History Offers Democrats a Way Out of the Menendez Problem

Senator Robert Menendez had a bad week.

A New Jersey Democrat currently serving his third full term in the Senate, Menendez was indicted last Thursday by federal prosecutors who laid out an elaborate and damning case involving secret payments funneled through an American-based businessman, all tracing back to favors the senator allegedly performed on behalf of the Egyptian government.

Even for New Jersey, which a 2014 Harvard study named one of the two most politically corrupt states in the country, the details are eye-popping. Cash totaling almost half a million dollars stuffed into closets, drawers and clothes in Menendez’s home. Gold bars, the price of which the senator allegedly searched on the internet, totaling $100,000 in value. A Mercedes Benz.

Menendez is a notorious political brawler who has survived scandal before — in 2017, a jury deadlocked on corruption charges that could have sent him to prison for years. But his luck seems to have run out, with party leaders in New Jersey abandoning him in droves — particularly the state’s all-powerful county chairs, who largely determine the outcome of primary elections — and national Democrats like Sen. John Fetterman (Penn.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) calling on him to resign.

In short, Menendez is done. Regardless of his legal fortunes, he’s not going to be renominated next year. But what about the remainder of this term? If history is an indication, that is entirely up to his colleagues in the Senate.

The Senate has not expelled a member of its body since 1862, during the Civil War. In modern times, only the threat of expulsion has compelled Senators to resign, rather than face the indignity of seeing their colleagues toss them out by vote. Several of those historical examples suggest that it’s possible for Senate Democrats to unhinge Menendez from his seat, but it won’t necessarily happen quickly.

No example proves this point better than the case of Harrison “Pete” Williams, the disgraced New Jersey politician who was convicted of crimes related to the famous ABSCAM case. Ironically, Bob Menendez currently fills the same seat that Williams ultimately resigned.

Between 1978 and 1980 the FBI conducted a sting operation in which agents posed as Arab businessmen and offered cash bribes to 31 elected officials. Ultimately, one senator and six House members took the bait.

Williams, a four-term Senator and leading liberal in Congress, was the highest-ranking official to go down. In a bizarre and intricate scheme, he agreed to help an undercover FBI agent posing as an Arab sheik to resolve hurdles in his U.S. immigration process in return for the sheik and his friends making a $100 million cash infusion in a mining business in which Williams held a secret 18 percent stake. Williams and his associates would then sell their interest to a second group of (fake) businessmen at a $70 million profit.

The parallels between the Williams and Menendez cases are striking. While Williams never had the opportunity to stash cash and gold in his home — after all, there was no deal to be had; it was a sting — both men were alleged to have funneled foreign payments through real companies (in the Menendez case, through a halal meat enterprise; in Williams’ case, a mining operation). Both men also allegedly turned their corruption into a family enterprise. Where Menendez’s wife has been indicted alongside her husband, FBI tapes showed that Williams boasted to undercover agents of an earlier scheme in which he pressured the state’s casino authorities to approve a deal that benefited a company that employed his wife in a low- or no-show job.

ABSCAM was somewhat controversial. Lawyers for the defense argued it was a classic case of entrapment, and in the case of Williams, there was something to the argument. During an initial encounter with the undercover agents, Williams seemed to demur. It took several months to get him on board. But once on board, he exhibited little compunction about profiting from his office and boasted frequently to agents of his past criminality.

When federal prosecutors indicted Williams in 1980, the Democratic-controlled Senate launched and then promptly suspended an official investigation, on the premise that such a parallel procedure would prejudice his criminal trial. But in May 1981, when a federal jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts, the Senate, now in Republican control, opened hearings. It took roughly three months for the Ethics Committee to vote unanimously for a resolution to expel Williams, and over the course of the year, Williams, who was appealing his conviction, tangled with his colleagues in federal court over their right to expel him and the proper scope of a full Senate trial.

It didn’t help his case that he was unrepentant. To his dying day, Williams would claim he was convicted of a “dishonest crime,” meaning he was entrapped, because “somebody else creates the situation for which you are convicted.”

When one of Williams’ defenders, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, recommended that the body censure, rather than expel their colleague, arguing that expulsion had traditionally been reserved for cases of treason and insurrection, his Democratic colleague, Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, answered in disgust: “If non-treasonous behavior be the sole benchmark of fitness to serve in this body, then one must ask how fit is this body in which we serve?” Eagleton emerged as one of Williams’ most vocal critics and argued that if the convicted politician wouldn’t do them the dignity of vacating his seat, “we should not perpetrate our own disgrace by asking him to stay.”

Ultimately, Williams ran down the clock. Only when his appeals were rejected in late 1981 and only when it became clear that the Senate would expel him on a bipartisan basis, did he relent. In March 1982 — more than two years after his initial indictment — he resigned his seat.

That’s not a story that augurs well for a speedy outcome in the Menendez case. While good money suggests his Senate days are numbered, Menendez is likely to hold on for as long as possible, if for no other reason than to maintain negotiating leverage with prosecutors and to raise money for his defense. He will become an albatross around the necks of fellow New Jersey Democrats and House and Senate colleagues in tough races. His presence in the Senate makes it all the harder for Democrats to build a case against GOP corruption next year.

More recent examples don’t suggest a different outcome. In November 1992, multiple women accused Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) of sexual misconduct. It took almost three years for a long ethics process to unwind — one that did little credit to Packwood or to the Senate. Facing the likelihood of expulsion, in October 1995, Packwood finally resigned. The same was true of Sen. John Ensign, a Nevada Republican who allegedly arranged illegal hush payments and a lobbying job for a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair. It took almost two years after the first revelations of misconduct before Ensign agreed to resign, and again, only because his colleagues seemed prepared to expel him.

All of which means, it’s in the Senate Democrats’ hands. They can drag it out, or they can expedite expulsion proceedings and make it clear to Menendez that he can leave quietly out the back door, or they can toss him out the front in full light of day.

Everyone deserves their moment in court, but there is a difference between legal and political proceedings.

Bob Menendez deserves the opportunity to explain to his colleagues how, on a senator’s salary, he came to possess a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible (sticker price, $60,000) and $100,000 in gold bars, to say nothing of envelopes of cash bearing the fingerprints of his co-defendants. He should also have the opportunity to explain why he presumably never reported these assets or paid taxes on them. But the Senate doesn’t need to wait for his criminal trial to unfold before initiating its own investigation, and it shouldn’t take months for such a process to play out. There is evidence in abundance that allows for a speedy resolution of his ethics case and a vote on the Senate floor.

The modern record suggests that embattled Senators will cling to their seats tenaciously, only until they know the die has been cast. Chuck Schumer and his caucus have a job to do. History shows them exactly how to get it done.

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Second GOP debate ratings: Viewership drops by more than 25 percent

Ratings for the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday are in — and the 26 percent decline is not a good sign for candidates not named Donald Trump.

Around 9.5 million people tuned into the debate, which was broadcast on Fox Business Network and simultaneously played on Fox News, where most people tuned in, and Univision, the network said Thursday. In comparison, almost 13 million people watched the first debate, which Fox hosted at the end of August.

The falling viewership comes alongside seemingly tepid appetites from Republican primary voters to choose anyone other than Trump, who despite facing dozens of criminal charges has stood head and shoulders above the rest of the field in polling. The former president has refused to show up for the debates and has run counterprogramming for both of the events so far — he first chatted with Tucker Carlson on X, and then he visited automobile workers in Michigan this week.

His campaign has already said he would not attend the next scheduled debate, which is slated for Miami at the beginning of November. Running his race like an incumbent, Trump has already set his eyes toward tackling President Joe Biden over the other candidates in the field, issuing a message on abortion that has drawn some ire from the most conservative parts of his party.

Trump has held a monumental lead in the polls throughout much of the race — leading his second-placing candidate, almost always Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 30 or more points in most surveys — and the first debate did little to change the dynamic.

Back in 2015, when Trump was a fresh novelty in the Republican Party and the race was perceived as much more competitive, primary debates set viewership records left and right. The first primary debate of the 2016 cycle drew 24 million watchers, and the second had slightly lower viewership at 23 million. In fact, all 12 debates of that primary cycle, from August 2015 to March 2016, had more than 11 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Before the second debate even ended Wednesday night, Trump’s campaign put out a statement pushing for the end of the events, calling them a waste of time that would not change the race's trajectory.

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The case for panicking over Biden’s reelection campaign

Should Democrats be wetting the bed over President Joe Biden's chances of winning reelection?

Depends on who you ask. Some in the party are truly panicked. Others are begging their compatriots to take a deep breath.

To find out who has the more compelling case, West Wing Playbook asked one person on each side of the debate to make it. Today we present to you the side of panic through an interview with Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who has encouraged other Democrats to challenge Biden in a primary and has thought about getting in the race himself.

On Friday, we will have a Q&A with a Democrat making the case for calm. So don’t @ us just yet.

Yes or no: do you think Biden can win the 2024 race?

Yes, he could win. But the question is, are there others who might be better positioned to win assuming that the eventual GOP nominee is going to be Donald Trump? We should not be sugarcoating or diverting attention from the polling data — we should be digesting it while there’s still time to course correct.

OK, you think he can win. But you also think he could lose?

Yes, I’m one of tens of millions of Americans who have that very legitimate concern.

Do you view the recent Washington Post-ABC poll as an outlier? Or a major warning sign?

If that’s not a warning sign, and a wake up call, and a red alert, I don’t know what would be.

While there’s still time, we should let Americans decide who is best positioned to beat Donald Trump because clearly the data is saying a majority of Americans do not believe, unfortunately, that it is President Biden.

Do you think this is mostly an age issue for him?

I’m trying to focus just on what the numbers are saying. The numbers are saying that despite successful policy implementation, despite navigating through some difficult years, that people are not pleased.

Why is that? If the policies are all there, what more can he do? 

It’s not a failure of policy. We’ve outperformed, I think, every OECD country in the world. But what we have to do better is to express empathy and understanding that people are not feeling that.

Democrats are always worried about elections. Why is this time any different? 

We’re somewhat sleepwalking into a repeat of 2016. That was a time when we thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. It was close, but she was always ahead. And now, no matter what one thinks of polling and surveys at this stage of a race, what is fundamentally different is that the president — at best — is tied, and more likely is slightly behind. 

Some Democrats think the party needs to chill out and stop panicking. Are they off the mark?

In my professional life, both in the public sector and private sector, chilling out has never been a recipe for success in addressing any problem. Thoughts and prayers don’t solve gun violence, they don’t give people homes or food — and chilling out does not make for electoral success.

It was hard to get someone to do this Q&A. People didn’t want to be on the record ringing the alarm bell. Why do you think that is?

Sadly, too many are focused on their own professional futures and not focused enough on our country’s future at a time when we really, really need that. 

Has all of this just been about raising your own profile?

I don’t think many would recommend this course of action to simply raise one’s profile in a system that rewards people who stay quiet and stay in line and sit down and shush up. 

So you’re running? 

I’ve still continued to encourage those who are more proximate and prepared to run a compelling campaign to jump in because we need you now — not in 2028. But if no one is willing to do so, I might.

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What does Matt Gaetz really want?

What is Matt Gaetz's endgame: spending cuts, a political boost, or revenge?

It’s the question reverberating on Capitol Hill after the simmering feud between the Florida conservative and Speaker Kevin McCarthy flared up again Thursday morning in a closed-door meeting, with one lawmaker telling Gaetz to “fuck off” for leveling unproven accusations against the speaker. Gaetz has threatened to force a vote on booting McCarthy for weeks, publicly called him “pathetic” and accused him of lying multiple times.

Hill Republicans, when granted anonymity to speak candidly, say they don't believe Gaetz when he insists it "isn't personal” (though rank-and-file GOP lawmakers are quick to add they don’t know what has set off the Florida Republican).

Some in the GOP chalk it up to Gaetz seeking a future foothold as a conservative TV pundit, others to a desire for name recognition ahead of his widely expected gubernatorial bid in 2026. Still others say he’s sincere in his demands for more spending cuts before voting to fund the government.

The speaker hasn't publicly weighed in. But in private, McCarthy has questioned what he could have done to trigger this level of hostility from Gaetz, according to a longtime ally of the speaker. Other McCarthy allies have theorized that Gaetz's fury dates back to a now-closed Justice Department inquiry into sex trafficking allegations, when some in the House GOP came just short of openly celebrating his potential political demise.

Gaetz denied that he faults McCarthy for anything related to that probe: “No, I think that was all handled fine,” he told POLITICO in a brief interview.

Still, calling Gaetz a thorn in McCarthy’s side would be an understatement. The Floridian has repeatedly threatened to call for a vote to strip the speaker's gavel if he works with Democrats to avert a government shutdown. He’s the most vocal among the conservatives who have sworn to oppose any stopgap plan to keep the government's lights on, and while he's not in the House Freedom Caucus, he counts many of its most obstreperous members as frequent allies.

McCarthy knows a long shutdown imperils his hold on his thin majority come 2025 — and the threat of a challenge to his speakership before the crisis is over looms large. Which Gaetz is openly, repeatedly, pushing for.

The Californian pointedly declined to criticize Gaetz during the federal sex trafficking probe that ensnared him. But in recent weeks, as their relationship curdled, McCarthy has occasionally hurled his own accusations back at Gaetz — while shrugging off the threats with “Matt is Matt.”

The speaker alleged to reporters earlier this month that the conservative was working against him alongside Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), referring to frustration over an unspecified ethics complaint.

Their tense relationship began affecting the entire House GOP more than a year ago, when the Floridian vowed to nominate former President Donald Trump for speaker. That clear message of no confidence in McCarthy shortly thereafter translated into open resistance on the floor throughout January’s speakership election.

Gaetz never cast a ballot for McCarthy, remaining one of six conservatives who — only after 14 failed rounds — agreed to vote “present” in order to let the Californian claim the top gavel. Now, he insists that his repeated antagonizing of the speaker has everything to do with holding McCarthy to the promises he made during that standoff, including bringing all 12 individual spending bills to the House floor.

“It’s based on the terms of the January agreement. If Kevin comes into compliance with the January agreement, he doesn’t have any problems. If he continues to be out of compliance with the January agreement, he’s got problems,” Gaetz said, though he's publicly acknowledged that some of the priorities he's demanded from McCarthy would likely fail in floor votes.

Immediately after the tense Thursday meeting, Gaetz brushed off reporters' questions on whether he was ready to force a vote to boot McCarthy from the speakership. He maintained that his “principal goal” is passing the individual spending bills the House GOP has struggled to clear this week.

Some members believe there’s more on Gaetz’s mind, however. The Florida conservative has already built significant name recognition as McCarthy’s foil, and Republicans see Gaetz as someone who likes to punch up for political gain — he's rumored to be eyeing Florida's governorship in 2026, when Gov. Ron DeSantis is termed out.

That means allying himself with other gadflies, more so than just a partnership with hardliners in the Freedom Caucus. Some Republicans noted Gaetz’s defense of former Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), both progressives who have clashed with their own leadership, as a further sign he aligns himself with self-styled outsiders.

“I just really think that one person wants a lot of attention. It may not be all that personal. It is maybe made-up to be personal,” GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez said of his fellow Floridian, later clarifying that the attention-seeker he referenced was not McCarthy.

“I think [Gaetz] is just using that as a vehicle to run for governor, and he thinks that the one way to go lift his profile is becoming this rebel,” Giménez added, describing his motivations as “despicable” either way.

Gaetz, or “Baby Gaetz” as he is known back in Florida, jumped from the state legislature to D.C. in 2017, where he’d quickly trade in a bipartisan record for a reputation as a populist Donald Trump defender. It was a reinvention he almost openly boasted about in a 2019 interview with the New York Times — saying that in the current political landscape “you’ve got to have the ability to reinvent yourself in this game many times.”

It's a strategy that’s worked well so far. In addition to the media attention he gets for his spat with McCarthy, Gaetz also earns positive feedback about it from his anti-establishment conservative base in Florida — a key demographic if he wants to take the governorship in a few years.

Asked about the Gaetz-McCarthy fight, Don Gaetz, the Florida congressman's father and a former state senator with considerable influence, said "there is no personal animus between him and Speaker McCarthy. What you see from Matt is what you are getting."

Gary Fineout contributed to this report.

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Adams: NYC policy to shelter the homeless shouldn't cover migrant influx

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams suggested Thursday he wants to exempt the influx of migrants from the city's decades-old right-to-shelter mandate as his administration tightens the length on shelter stays and explicitly discourages new arrivals.

“I don't believe the right to shelter applies to a migrant crisis,” Adams said during an appearance on WABC’s "Sid & Friends in the Morning," referring to a mandate dating back to 1981 that the city provide shelter beds to anyone in need.

He was responding to a decision from a Staten Island judge earlier this week that referred to the shelter guarantee as “an anachronistic relic from the past” that was “intended to address a problem as different from today's dilemma as night and day."

The mayor appeared to agree with that sentiment, even as his administration plans to appeal the larger order from Judge Wayne Ozzi, which blocked a migrant shelter in Staten Island.

“Our team is looking at exactly what we're going to do with the ruling,” the mayor said. “There are parts of the ruling we may — and that's may — agree with. We're going to examine that."

Adams’ comments come as the city moves to seek relief from the right-to-shelter mandate in court and further restricts how long migrants can stay in shelters.

The administration is now limiting shelter stays for new arrivals to 30 days, down from a 60-day limit the city began imposing in July. Migrants can still return to the arrival center for a new time-restricted placement if they have nowhere to go at the end of that period.

The moving target has sowed confusion among asylum-seekers, advocates and elected officials said, as the city looks to limit the surge of more than 110,000 migrants who have come to the city since 2022.

“We saw that people were confused by the messages that they got about what was supposed to happen when they got to the end of whatever time limit they had,” said Joshua Goldfein, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which serves in a watchdog role over the right-to-shelter mandate.

“It doesn’t make sense to put an arbitrary time limit on when somebody is getting services.”

Others say the migrant-specific restrictions are a slippery slope toward weakening hard-fought shelter requirements that keep homeless New Yorkers off the streets.

“The intent here is to illegally get as many of them out as possible by utilizing loopholes that allow them to do that,” Council Member Diana Ayala, chair of the committee overseeing the shelter system, said in an interview.

“My concern is that we’re going to start with eliminating out-of-towners and people from out of the state, and then what? Then we move to New Yorkers?” Ayala said. Speaking of shelter conditions, she added, “They’re just trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible so folks not only don’t come here, but exit on their own.”

Discouraging new arrivals has become an increasingly explicit goal of migrant policies enacted by the Adams administration.

Officials released new fliers Wednesday that they plan to hand out at the border, which note that asylum-seekers in New York City “are now getting letters to move out of the shelter” and warn newcomers that they will not be placed in a hotel. It also notes that the city “cannot help you obtain a work permit,” and that migrants “will not be able to easily find work.”

“NYC is one of the most expensive cities in the world; you are better off going to a more affordable city,” the flier reads.

“We definitely do want to discourage people from coming here so that we can pretty much deal with the 113,000 people that are in our system right now,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said at a briefing on the issue Wednesday. “We want to be responsible and tell people the truth about what they're walking into.”

There are upward of 61,000 asylum-seekers currently in the city’s care, and more than 3,000 entered the city’s care just last week, officials said.

Several hundred migrants have hit the 60-day limits since last week, when the policy went into effect, according to Ted Long, senior vice president at New York City Health + Hospitals, which is running some of the migrant facilities.

From last Friday to early this week, “less than half of those still under our care on day 61 needed to come back to the arrival center for another placement,” Long told reporters Wednesday. City Hall did not respond to a request for more specific figures.

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Attorneys fret shutdown will derail long-awaited Trump deposition

The impending government shutdown might inadvertently derail a deposition of Donald Trump that has been years in the making, attorneys in a long-running civil lawsuit warned Thursday.

Lawyers for former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — who are suing the Justice Department claiming their departures from the bureau were improperly influenced by Trump — say they’ve scheduled a two-hour Oct. 17 session with the former president.

However, they noted that the Justice Department typically seeks to delay all civil matters during government shutdowns and might seek to do so in the Strzok-Page case as well.

“Considering the lengthy effort that scheduling Mr. Trump’s deposition required and that a stay might result in substantial delay of the conclusion of this action, Plaintiffs will oppose any stay and expect to promptly request relief from any default stay that is imposed,” Strzok and Page’s attorneys wrote.

The two former FBI employees were involved in Trump-related investigations in 2016 and 2017 before the public release of their private text messages by Justice Department officials revealed hostility and disgust with Trump. They’ve sued over the handling of those messages and claimed that Trump’s public attacks on them contributed to the FBI’s decision to fire Strzok and Page’s resignation.

Deposing Trump is the last step in the process of evidence gathering connected to the lawsuit, which has also resulted in depositions of FBI Director Christopher Wray and other senior FBI and DOJ officials.

The effort to depose Trump has been laborious. An earlier scheduled deposition in the spring was postponed after the Justice Department sought to block it altogether, claiming that Strzok and Page had failed to present evidence that Trump’s conduct had any bearing on their departures from the bureau. But Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered a narrow and limited deposition of Trump despite DOJ’s efforts.

The Justice Department sought intervention from an appellate court to block Trump’s deposition, but an appeals court panel rejected the effort over the summer, putting Trump’s deposition back on track.

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DeSantis slams Trump and Biden after Republican debate

Fresh off the second Republican presidential debate, Ron DeSantis is going into attack mode.

The morning after the debate, the Florida governor took issue with President Joe Biden's new campaign ad that spliced together snippets of DeSantis' debate performance in which he called out former President Donald Trump for his absence on the debate stages. It ends with Biden saying he approves this message.

DeSantis clapped back on X, formerly known as Twitter: “When I'm the nominee, I'll make you climb out of your basement, accept responsibility, and defend your failed record, @JoeBiden.”

DeSantis also had his sights on Trump, digging even further into Trump’s absence on the debate stage by saying in a Fox News interview that Trump should “defend why is he running on the same program in 2016 that he did not actually implement.”

“He has had a lot to say about me on social media since 2022 — right before the midterm election, he started attacking me when we were supposed to be united to a red wave,” DeSantis said. “[It's] one thing to do it behind the keyboard. Do it to my face. I'm ready for it. You used to say I'm a great governor. Now you say the opposite. Let's have the discussion. We can do it one-on-one.”

The digs come after DeSantis failed to create a viral, memorable moment at Wednesday night’s debate — or even one at the August debate. Instead, DeSantis appeared only to be going off rehearsed riffs.

DeSantis was seen as Trump’s top potential Republican challenger when he first announced his presidential run in May, but his poll numbers have only fallen since then — both nationally and in early-voting states. DeSantis ranked fifth place in a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released this month. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump’s lead over DeSantis has nearly doubled since April.

“Polls don’t elect presidents, voters elect presidents,” DeSantis said Wednesday night.

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GOP senators rough up Pentagon nominee over Afghanistan evacuation

Republican senators on Thursday tore into President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Pentagon’s policy chief over the role he played in the Afghanistan evacuation when he was a State Department official.

During Derek Chollet’s confirmation hearing to be the undersecretary of Defense for policy before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) called out what he characterized as the State Department’s failure to evacuate American citizens during and after the withdrawal.

He accused the administration of hindering his efforts to evacuate a group of Americans, including a 3-year-old girl with a leg infection, a mother and her three children, to the Kabul airport. At the time, Chollet was serving as counselor of the State Department, a role he still fills.

“All night of the 29th, you guys are taking me from gate, to gate, to gate, to gate, to gate, to gate, to gate trying to get these individuals in HKIA,” Mullin said, referring to the Hamid Karzai International Airport. “The State Department was stopping us every step of the way.”

After driving the three-year-old girl across the border to Tajikistan, the U.S. ambassador there told Mullin “I was told by Washington, D.C., not to assist you in any way,” the senator said during the hearing. The girl ultimately died, Mullin said, noting that he sent State Department officials pictures of her from his phone.

“For you to sit there and say that every American who wanted to get out got out, you're absolutely lying. And you know that to be factual and you say it with a straight face,” he said.

Chollet has been nominated to replace Colin Kahl as the top official advising the Pentagon chief on all matters related to policymaking. Kahl was one of Biden’s most controversial nominees, and only barely scraped through confirmation after facing sharp questions over his harsh criticism of Republicans on social media and support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Republicans have said they want to reset relations with the policy chief after having a rocky relationship with Kahl, and Chollet is considered likely to be approved by the committee. But that didn’t stop some of them from asking tough questions about the Afghanistan withdrawal and other Biden-era decisions.

During Thursday’s hearing, Mullin hounded Chollet for an answer on whether anyone in the Biden administration has been held accountable for the “disastrous withdrawal.”

“Has anybody been held accountable?” said Mullin, who made repeated requests of the U.S. government to travel to Kabul during the evacuation to rescue American citizens. He’s since become an outspoken critic of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Senator, accountability is critically important–”

“No, I’m saying has anybody been held accountable?” Mullin interrupted. “That's a simple one. It's a yes or no.”

Other Republicans also went after Chollet for the Afghanistan evacuation. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the committee’s ranking member, said Chollet’s comments suggesting the decision to leave Afghanistan was “strategically sound” caused him concern.

During his questioning, Wicker referenced Biden’s interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos pledging to get all Americans out of the country.

“When did you realize that the president was not going to do this?” Wicker asked.

Chollet acknowledged his role in the withdrawal and touted the administration's evacuation of 120,000 people in August 2021, and 15,000 since then.

Chollet also took heat from Republicans for his defense of former President Barack Obama’s time in office, his comments to The Associated Press in 2018 that the notion of a security threat at the southern border was “preposterous,” and remarks to The New York Times in 2020 that “The Army in particular is a pretty bubba-oriented system.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) asked Chollet repeatedly what was more important to the Navy: warfighting and shipbuilding, or climate change. After Chollet refused to bite, Sullivan said the nominee’s answer was “extremely disappointing.”

“The biggest concern so many of us have is the civilians at the Pentagon are shoving down a system of values that don't relate to warfighting, don't work relate to lethality,” Sullivan said.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Chollet to say what he thought of the Biden administration’s timeframe for sending military equipment to Ukraine.

“In retrospect, do you agree there's any weapon system that the Biden administration should have sent earlier than it finally ended up sending them, or do you think it's pitched a perfect game on every decision?” Cotton asked.

Chollet acknowledged that the administration’s approach to Ukraine has not been “perfect,” but said he’s “satisfied” with the amount of assistance the U.S. has given to Kyiv.

"I don't think anyone presumes there's been a perfect game pitch, for sure,” Chollet said.

If the committee decides to approve Chollet's nomination, full Senate confirmation is still unlikely due to Sen. Tommy Tuberville's (R-Ala.) hold on all Pentagon nominees in protest of the agency's abortion travel policy.

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San Francisco’s mayor wants drug testing for welfare recipients

SAN FRANCISCO — Recipients of public assistance — in a city once known for its embrace of counterculture drugs — would have to submit to tests for substance use under a proposal announced Tuesday by Mayor London Breed as she faces mounting pressure to address San Francisco’s fentanyl epidemic.

Breed, who is running for reelection in 2024, outlined the plan the same day that an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. fortune launched his own mayoral bid, arguing that his incumbent opponent had let the drug and homelessness crises fester under her watch.

Her proposal — which progressive critics immediately compared to Republican-style welfare mandates — would require all recipients of locally-funded cash assistance participate in a substance abuse treatment program if screening showed drug use.

“No more handouts without accountability,” Breed said at a City Hall news conference. “People are not accepting help. Now, it’s time to make sure that we are cutting off resources that continue to allow this behavior.”

The proposal from the Democratic mayor of this ultra-liberal city reflects the depth of frustration with a fentanyl crisis that has led to record overdoses, turned parts of downtown into open-air drug markets and is correlated with an increase in car break-ins and other property crime.

It follows similar moves by leaders of other blue cities like New York and Portland, who are pushing forced treatment for mentally ill residents and sweeps of homelessness encampments that were once anathema to the Democratic Party. Breed, and her big city counterparts, are taking more drastic measures around the intertwined problems of drug use, homelessness and mental health to show voters they’re serious about public safety concerns.

Breed has increasingly leaned into tough-on-crime rhetoric in recent months as she faces political headwinds and a growing field of challengers. On Tuesday, she defended her welfare proposal with a Clinton-esque commentary about the need for incentives that make subsidies contingent on personal responsibility.

But she faces a tough road getting the progressive-leaning Board of Supervisors to go along with her proposal. Several were swift to call her plan inhumane and politically-motivated. About a dozen states, mostly deep-red, require drug testing for welfare recipients.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, a progressive and potential rival in the mayoral race, said Breed is deflecting because she has failed to work with the police department to effectively close open-air markets for drugs and stolen goods.

“These are serious times in San Francisco — and we need serious ideas, not politicians desperately grasping for a political lifeline,” he said.

Breed announced her proposal on the same morning that Daniel Lurie, a longtime nonprofit executive and Levi Strauss heir, formally announced he will challenge her in next year’s election.

Lurie told a crowd of hundreds of supporters that he would seek to dramatically increase San Francisco’s police presence to respond to the crises that have roiled its streets.

“My administration will finally slam the door shut on the era of open-air drug markets and end the perception that lawlessness is an acceptable part of life in San Francisco,” he said during a rally at a community center in Potrero Hill.

Several details of Breed’s drug testing proposal are unclear, including which specific drugs would be tested for. Her office said she would unveil the text of the legislation in the coming weeks.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a recovering addict and former spokesperson for the police department, is carrying the measure with Breed. He said more coercive incentives are needed to get people into treatment, especially amid the “unprecedented loss of life in San Francisco” due to drug overdoses.

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Obernolte: House is still choosing priorities on AI law

Rep. Jay Obernolte said Wednesday his near-term priority as vice chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus is picking a lane on how to legislate the emerging technology.

“Are we going to do a broad-based approach with a new agency? Potentially like the EU has done? Or are we going to adopt a sectoral approach, where we empower our existing sectoral regulators to regulate AI within their sectoral spaces?” Obernolte (R-Calif.) said at POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit.

Obernolte’s basic questions reflected a Congress still in the early phases of regulation. In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this month convened an “AI Insight Forum” of tech leaders, not long after he laid out a framework in June for Congress to get on a path toward comprehensive regulation. But some lawmakers have urged for more efficiency in the legislative process to match the breakneck pace of innovation.

Michael Kratsios, former U.S. chief technology officer and now managing director of the San Francisco-based Scale AI, said at the summit that the release of ChatGPT “fundamentally changed the dynamic in Washington” and made the conversation around AI more urgent and concrete.

“It is something that everyday Americans can touch, feel and play with personally,” he said. “Before it was just sort of this, you know, 'Terminator' dream in the movies or something that was happening, maybe in some factory somewhere through a robot.”

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Abbott visited New York City. He didn't take pity on its migrant surge.

NEW YORK — Everything’s bigger in Texas — including the humanitarian crisis of helping migrants.

That was the message from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as he spoke Wednesday in Manhattan, where leaders have blasted his continued efforts to ship migrants from the southern border to blue states, particularly the biggest of them all: New York City.

Abbott both defended his program bussing migrants from the border to sanctuary cities like New York and trivialized Mayor Eric Adams’ complaints about the strain it has put on the city's resources.

“What's going on in New York right now might not be the common circumstance or what you were looking for,” Abbott said at a breakfast hosted by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “But what is going on in New York is calm and organized compared to the real chaos of what we see on the border — not every day, but every hour of every day.”

The Adams administration says nearly 120,000 migrants have come to the city since last summer, many of them without shelter, jobs and support systems. More than 60,000 are currently in the city’s care through a network of shelters in hotels, tents and office buildings.

Adams has blamed Abbott as a catalyst for the recent increase in asylum-seekers coming to the city. Earlier this month, the mayor called him “a madman.” So City Hall saw Abbott’s first visit to the city in years as an insult.

“New Yorkers deserve better than being trapped between a vicious game of political hot potato,” a spokesperson for Adams said. “When thousands of asylum-seekers arrived at Governor Abbott's doorstep in pursuit of the American Dream, he chose to use them as political pawns.”

Abbott, a Republican, put the blame on President Joe Biden, saying that Texas has bussed just 15,800 migrants to New York. That’s a fraction of the migrants who have come to the city through either private transportation or supported by nonprofit organizations. Abbott added that the buses were necessary to relieve overwhelmed small border towns.

The Adams administration has also bussed migrants to hotels in other parts of New York and has lobbied Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to help the city with more money and resources, along with policies to allow the city more flexibility on where to house them.

In fact, Abbott never directly attacked Adams during the nearly one-hour program, and he was eager at times to note their points of agreement — something that Republicans have done regularly with Adams, who has sparred with the White House over the issue.

“This is something that's unsustainable. I think those are the words of your mayor. Those are the words of the mayor of Chicago and LA. Those are the words of the governor of Texas,” he said.

Abbott echoed New York leaders in saying that the federal government should pay Texas and New York for serving migrants and teased that “you may be able to expect some litigation” on that issue coming soon.

Asked what advice he’d give Adams and Hochul, he said it’s something they’re already beginning to follow: blaming Biden for not limiting migration to the country.

“They must prevail upon their president for more than just money. They need a change in policy,” he said. “They need to demand what all Americans expect and that is the Biden administration will follow the rule of law and stop illegal immigration into the United States.”

The White House has put the onus on Congress to change immigration laws, and it points to the help it has given New York and other states.

Hochul, meanwhile, was unswayed by Abbott’s visit to New York.

“Let me be clear. I will not be taking advice from Greg Abbott,” she told reporters at an unrelated press conference Wednesday.

“This is just pure politics what he is talking about. And if he’s genuine about solving the problem, don’t come to New York and grandstand. Go to Washington and meet with Speaker (Kevin) McCarthy and say you have the key in your hands to solving this problem.”

Abbott isn’t expected to meet with either Hochul or Adams while in New York. He appeared in studio on Fox News Wednesday morning — where he also encouraged New York to “blame Joe Biden” — and met with billionaire donor John Catsimatidis, taping a prerecorded segment for Catsimatidis' radio show.

Abbott adviser Dave Carney said Abbott would be in New York until Friday, including visits to the New York Stock Exchange and attending a celebration for an exchange traded fund of Texas companies.

Where Abbott spoke was also notable. It was at the Yale Club in Midtown Manhattan, which is next door to the Roosevelt Hotel that the city has turned into its main migrant intake center.

The governor didn’t appear to visit and drove away after the event. But one Adams’ deputy mayor leading the migrant response, Anne Wiliams-Isom, suggested Abbott could learn from the way the city has provided shelter and services.

“I hope that when he’s here, he can get a glimpse of what it really looks like to deal with a humanitarian crisis in a humane way,” she said.

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