Herschel Walker Seems Unclear on What Chamber of Congress He’s Running for

Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker may not even know what chamber of Congress he’s running for.

In the final weekend before Tuesday’s runoff race, Walker and his opponent, Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, both hosted multiple events to try and galvanize supporters.

But in an interview with Politico, Walker seemed confused about which house he was running for. He also seemed to think that a victory would mean Republican control of that chamber.

“They’re not [less motivated] because they know right now that the House will be even so they don’t want to understand what is happening right now,” he said Saturday about Georgia voters. “You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stall things within there.”

Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives, but only by a handful of seats. It also remains unclear if the entire party—which is split between Donald Trump loyalists and more moderate lawmakers—will be able to present a united front.

Democrats, however, have kept control of the Senate. A Warnock victory is not necessary for a majority but is still important. If he wins reelection, then Democrats will have an outright 51-49 majority, meaning control over the committees, as opposed to a 50-50 split with a tiebreak.

Walker has made gaffe after gaffe since he started running. He has lied repeatedly and been accused of domestic abuse and forcing partners to get abortions. At his events, he mostly focuses on far-right dog-whistle topics, such as boosting transphobia or railing against pronouns and “wokeness.” Republicans rarely let him speak alone in interviews.

Warnock, meanwhile, has pushed hard on issues such as the economy and health care. He has tried to appeal to younger voters and independent or more center-leaning Republicans.

“This is not about Republican and Democrat. This is not about right and left. This is about the difference between right and wrong,” Warnock said at a rally on December 1.

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to make South Carolina the first state on the presidential primary calendar. South Carolina would replace Iowa, which has hosted the first presidential nominating contests for 50 years.

The upheaval of the nominating calendar comes largely from an effort spearheaded by President Joe Biden to readjust the order, ostensibly to make the primaries more demographically representative of the nation.

Per Biden’s recommendations, the DNC ordered Nevada and New Hampshire to concurrently vote second, three days after South Carolina, with Georgia to follow the week after, and Michigan to round out the first five contests two weeks after Georgia.

The proposal will still need to be approved by the full DNC at a meeting that will take place early next year, but as of now it seems unlikely to fail.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s only congressional Democrat (whose endorsement of Biden helped generate a media storm during the primaries), said the move to prioritize South Carolina was apparently a surprise. “I didn’t ask to be first,” he said. “It was his idea.”

“He knows what South Carolina did for him, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again, by giving respect to South Carolina,” Clyburn said.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison of South Carolina echoed Clyburn, saying he did not know Biden was recommending South Carolina to lead the presidential nomination calendar until Thursday evening. He claimed to want the process to play out without his influence.

“Folks, the Democratic Party looks like America,” he said. “This proposal reflects the best of our party as a whole, and it will continue to make our party and our country stronger.”

The expanded child tax credit, or CTC, created the largest drop in child poverty in a single year, according to a new report from the Joint Economic Committee Democrats. In 2021, child poverty nearly halved, dropping from 9.7 percent to 5.2 percent.

The CTC, expanded under the 2021 American Rescue Plan, lifted 5.3 million people, including 2.9 million children, out of poverty in 2021. According to the report, 2.1 million of those children were lifted out of poverty specifically due to the expansion.

The expansion increased the value of the CTC from $2,000 per child to up to $3,600 per child under 6 years of age, and to $3,000 per child between the ages of 6 and 17. The credit was available to couples that made up to $150,000, or single heads of households that made up to $112,500.

Lifting millions out of poverty, the measure made 19 million more children eligible for the credit. The credit was also made fully refundable, allowing previously ineligible low-income families to receive the full credit, which accounted for some 80 percent of the reduction in child poverty.

Such effects dramatically impacted the lives of millions across the country. One man told The New York Times how his family was able to take a vacation for the first time, camping for a night in state park. Another woman explained how she worked a second job as night janitor to pay for her daughters’ cheerleading classes; with the expansion, she was able to quit and actually take the girls to the practices.

Congress, particularly Joe Manchin and Republicans, prevented the life-altering measure from being extended through the Inflation Reduction Act. Such glimmers of hope for families—like being able to go camping for the first time or quit a second job and go to a kid’s practice—have been left to fade away.

Now advocates for the CTC, like Senators Michael Bennett, Sherrod Brown, and Cory Booker and Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Suzan DelBene, are hoping to renew the measure in an end-of-year tax deal. But, as it remains unclear how Congress will complete a government funding bill for fiscal year 2023, so the fate of the CTC is subject to those negotiations.

In the meantime, the dramatic, life-changing impacts of the CTC cannot be forgotten—and they cannot be left to fade away without a fight.

Read the rest of the report here.

Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer, has been allowed back on Twitter, even as platform owner Elon Musk banned Kanye West for being a Nazi sympathizer.

Anglin was kicked off Twitter in 2013. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as “a prolific internet troll” and a “serial harasser,” while it says The Daily Stormer “nurtured a new generation of white supremacists online.”

Late Thursday night, Musk banned West for posting a swastika on Twitter, saying the rapper “violated our rule against incitement to violence.”

On Thursday, West had appeared alongside white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on InfoWars, hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. During the multihour interview, West expressed support for Hitler, shared Nazi propaganda, and denied the Holocaust.

Since Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter, hate speech on the platform has skyrocketed. Antisemitic posts jumped 61 percent in the two weeks after he completed the purchase.

Most of Twitter’s employees were either fired or have quit, and Musk has yet to create the promised content moderation team. Instead, he seems to be governing by whim—and personal affront—when it comes to suspending accounts.

InfoWars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones filed for personal bankruptcy on Friday, citing the damages he owes to families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Jones was ordered earlier this year to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the families for lying for years about the school shooting. He has since been accused of improperly siphoning financial assets away from his business empire while claiming to be broke, in an effort to avoid paying.

This filing comes after Free Speech Systems, InfoWars’ parent company, also filed for bankruptcy in July.

Jones filed for bankruptcy the day after he hosted antisemites and Holocaust deniers Kanye West and Nick Fuentes on InfoWars. West’s comments, which included saying he liked Hitler and thought the Nazis had done some “good things,” helped get him banned from Twitter just a few weeks after being reinstated.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has insisted that Jones, however, will never be reinstated.

You can read more on Jones’s financial situation at The New York Times.