Georgia Republican Lieutenant Governor Says He Couldn’t Vote for Herschel Walker

Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor said he ultimately couldn’t bring himself to vote for Herschel Walker.

Geoff Duncan has been an outspoken critic of both Walker and Donald Trump, whose MAGA message Walker embraced on the campaign trail. Duncan said in October the former football player had earned neither his respect nor his vote.

Duncan said he went to vote early Wednesday in the Senate runoff. “I was one of those folks who got in line and spent about an hour waiting,” he told CNN. But when it was his turn, “I had two candidates that I just couldn’t find anything that made sense for me to put my vote behind. And so I walked out of that ballot box showing up to vote but not voting for either one of them.”

He also said that Walker has not proven he wouldn’t simply be “Trump’s puppet” if elected. Duncan has been outspoken in denouncing the former president’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

Some people were quick to point out that it seemed odd that Duncan would still show up at a voting booth and wait an hour in line, even if he’s known all along that he was not going to vote for Walker.

Others also noted that if he had really wanted to take a stand, he would have crossed party lines and voted for Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.

Record-high numbers of Georgians have turned out to vote in the highly contested runoff race between incumbent Warnock and Walker. Although Democrats have maintained control of the Senate, a victory in Georgia would give them an outright 51–49 majority, instead of the current 50–50 majority by tiebreak.

In the final days of the race, Warnock has sought to stress his opponent’s incompetency and lying. Walker also recently landed himself in hot water with both a viciously transphobic ad, just days after the Colorado Springs shooting, and by apparently not even legally living in Georgia.

President Joe Biden, also known as “Union Joe” and “Amtrak Joe,” is failing rail workers.

On Wednesday, the House voted 290–137 to support a labor agreement brokered by Biden in order to avert an impending rail strike. The House then voted 221–207 to add seven paid sick leave days to said agreement. Every Democrat in the House endorsed this amendment. Rail workers currently have no paid sick days.

Biden remained mum on the paid sick leave measure, only recognizing the success of the labor deal he arranged.

“This overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives makes clear that Democrats and Republicans agree that a rail shutdown would be devastating to our economy and families across the country,” Biden said in a statement, failing to note the still significant Republican opposition to his labor agreement.

In a press conference Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre carried the rest of the message: Of course Biden supports paid sick leave for workers, he is just not interested in working to make it a reality.

The White House is dressing up this inaction as concern for the impacts a nationwide rail strike would have on the economy. But given that a majority of rail workers have rejected Biden’s tentative agreement, there’s no guarantee his deal would stop a strike anyway.

Meanwhile, the White House has self-imposed a deadline of December 6 for Biden to sign any legislation, three days earlier than the deadline unions threatened before striking. The administration appears to be fomenting heightened urgency in order to avoid engaging with the basic fact that it is not going to bat for workers.

The paid sick leave bill, given to Biden on a platter by progressives, offered the president a second chance at getting it right for rail workers.

After every single present Democrat—218 of them—voted in support of the measure, Biden could have expressed excitement at the prospect of giving rail workers paid sick leave, blasted the 207 Republicans who voted against it, and even pressured the Senate to follow the House’s suit. After all, numerous Republican senators, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley, have expressed noncommittal support for rail workers. Biden could have turned the tables and forced them and other Republicans to put up or shut up. It would have been good politics, and morals too.

Instead, Biden is completely dropping the ball on advocating for workers. Once again.

The House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday finally obtained six years’ worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns, despite repeated efforts by the former president to prevent it.

The Democratic-led committee—and Democrats in general—have been trying to get Trump’s tax returns for three years, after he refused to release them during the 2016 presidential election, which is not required but is precedent. And now, CNN first reported, the Treasury Department has finally given them the receipts.

The Supreme Court last week denied Trump’s request to withhold his tax returns from the committee and ordered the Treasury to hand the documents over. This came about a month after a federal appeals court also ruled against him, declining to reconsider an August decision approving the committee’s request for the papers.

The House committee requested the tax returns for six years, primarily from his time in office. The documents include his personal tax information and that of several of his businesses.

Trump has fought long and hard to prevent the release of his tax returns, raising questions about why he would do so.

He seems to be fighting a multifront war, and it is not going super well. Senator Lindsey Graham was forced to testify last week before a Georgia grand jury over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and former chief of staff Mark Meadows has been ordered to do the same.

The Supreme Court in January declined to stop the National Archives from turning over documents to the House January 6 committee, which is circling closer to Trump and his involvement in the riot.

Trump is under investigation by the FBI for taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, and the New York attorney general has filed suit against him, his family, and his business for fraud.

And the Republican Party in general just seems to be over him.

The House voted Wednesday to force the end of a rail workers’ strike and, thanks to progressive lawmakers, also to give workers needed paid sick leave.

Four out of 12 rail unions—representing the majority of rail workers—have been threatening to strike, after a labor deal brokered by President Joe Biden failed to meet their demands for paid sick leave. Workers currently get zero paid sick days. Biden, who has touted himself as a “pro-labor president,” called for Congress to impose the deal anyway and block the strike, saying it would cause too much economic damage.

But in the eleventh hour, progressive Representative Jamaal Bowman submitted an amendment to the bill that requires the addition of seven days of sick leave.

Other progressives, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush, also pushed for the change.

“Every single worker in America needs paid sick leave, including our invaluable rail workers. Anything other than that is unacceptable” Bowman said in a statement. “I could not in good conscience vote for a bill that doesn’t give rail workers the paid leave they deserve.”

He urged the Senate to follow suit and approve the amendment.

Bush said the last-minute amendment was possible when Democratic “leadership realized that they weren’t going to have the votes to pass a bill without this addition, and they came to the table and we negotiated an agreement.”

She added that House progressives were working with Senator Bernie Sanders to get the amended bill passed.

It is unclear if the paid sick leave amendment will pass the Senate, though there are some signs for hope. Sanders had said separately he intended to demand a roll-call vote on an amendment to include seven sick days. Republican Senator John Cornyn said he thought there might be enough GOP support for such an amendment for it to pass.

Joe Manchin, who represents West Virginia—a state with small but still strong union membership—said he would need to review a seven-day amendment. But the senator, who has become known for consistently throwing a wrench into Biden’s plans, said he’ll vote for “anything to prevent a strike that will enhance inflation and cause economic harm to our country.”

Rail unions and management have been negotiating for months, but with inflation still high and the holiday spending season looming, Biden finally stepped in earlier this week.

“Joe Biden blew it,” Rail Workers United Treasurer Hugh Sawyer said in a statement Tuesday. “He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers.… Sadly, he could not bring himself to advocate for a lousy handful of sick days.”

Let’s see if the progressives can pull through.

This article was updated with a statement from Representatives Bowman and Bush. It has also been edited to clarify the power of unions in West Virginia.

The House voted Wednesday to advance a deal aimed at averting a national rail strike—and also give rail workers needed paid sick leave.

Members voted 290–137 in support of a tentative labor agreement brokered by President Joe Biden. Subsequently, the House voted 221–207 to add seven paid sick leave days to said agreement. Rail workers currently have no paid sick days.

The additional paid sick leave measure comes after progressive House members, including Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, pushed for its addition.

Unless an agreement is met by December 9, tens of thousands of rail workers will go on strike, disrupting a large portion of the country’s economy.

The urgency of the matter—both the fate of the economy and, crucially, workers’ welfare—prompted Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promptly bring the two measures to the House floor for a vote.

“After hearing from our Members, we are in agreement that a nationwide rail strike must be prevented—and that more must be done to secure the paid sick leave that hard-working railroaders deserve,” Pelosi wrote in a memo to colleagues on Tuesday.

The measure helps make clear where members of Congress actually stand on advocating for workers. The bill now goes to the Senate for a vote on Thursday, where the fate of paid leave remains unclear. Senators Cruz, Rubio, and Hawley have expressed noncommittal support for rail workers, rooted mainly in opposition to Biden’s initial deal. Senator Bernie Sanders has led the charge on the Senate side to add paid sick leave days to the rail agreement.

With the passage of both measures in the House, the Senate now has to take up both the tentative agreement and paid sick leave provision. As a result, senators’ true stance on the welfare of workers will become clear soon.