peace to the families impacted by this heart-wrenching incident but we hope the individuals responsible are held fully accountable in a court of law.” 

The Colorado legislature elevated the offense of abuse of a corpse to a Class 6 felony in 2020 following the discovery of a body-brokering scheme at Sunset Mesa funeral home in Montrose.

If convicted of the highest charge — money laundering — the couple faces up to 12 years in prison and a fine of $750,000.

from Courthouse News

Speaker Johnson led House passage of Israel aid. But the hard part comes next in confronting Biden

WASHINGTON (AP) — As new Speaker Mike Johnson grabbed hold of the House gavel, he made a plea for Americans to “give me a chance” before making up their minds about the newcomer’s ability to lead the far-right House Republican majority that elected him to power.

What Johnson has shown in his first big test as the House passed a nearly $14.5 billion military aid package to Israel is that the easy-going social conservative is more than eager to lift up the priorities of his right flank rather than reach toward the political center in the name of compromise.

By seeking to force the Israel-Hamas war package to be paid for with government spending cuts, something rarely required in emergencies of war or natural disasters, Johnson turned what’s normally an overwhelming bipartisan issue, support for Israel, into one that bitterly split Democrats from Republicans. President Joe Biden threatened a veto.

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It’s a stark example of what may come — or not. The looming government shutdown deadline, Biden’s nearly $106 billion request for aid to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and U.S. border security policy and the presidential impeachment inquiry are all demanding attention from the untested new leader.

“That’s his very first opening move?” asked an incredulous Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close Biden ally, echoing the sentiment of many Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“Congress is all about what caucus and which members are driving you and setting your priorities,” he said. “And part of the challenge the House seems to be having is the House Republican caucus has deep divisions between their Main Street and their MAGA Republicans.”

Johnson, of Louisiana, is trying to accomplish the seemingly impossible — uniting a fractured House Republican majority where the past GOP leaders before him have very publicly and dramatically fallen short.

The new speaker, who is closely aligned with Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 election, has positioned himself as someone who can unite the GOP’s flanks. A low-key, lower-rung leader, he surprisingly rose to the top spot after more tested or fiery contenders — Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer — were brushed aside to replace the ousted former speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif..

In Johnson, House Republicans ultimately found the leader it now seems they always wanted since taking control in January — a Trump defender who challenged the 2020 election results, voted against certifying the election for Biden and reflects the deeply conservative and growing Christian nationalist wing of the GOP.

“A lot of these people don’t know me,” Johnson told Fox News host Sean Hannity in the first of multiple interviews on the cable show. “Give me a chance. Let me have a chance to lead here, and you will see what I’m really about.”

While Johnson found quick political success in his first week on the job with House passage of the Israel aid package, he is keenly aware it is a short-lived victory. The package, with its plan to pay for the aid with cuts to the IRS, would actually end up costing the government billions in lost revenue from tax dodgers, according to budget scorekeepers. and is headed toward a dismal defeat. The Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has already rejected it.

The speaker took the risk, ceding to the far-right’s demands to reduce the size of government, and calculating that doing so will position House Republicans with the strongest hand as they fight Biden and the Senate.

Jordan, a firebrand former rival allied with Johnson, said the new speaker is doing a “good job.”

But the chairman of the Democratic caucus, Rep. Pete Aguilar, said Johnson took a flat out “wrong” move.

Democrats argue that Johnson could have launched his speakership on a consensus note and won a full vote of support on the Israel aid package, with hundreds of Democrats and Republicans coming together to support the top U.S. ally in the Middle East. But instead he chose a divisive, starkly partisan path.

“We’re learning a lot about the new speaker,” Aguilar of California said at a press conference at the Capitol.

“These are the things that Speaker Johnson has to advocate to appease the most extreme members,” he said. “They are his base. They are who gave him the gavel.”

After so much turmoil in the House this year, there is little time left for Republicans in the majority to accomplish the big goals they promised voters they would set out to do.

The year-end calendar is pressing down on Johnson in disadvantageous ways, starting with this month’s deadline to fund the government by Nov. 17 or risk another federal shutdown. A lapse in government funding is what McCarthy successfully avoided in a compromise with Democrats, but it resulted in Republicans kicking him out of the speaker’s office.

Johnson also has signaled the Biden impeachment inquiry may soon come to actual impeachment proceedings. “I do believe that very soon, we are coming to a point of decision,” he told reporters.

Johnson has promised he would turn next to Ukraine as Congress tries to broker a compromise package that would provide money to help Kyiv fight Russia as part of a broader deal to beef up security at the U.S. Mexico border as well.

During the Hannity interview Johnson signaled a break from the GOP’s rising non-interventionist wing, and vowed the Congress would not “abandon” Ukraine.

“We can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine,” he said about the Russian president.

But Johnson said the U.S. has stewardship over “the precious treasure of the American people.” And he said House Republicans want to know the administration’s strategy: “What is the endgame in Ukraine?”

It’s a high-stakes trial for the new speaker, who met with Biden his first day on the job in what he first said was a very good meeting, before questioning the president’s “age and acumen” later on Fox.

The White House and its allies have allowed little of a honeymoon for the new speaker. In the administration’s stark veto message it said the Israel package’s “new and damaging precedent would have devastating implications for our safety and alliances in the years ahead.”

Still, the White House has begun reaching out to allies over the border security demands Johnson is making in return for the aid to Ukraine.

A former House Republican, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, said Washington is underestimating Johnson.

“You’ll see consistency, consistency out of Mike,” said Mullin. “Mike will not be a guy that’s going to get rattled, he’s not going to get excited.”

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By LISA MASCARO AP Congressional Correspondent

from Courthouse News