Jamie Raskin announces cancer diagnosis

Rep. Jamie Raskin announced on Wednesday that he’d been diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, “a serious but curable form of cancer.”

“With the benefit of early detection and fine doctors, the help of my extraordinary staff, the love of Sarah and our daughters and sons-in-law (actual and to-be) and family and friends, and the support of my beloved constituents and my colleagues in the House, I plan to get through this and, in the meantime, to keep making progress every day in Congress for American democracy,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement.

The congressman said he was diagnosed after “several days of tests” and would “embark on a course of chemo-immunotherapy on an outpatient basis” at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. He added that the prognosis for most in his situation was “excellent” after four months of treatment.

“I expect to be able to work through this period but have been cautioned by my doctors to reduce unnecessary exposure to avoid COVID-19, the flu and other viruses,” Raskin said. “In addition to destroying cancer cells, chemotherapy impairs natural antibodies and undermines the body’s immune system. I am advised that it also causes hair loss and weight gain (although I am still holding out hope for the kind that causes hair gain and weight loss).”

Raskin, who was sworn in to his third term in Congress in 2021, has cemented himself as an influential House Democrat and seen his national profile rise after taking on the role of a manager in President Donald Trump’s second impeachment, and after becoming a Jan. 6 select committee member. Just last week, he landed the top Democratic job on the influential House Oversight Committee, where he’ll serve as a ranking member in the new Congress.

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Bankman-Fried to enter plea next week in FTX case

FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried is scheduled to be arraigned and enter a plea in federal court in Manhattan next Tuesday on criminal charges alleging wire fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

The 30-year-old is accused of stealing billions of dollars in customer and investor funds through his Bahamas-based crypto exchange, FTX, as well his hedge fund Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas last week. He was later released on a $250 million bond to his parents' home in California.

Two members of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and are cooperating with prosecutors in their investigation of FTX’s collapse, which federal officials say is ongoing.

The downfall of Bankman-Fried’a crypto empire sparked a market contagion that’s upended the digital asset industry. It’s also forced a reckoning among Washington policymakers who viewed Bankman-Fried — a major political donor — as a key industry figure in policy battles over the future of cryptocurrency regulation.

A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried declined comment.

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U.S. to require Covid tests for travelers coming from China

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will require anyone arriving by air from China to provide a negative Covid test, following a surge of Covid-19 cases across China as Beijing has eased its strict zero-Covid rules.

Under the new rules, which will take effect on Jan. 5, anyone two years and older will need to show a negative result from a test taken within two days of their departure from airports in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, administration officials told reporters in a briefing.

The move reflects the Biden administration’s alarm about the potential spillover of new Covid variants linked to soaring Covid infections in China. The Chinese government ended its draconian Covid-zero policy — hinged to mass testing, tracing and lockdowns — on Dec. 7 following mass protests in November fueled by anger about the strategy.

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Judge: Jan. 6 committee evidence suggests Trump asked rally crowd to break the law

The Jan. 6 select committee’s finding that Donald Trump lured followers to storm the Capitol does not absolve them of legal responsibility for their actions, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, the first opinion to cite the congressional panel’s criminal referrals of the former president.

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates cited the select committee’s reportand criminal referrals to swat down a Jan. 6 defendant’s claim that he believed Trump had authorized him and other rioters to enter the Capitol when he urged the crowd to march down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that defendant Alexander Sheppard should be prohibited from making the “public authority” defense because there’s simply no evidence Trump told his followers that entering the restricted grounds of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was legal. In fact, his incendiary rhetoric — especially telling his supporters to “fight like hell” — may suggest Trump was asking them to break the law, Bates said.

His words “could signal to protesters that entering the Capitol and stopping the certification would be unlawful,” Bates found.

Bates’ ruling is the first to reckon with the select committee’s finding that Trump violated at least four federal laws in his crusade to subvert the 2020 election. And it is an early window into how the judiciary might interpret the unusual findings of criminal violations by a congressional committee.

A slew of Jan. 6 defendants have sought to argue that Trump somehow blessed their decision to breach the Capitol, saying they were misled into believing their actions were legal. Though Trump has no power to permit others to violate federal laws, many in the crowd might have viewed his instructions as legal permission, they’ve argued. Those defenses have largely failed in courts, and the one jury to hear that claim — in the case of Dustin Thompson — rejected it, finding Thompson guilty on all charges.

Bates noted that the select committee’s findings might, on the surface, lend credence to the notion that Trump had somehow sought to give supporters permission to go into the Capitol. The panel, he said, cited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech as a triggering moment for the attack on the Capitol, quoting the report’s finding that Trump “summon[ed] a mob to Washington, and knowing they were angry and armed, instruct[ed] them to march to the Capitol.”

But the committee’s finding, Bates ruled, does not suggest that Trump told his followers that entering the Capitol would be legal. In fact, Trump’s incendiary rhetoric might have done just the opposite.

“Thus, the conclusions reached here — that even if protesters believed they were following orders, they were not misled about the legality of their actions … is consistent with the Select Committee’s findings,” Bates wrote.

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A Republican free-for-all looms in 2024 Indiana Senate race

INDIANAPOLIS — A crowded 2024 Senate primary is already brewing deep in the heart of Trump country.

In a state with a deep and restless bench of ambitious GOP politicians, a half-dozen of them are weighing a shot at a coveted seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Mike Braun as he runs for governor. The roster of candidates spans the GOP’s ideological spectrum at a time when significant numbers of Republican voters here appear to be souring on the former president.

But the biggest factor hovering over the race at this moment isn’t Trump. It’s the possibility of a political comeback by Mitch Daniels, the outgoing Purdue University president whose eight years as governor shaped nearly two decades of Republican rule in the state.

Daniels — a classic Reagan conservative with mainstream moderate impulses known for advocating a truce on the culture wars and being critical of Trumpism — could face a group of Republicans who have embraced those same culture wars as dogma in the Trump era. His potential list of challengers, meanwhile, includes a list of onetime and current allies who have benefited from his political coattails even as they’ve embraced the policies and political style of the former president.

At the top of that list is Rep. Jim Banks, the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee and Fox News fixture whose stock has risen in Trump world as a close ally of Donald Trump Jr. National and state-based Republican strategists say Banks is a formidable candidate more in touch with the grassroots of the party than Daniels.

Other candidates include two Fox News regulars: Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is engaged in a legal battle with the Indianapolis doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old rape victim last summer; and Jennifer-Ruth Green, the Black Air Force veteran who came within 5 points of defeating Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan in the state’s 1st Congressional District in November.

Other Trump allies, including Rep. Victoria Spartz and former Attorney General Curtis Hill, could run, as could retiring Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, whose personal wealth would also allow him to self-fund.

The unfolding primary could provide an early indicator of Trumpism’s staying power in a state the former president has won twice by more than 15 points. Daniels, for instance, refuses to even talk about Trump or say his name, and has likened the last decade of American politics to a virus. Banks has not yet formally endorsed Trump. And Hollingsworth was the only Indiana Republican who voted with Democrats for the Jan. 6 Commission, a fact other candidates could use as a wedge issue.

Other candidates, meanwhile, have lashed themselves to the former president, in at least one case seeking his advice about the race.

Daniels’ decision, however, could well determine how many of the others decide to jump in.

“It’s just so early to tell, but I would certainly think that is a significant dynamic change in that race, which would likely cause most people who are thinking about running to take that in as a new factor as they make their decisions,” said Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party.

The still-unformed field is vexing some of the party’s biggest players. Bob Grand, the Indianapolis Republican donor and powerbroker, said in an interview he would back Banks, who pivoted to a possible run after narrowly losing a race for House whip. But asked whether that would change if Daniels runs, Grand said the former governor “would clear the field.”

Daniels, who will decamp in January to his Florida home for an annual golf trip following his tenure at Purdue, famously keeps his own counsel and detests political consultants and pollsters. He’ll be joined by three close friends, including Mark Lubbers, his longtime confidant and a top adviser early in his gubernatorial administration. Some reports have suggested he’ll meet with advisers while in Florida to discuss his next moves, but those are erroneous, according to Lubbers.

“He has a tiny number he might seek advice from, but in his 20 years of Indiana politics, there has never been a meeting of a ‘brain trust,’” Lubbers said in an interview.

A person close to Rep. Victoria Spartz said she might not ultimately run if Daniels does. Spartz declined to comment on that question, but told POLITICO she is seeking a meeting with Daniels before making her decision. She traveled to Mar-a-Lago recently to discuss her ambitions with Trump.

“I did tell him that I was considering it but have not decided yet,” she said.

Pollsters close to the Spartz and Daniels camps in recent days have released surveys of the field as the candidates jockey for position. An internal poll released by Spartz showed what her campaign described as a “wide-open race.” Thirty-five percent of likely primary voters said they would definitely or probably for Daniels, while Spartz was tied with Banks at 14 percent.

A poll from Bellwether Research’s Christine Matthews, Daniels’ pollster, showed similar results. (Lubbers said the poll was commissioned without Daniels’ knowledge.)

While Spartz is likely to be influenced by whether Daniels runs, a person close to Banks indicated he is leaning toward getting in regardless of the final field.

“Jim Banks rightfully believes he is the person best positioned to win a Republican primary for Senate in Indiana,” a person close to Banks said. “He won’t make his decision based on what others do and I think the poll numbers released by Daniels and Spartz will only embolden him to run.”

The budding field features intriguing match-ups fraught with political characters who have rich and complicated personal relationships. And the results of the primary could yield tea leaves about the direction of the party both in Indiana and nationally.

There are some signs Trump’s hold on the party here is weakening. Sen. Todd Young, who has worked with the Biden administration on domestic research and science legislation and other issues, was rewarded by voters with a 20-point reelection victory — a greater margin than Trump’s 16-point victory in 2020. More than a third of Republican voters in Indiana — and more than half of seniors — say they’ve become less fond of the former president the past several weeks, according to the Bellwether poll.

The influential conservative Club for Growth, led by former Indiana Rep. David McIntosh, has backed both Banks and Spartz in the past. But it would be unlikely to take sides in a contested primary, a person close to the Club told POLITICO.

Banks, for his part, played an integral role in helping launch the career of Green, endorsing her in her House primary and showering her with money from his political action committee.

Farther back in the late 2000s, Banks was among Daniels’ first early supporters as a college Republican at Indiana University, Daniels recalled in an interview with POLITICO Magazine interview earlier this year. And when Banks was in the Indiana state Senate, Daniels, then governor, called him the future of the Republican Party at a county party dinner.

Daniels, who came close to launching a 2012 presidential campaign, has remained distant from the politics of Trumpism over the past decade as he’s served as president of Purdue. Banks has allied himself with the Trump wing of the party, building a close rapport in particular with Donald Trump Jr.

For Daniels, 73, a Senate campaign would be something of a full-circle moment. Then the father of a young family, Daniels famously declined an appointment to former Vice President Dan Quayle’s Senate seat when Quayle’s nomination left it vacant in 1988. Braun’s seat was also held by Daniels’ earliest mentor in politics — the late former Sen. Richard Lugar, who hired Daniels as a young aide when Lugar was the mayor of Indianapolis.

Earlier this summer, Daniels had been urged by allies — including Indiana Speaker of the House Todd Huston — to seek a third term as governor. But Daniels recently said he is “disinclined” to do so. A person familiar with his thinking said that Daniels “seems more interested in protecting his legacy as gov[ernor] than building a new one.”

“He wants to have his voice heard and he’s looking at it,” this person said of a potential Daniels Senate campaign. “His interest is federal.”

Still, absent a more definitive announcement from Daniels, Banks is poised to be the frontrunner, said a national Republican strategist unaligned with Banks and set to work on 2024 Senate races.

“I think Mitch Daniels would be formidable, but he also has to run a very modern, more base-driven campaign” in order to succeed in the primary, a departure from his past approach, this person said.

But the other potential GOP candidates are also seen as strong contenders, the strategist said, and national Republicans are “agnostic” about which of them should become the nominee.

“Any of them could win a general,” the strategist said, and “all of them would have a case to make.”

None of the prospective candidates have made themselves enemies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, meaning the McConnell-backing Senate Leadership Fund super PAC would not have a strong motivation to wade into the primary.

By contrast, Republicans like Eric Greitens in Missouri, Mo Brooks in Alabama, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire sought to appeal to the conservative base by declaring they would oppose McConnell as leader. And SLF subsequently spent money against them.

Greitens and Brooks lost their primaries, while Bolduc and Tshibaka were defeated in the general election.

For now, all eyes are on Daniels.

“It’s just hard to fathom anyone wanting to challenge him should he decide to run,” said Cam Savage, an Indianapolis-based Republican consultant who served as Daniels’ communications director on his 2008 reelection bid. “It’s even harder to fathom anyone thinking they could beat him.”

Lubbers said a Daniels decision is not imminent.

“Mitch makes up his own mind in his time,” Lubbers said, adding that “everyone else will just have to wait until he decides.”

Natalie Allison contributed to this report.

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Buttigieg pledges 'extraordinary effort' as Southwest Airlines cancels more flights

Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday said his Transportation Department “will mount an extraordinary effort” to ensure Southwest Airlines, plagued by days of cancellations that have stranded thousands of passengers and aircrew nationwide, meets its obligations to its customers — including refunds.

Speaking to ABC’s "Good Morning America," Buttigieg upped the pressure on Southwest, pointedly saying the travel meltdown goes beyond a weather-driven issue, key wording that means the administration will interpret compensation owed in the most favorable way for passengers. He reiterated that the Texas-based airline must also work to get meal vouchers, hotel stays and ground transportation in place “because this is the airline's responsibility.”

“In order to restore that relationship with their customers, Southwest is going to have to not only make them financially whole, but find a way to really rebuild trust and confidence,” Buttigieg said in a stern appearance that is a marked departure from his more typically genial demeanor. “They pledged to me that they're going to do that. I want to see exactly what that means,” he said.

Late Tuesday, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan had his first on-camera appearance about the problems, in which continuing bad weather quickly overwhelmed Southwest's internal scheduling system, leaving crews stranded and planes parked as the system struggled to match people to equipment.

“We reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up,” Jordan said. The airline has canceled more than 2,500 flights Wednesday and another nearly 2,400 for Thursday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, just to reset its schedule with the flights it knows it can operate.

“We're focused on safely getting all of the pieces back into position to end this rolling struggle,” Jordan said.

Just before the Labor Day weekend, DOT published a dashboard showing each airline’s cancellation and refund policies, a move which prompted many airlines to make those policies more consumer-friendly, such as offering more generous hotel and meal vouchers when flights get canceled or significantly delayed and more flexibility to reschedule flights. Typically, compensation owed to fliers depends on whether an event was in the airline's control — like an equipment malfunction — or out of its control, like weather.

Key congressional Democrats such as Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, have already said they plan to probe the matter when lawmakers return next year.

Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), who will be the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee next year, on Tuesday said he spoke with officials at Southwest, who told him cancellations as of Christmas Eve are “deemed controllable,” meaning passengers are entitled to refunds and reimbursements as a result of the airlines’ meltdown.

Refunds for cancellations since Dec. 24 “will include full fare and any other unused charges,” Larsen tweeted.

Southwest, like other airlines, received billions in Covid-19 pandemic relief money — roughly $3 billion in grants and low-interest loans for the airline alone — with the understanding that the money would help keep people on the job and position the carrier to be ready when travel demand returned.

DOT has already given passengers a taste of what it can do when push comes to shove. In November, it announced it had forced Denver-based Frontier Airlines and five foreign carriers to give passengers $600 million in refunds for canceled flights. It also fined them a total of $7.25 million and said more civil penalties against airlines for consumer protection violations could follow by the end of the year.

DOT is also working on several regulations intended to shore up protections for airline passengers — but those will take some months to complete.

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Newsom, key Democratic governors brace for pension crunch as recession looms

The stock market’s plunge battered public retirement systems in 2022. The outlook for 2023 is even more grim.

With Wall Street CEOs warning of financial carnage ahead, governors overseeing some of the nation’s largest pension systems are bracing for a hit to state investment funds that have long supported benefit plans and cash-strapped budgets. The longer the decline, the harder it gets for governments to pay retirement benefits promised to millions of teachers, cops, firefighters and other workers in exchange for careers in public service.

But the political stakes are also high for key Democrats — including Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Phil Murphy of New Jersey — who have touted their records as fiscal stewards as they angle for a bigger role on a national stage.

All three have pumped billions of dollars into their states’ retirement systems to stabilize the programs amid unpredictable market swings. And all three are widely believed to be exploring presidential runs in the future.

“There’s going to be acute fiscal pain and pressure the more you ignore the cost,” said Leonard Gilroy, a senior managing director of the Reason Foundation’s Pension Integrity Project, which advises state governments on pension plans. “If you're not paying it down, you're chasing it.”

For all three governors, steps taken by many of their predecessors have put them in the unfortunate position of having to give chase.

“When we arrived on the scene, New Jersey’s pension system had either been ignored or underfunded by administrations on both sides of the aisle for more than 20 years,” Murphy said in a statement to POLITICO. He’s “fully committed” to paying the state’s full obligation to its retirement system for the third time in as many years in 2023, he said.

Lengthy periods of slow economic growth and weak markets can chill what retirement systems expect to generate from their investment plans — meaning that taxpayers and public workers have to pick up a larger chunk of the cost. That ultimately leaves states with less money to spend on schools, social programs and basic infrastructure — a problem that’s likely to be exacerbated by falling tax revenue and the elimination of billions of dollars in federal Covid aid.

Those challenges get even tougher when investment portfolios don’t hit their marks. States don’t budget their pension payments based on a single year of returns — those projections are smoothed out so they’re less susceptible to booms and busts. But it only takes a couple of years of underperformance to “throw the finances of the system out of whack,” Gilroy said.

And 2022 was pretty dismal. The combination of rising interest rates and sharp declines in the stock market made for a brutal investment environment.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s largest public pension, lost almost $30 billion in the downturn. New Jersey and Illinois pensions also finished their fiscal years in the red — as did almost every other state and local retirement system.

Many investors aren’t expecting much better in the near term.

CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost sees “a challenging road ahead as major economies around the world continue to slow and market volatility grows,” according to a statement provided to POLITICO. “We understand these low-returning environments can put pressure on our employer partners and local government budgets.”

Propping up pension payments with budget cutbacks or new taxes can make for difficult politics, said Alex Navarro-McKay, a longtime Democratic consultant and the outgoing head of BerlinRosen’s campaigns team. That’s particularly true in an economy that’s avoided recession despite a pervasive sense of dread in financial markets.

“If the real economy is in recession, voters understand that policymakers have to make tough choices; and policymakers who deliver tough news honestly can skate through difficult times,” he said. “If the real economy avoids a recession, then it's harder for voters to understand why their state or local government is cutting spending or increasing taxes.”

Underfunded pensions in states like California, New Jersey, Illinois and elsewhere have bedeviled political leaders from both parties for decades.

Many states — through a combination of poor planning, budgetary shortfalls or political gamesmanship with powerful public sector unions — went years without making full payments. Changes that reduced the retirement age and promised stronger employee benefits drove up costs. So did cost-of-living adjustments, complicated borrowing schemes and shortsighted decisions to skimp employer contributions.

The problem became even more acute during the global financial crisis and its aftermath.

As markets cratered, investment revenue that covered a portion of states’ obligations to their pensioners disappeared — creating an even deeper hole that elected officials, union leaders and financial advisers have spent years trying to fill. Total unfunded liabilities are hovering around $1 trillion nationally — though estimates vary — and could climb higher if returns repeatedly fall short of expectations.

“There are likely to be some very tough choices,” said fiscal watchdog Laurence Msall, who heads the Chicago-based tax policy and government research group Civic Federation. “The financial pressure isn't going away.”

With that said, Msall and other pension experts said state leaders have started to take meaningful steps to stabilize their retirement systems by socking away more money at a time when public coffers were flush with federal Covid aid and surging tax revenue. In mid-2021, barely a year after a sharp pandemic downturn sparked a short recession, researchers at Pew Charitable Trusts reported that the nation’s retirement systems were on their soundest footing since the global financial crisis.

“States and localities recovered quickly and strongly because of policy action,” White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in an interview. “That provides a tailwind to some of the challenges or risks that may come.”

Pritzker spokesperson Alex Gough said the last two budgets included full pension payments, as well as a supplemental $500 million allocation that will put the state in a better position to manage future market downturns.

Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs partner who led the bank’s investment management division, said New Jersey has been slowly ratcheting down its return expectations — in addition to paying off bonded debt and meeting its pension payments — in anticipation of a slower investment environment.

“This more conservative assumption has better positioned us to absorb any volatility in returns moving forward,” he said.

In California, Newsom is following through on reforms that were put in place by former Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, who made an overhaul of the state's benefits program a priority following the global recession. Newsom’s budgets have included additional deposits to CalPERS and the state’s teacher retirement system, and diverted cash into a rainy day fund for periods of economic stress.

Those budgets benefited from a strong economy and multibillion-dollar revenue surpluses. Now, analysts are warning that there's trouble ahead, particularly as California's tech industry struggles to withstand a market downturn that's resulted in thousands of layoffs.

“In every single budget, Gov. Newsom has prioritized strengthening California’s pension systems and planning ahead for an economic downturn to help make sure people get the benefits they worked for. The state has prepared for this,” spokesperson Alex Stack said.

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