Month: October 2019

DES MOINES, Iowa — One of the biggest applause lines of Pete Buttigieg’s latest trip to Iowa came when he said: “Faith isn’t the property of one political party.”

After years of playing down or even ceding the message of faith and values to Republicans, Democratic presidential candidates are trying to reclaim it in the 2020 election, sharing their own personal faith stories and reaching out to a slice of religious voters who they believe have been motivated and alienated by President Donald Trump, who has bragged about sexual assault and paid hush money to an adult film actress. While past Democrats have shared their faith on the trail, party strategists and observers say it is playing a more central role in the 2020 campaign than they’ve seen in a long time.

But the Democratic focus on religion comes with a new twist: While some previous Democratic candidates have used their faith to connect with conservative or traditionalist voters, 2020 hopefuls like Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and others are using their religion to justify liberal positions on same-sex marriage, abortion and other policy areas that have traditionally animated the conservative religious right in the other direction.

Buttigieg, the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Ind., went viral in April saying that Vice President Mike Pence’s “quarrel, sir, is with my Creator” if he had a problem with Buttigieg’s sexuality. Gillibrand has championed abortion rights by squaring her support through her belief in “free will, a core tenet of Christianity.” Booker has summoned the concept of “civic grace” when he talks about reforming the criminal justice system.

“At a moment when we see families being ripped apart at the border, when we see people’s health care put at risk, when we see policies designed to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted, it calls into question how anybody on board with the current mess in Washington can claim to be doing so in accordance with their faith,” Buttigieg said in an interview. “It’s the right moment, I think, for Democrats to challenge that idea.”

The rhetoric marks a sharp break from the traditional religious politics of recent decades, said Al Sharpton, the reverend and civil rights activist who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

“For the last several cycles, people tried to act like, as a candidate, to talk about faith is to make you less progressive,” Sharpton said. “In the late ’70s and ’80s, we let the right wing hijack the Bible and the flag, and Democratic candidates, to reclaim that, [are saying] that we have progressive ideas and we also have a firm belief in faith.”

No Republican has offered a greater contrast on religion and morality than Trump, Democratic strategists and candidates believe, though the president won strong support from religious voters in 2016. That opening is driving a “sea change” in the way candidates are addressing religion on the trail, said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, the Democrats’ flagship presidential super PAC.

“Part of it has grown out of the despondency after the 2016 election, when Christians who don’t normally get political decided they needed to be more open about it their faith in the context of politics,” Cecil said. “And it also grew out from Trump, who is entirely paradoxical to Christianity, and that opens up some voters to new candidates.”

What Gillibrand calls the “misuse by the Republican right of faith-driven people” started well before Trump, she said in an interview with POLITICO before a Sunday church service in Iowa. “I think there’s [now] a reclamation to say, well, if you really are driven by the Gospel, you should feed the poor, you should help the weak, you should help the vulnerable.”

Religious campaigning isn’t a requirement for most Democratic voters, according to a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. But one-third of those surveyed said that it was important to find a candidate of faith in the 2020 campaign. It’s a coalition that a candidate might build out from, though Democrats “who appeal to voters’ religious bona fides will not necessarily benefit from a polling uptick,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president.

Most presidential campaigns have not yet hired a faith outreach director to organize the hunt for those voters below the candidate level, though there are staffers charged with communicating with religious groups, several campaigns said.

“I’m not saying it’s more important than a data operation or a communications shop, [but] if we get into the summer and the major campaigns haven’t brought faith outreach on, then I’d be very concerned,” said Michael Wear, who led President Barack Obama’s faith outreach during his 2012 campaign, noting that Obama already hired a staffer for this position by this time in 2007. “Otherwise, we’ll be leaving voters on the table.”

Candidates’ faiths are usually a part of their larger personal stories — Hillary Clinton’s Methodist roots and Obama’s Chicago faith community both played roles in their presidential runs. The same is the case in 2020, but at a higher volume, due to both the size of the field and to the heightened interest in tackling the topic.

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Joe Biden and Julian Castro both discuss their Catholicism often. Amy Klobuchar highlighted her father, a recovering alcoholic who was “pursued by grace,” in her policy rollout on drug addiction and mental health. Kamala Harris often recalls stories about singing in the church choir with her sister, while Elizabeth Warren, a former Sunday school teacher, introduced her followers to her childhood church in a video released Easter Sunday.

There’s even an actual spiritual guru in the primary: Marianne Williamson, an author who frequently appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show and boasts a 2.7 million-strong Twitter following, will be on the debate stage in June.

Gillibrand and Booker are struggling to break out of the crowded pack of Democratic candidates. But a Gillibrand aide said after her forceful faith-based defense of abortion rights in May, triggered by a wave of state-based anti-abortion laws, Gillibrand’s campaign received three times more donations than it had gotten in the first four months of her presidential run combined.

Gillibrand impressed Rev. Frantz Whitfield at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church on a recent Sunday in Waterloo, Iowa, when she delivered an 8-minute sermon that married her left-leaning politics to her faith. It is “fundamental to who I am,” she told about 50 congregants, who nodded and clapped along with her.

After Gillibrand’s closing refrain, with rousing calls to “put on the armor of God,” Whitfield retook the microphone and said, “I don’t need to preach today.” Wilma Jackson, the church’s choir director, said she’s “very interested now” in supporting the senator because Gillibrand “brought it straight from the Bible.”

Gillibrand attended Catholic schools and became a practicing Christian in her twenties, after a college friend introduced her to Redeemer Church in New York City. She was “single” and “lonely” at the time, so her faith community became “grounding aspect of who I am,” she said.

Whitfield, along with other Democratic strategists, said that authentic connection is particularly required with African-American voters, a critical Democratic voting bloc. Booker said in an interview with POLITICO that even as the Democratic Party may not have been as forward about its faith with wider audiences, the “the black Christian tradition” has “never, ever yielded from talking about God and religion.”

“We’ve never ceded that ground,” he said.

Booker has rooted much of his presidential messaging around “radical love” and a “revival of civic grace,” concepts traced in the Gospel. On the campaign trial, Booker invokes the tempo of a preacher and weaves Gospel verses into his stump speeches. He even spent the final hours before his presidential campaign launch in February at a prayer service in Newark, N.J., where he was anointed with oil by his pastor.

The New Jersey senator said he sometimes gets frustrated that “talking openly about your faith is something you see something far more in the Republican Party, and it’s often done in ways that I think are not humble [and] are more judgmental.”

“I think value-based conversations are where we should often start because I think Americans — those who are religious and those who are not — share a common moral framework,” Booker said.

Democrat Stacey Abrams will not run for Senate next year in Georgia, she announced Tuesday morning, leaving Democrats without a top recruit to challenge GOP Sen. David Perdue.

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"The fights to be waged require a deep commitment to the job, and I do not see the U.S. Senate as the best role for me in this battle for our nation’s future," Abrams said in a video posted to her social media accounts. "But let’s be clear: I will do everything in my power to ensure Georgia elects a Democrat to the United States Senate in 2020."

For months, Abrams has publicly deliberated over whether to enter the 2020 presidential race, run for Senate in Georgia next year or try to avenge her narrow defeat in last year’s governor’s race when GOP Gov. Brian Kemp is up next in 2022.

Abrams lost to Kemp by 1.4 percentage points last year — and while she has long coveted the governorship, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has recruited her intensely to run against Perdue. But seen by many as a potential rising star within the party, Abrams has chosen, for now, not to mount another statewide campaign in red-leaning Georgia.

Her decision was first reported by CNN, which said Abrams met with Schumer on Monday to inform him of her plans. Two sources confirmed to POLITICO that Abrams informed Schumer Monday of her plans.

While she has been mulling her political future, Abrams has built a national network that could benefit her if she runs for president. She is likely to take her time before deciding on a White House run: Abrams told POLITICO in an interview earlier this month she believed she could wait until fall — after the initial debates, and potentially after some candidates drop out of the race — to announce her run, saying there were advantages to waiting.

"My responsibility is to analyze it, decide if that’s the job for me and how I can win," she told POLITICO. "I believe based on my understanding of the contours of how to run a presidential race, September is actually an appropriate date."

If Abrams chooses to run for president, she would be the fourth Democrat to pass on potentially competitive Senate race for a White House bid, joining former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Her decision to pass on the Senate is a blow to Democrats, who considered her their top recruit in Georgia. Schumer met with Abrams at least three times and was in touch more often, and enlisted allies to help Abrams work through the contours of the job.

Democrats still believe they can be competitive against Perdue in Georgia next year, though Abrams was their best opportunity to flip the seat. Teresa Tomlinson, the former mayor of Columbus, has already formed an exploratory committee and plans to run for the seat, and other Democrats are likely to join the race.

Republicans, meanwhile, taunted Schumer Tuesday morning after Abrams’ announcement. National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Jesse Hunt called it Schumer’s "most embarrassing recruiting fail of the cycle" and said Democrats were "stuck with an assortment of second-tier candidates" for the race against Perdue.

Stewart Boss, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, countered, saying Abrams and Georgia Democrats have laid a "strong foundation" in the state, and Democrats still believe Perdue will be "held accountable" next year. "His weaknesses are why Georgia is a great pickup opportunity," Boss said.

A Hawaii Civil Defense Warning Device is designed to sound an alert siren during natural disasters. Wednesday evening, police activity caused a false tsunami alarm.

Emergency sirens wailed on Hawaii’s Oahu and Maui islands Wednesday evening, warning of a tsunami, but the alert turned out to be a mistake. The error sparked anger from residents who recalled a similar false warning last year of an imminent ballistic missile attack.

Within minutes of the alarm going off shortly after 5 p.m. local time (11 p.m. ET), authorities were trying to calm the public by getting out word of the mistake.

The National Weather Service in Honolulu tweeted: “***NO TSUNAMI THREAT*** We have received phone calls about sirens going off across Oahu, but we have confirmed with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center that there is NO TSUNAMI THREAT.”

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell also took to Twitter. “Mahalo to everyone for taking appropriate action & tuning into local media,” he tweeted, adding that the sirens had been “inadvertently triggered” during Honolulu Police Department training.

Hawaii Public Radio reports that the sirens were heard in Waikiki, McCully, Manoa and Hau’ula on Oahu and in parts of Maui.

Honolulu resident Dustin Malama was one of many who took to social media to express anger over yet another false alarm: “When mistakes like this happen you belittle the importance and meaning of the warning. There better be resignations over this or there needs to be a congressional hearing on why this keeps happening.”

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The incident reminded residents of a heart-stopping 2018 false warning of a ballistic missile attack, which occurred amid especially bellicose rhetoric between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Just days before the mistaken alert, Kim had warned that the nuclear button is “always on my desk” and Trump retorted with a tweet: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

The 2018 warning was sent out as a push alert to cellphones and local television stations but then was quickly withdrawn. Officials blamed it on “human error,” saying the wrong button was pushed during a drill. At the time, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said it was implementing new safeguards to ensure there was no repeat of the mistake.

After Wednesday’s episode, Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard said the department was also taking steps to prevent false alarms in the future.

“Especially after the missile crisis, it’s really unacceptable on our part,” she acknowledged. “Unfortunately, we train on live equipment, but after this particular accident, we will be exploring immediately buying equipment specifically for training so this will not happen again.”

President Donald Trump is looking to woo black voters — if he can make them forget about his tweets.

The Trump 2020 campaign has been quietly reaching out to prominent African Americans about joining its latest coalition, intended to boost Republican support in the black community. The effort comes just as the president capped off a month filled with racially divisive language and Twitter taunts aimed at House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and four freshman congresswomen of color.

Critics may find the timing of the outreach outrageous. But the campaign hopes that if it can shave just a few percentage points off Democrats’ overwhelming support among black voters, it can boost voter turnout in eight or so key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — each of which Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 percentage point.

The campaign’s pitch to African Americans is simple: Ignore the president’s words and instead focus on his policies, the state of the economy, the low unemployment rate, the passage of criminal justice reform and the creation of Opportunity Zones, which are meant to bolster investment in underserved or poorer cities.

When Trump took office in January 2017, the unemployment rate among African Americans was 7.7 percent. Friday’s jobs report pegged it at 6 percent for July.

“Do I think some of his verbal formulations are inartful? Yeah,” said Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, former Ohio secretary of state and a top Trump transition official. “But for me, as a domestic policy adviser during the Trump transition, it has been all about the agenda, a set of results and tomorrow. You have to believe his policy agenda flies in the face of the false narrative of the racist in charge.”

But for others, Trump’s rhetoric cannot be divorced from his record, and critics argue he must take responsibility for that as president. A Quinnipiac University poll released on July 30 showed that 80 percent of African American voters surveyed consider Trump a racist.

“The idea is that, because of his agenda, his comments on Charlottesville, Baltimore or ‘shithole countries’ do not matter,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the first African American to serve in that role. “Or that you can say the most racist things in the world, but hey, I got a tax cut. Or you can disparage my homeland, but the unemployment rate is going down.

“I certainly think we should expect more from our political leaders,” Steele said. “I would think they would expect more from us.”

Trump has regularly defended himself by saying, “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.” He told reporters recently that scores of African Americans have been calling the White House to thank him for his work. “What I’ve done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done,” Trump said this week from the White House lawn, as he left Washington for an event in Jamestown, Va., that all the state’s black lawmakers boycotted.

Republicans have struggled for decades to make inroads with African American voters. Trump earned just 8 percent of the black vote in 2016, while his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won 89 percent. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney performed even worse in 2012, earning just 6 percent of the African American vote against President Barack Obama.

George W. Bush did the best among GOP presidential nominees in recent years. He earned 11 percent of the African American vote in 2004, up from 8 percent in 2000, by appealing to conservative religious voters.

The Trump campaign was criticized during the 2016 campaign for vying for the black vote but never taking the time to visit black churches, black colleges or African American groups. The purpose of coalitions like the African American one is to do a better job of outreach to specific communities.

“I do not have the inside track on it, but the success of the outreach depends on who is running it, how much money they are devoting to it and whether there is a genuine organizational effort, or if it is just a website run by a couple of kids,” said Jennifer Hochschild, a professor of government and African American studies at Harvard University who tracks race and politics. “My guess is that it is mostly a waste of time. Republicans have been trying to do this for 50 years. Latinos are much more potentially movable into the Republican column.”

The hope among Trump campaign officials and advisers is that this time will be different — and not a photo-op.

The African Americans for Trump coalition is being organized by Katrina Pierson, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and a few campaign staffers. The launch date is set for after Labor Day. The Trump campaign has already rolled out two coalitions this summer — Latinos for Trump and Women for Trump — meant to show the president’s support among groups other than white men.

“The campaign is working hard to get the president’s message to all voters,” Pierson said.

And longtime African American Trump supporters agree with the campaign’s assessment that voters should worry about results over rhetoric.

“I think people get caught up in the emotional with President Trump,” said Georgia businessman and longtime Trump supporter Bruce LeVell, who led Trump’s National Diversity Coalition in 2016. That group of campaign surrogates primarily made TV and public appearances on behalf of Trump, whereas the 2020 campaign coalition is expected to do more political outreach.

“Don’t get caught up in the emotions; pay attention to the numbers, not the he said, she said. I think black male voters, especially, will be a game changer for President Trump’s reelection,” LeVell said.

Still, the argument to pay attention to the president’s agenda and not his words doesn’t sit well with all policy experts. Economist Valerie Wilson said that, while the unemployment rate among African Americans has dropped to 6 percent, it’s still far higher than the national unemployment rate of 3.7 percent because of factors that have not been adequately addressed by the administration.

African Americans continue to suffer from a large disparity in wages relative to white people, including between those with college educations. The same disparities exist in wealth and homeownership, making far more black people vulnerable to economic downturns because they have fewer assets to fall back on.

“I do not think it is a legitimate argument to try to gain support from black voters based on the economic argument. There is little we can point to from the current administration as a reason for where African Americans are economically,” said Wilson, the director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.

She said the African American unemployment rate started to decrease under Obama as the economy recovered from the Great Recession.

Steele and others also note that much of the work of bipartisan criminal justice reform was underway by both liberal and conservative groups before the White House got involved, and, they argue, the Trump White House has had a poor track record with its hiring of African Americans and other people of color.

“Let’s just look at the way he treated his one and only African American assistant to the president. The president called me a dog. How will he explain that to African American female voters?” said Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former senior official at the Trump White House.

“Now, he has a track record, or lack thereof, with African American voters,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what the campaign does, or if it spends millions on outreach. He will not get the black vote.”

The Trump campaign’s 2016 goal was to exceed Romney’s support among African American voters. For 2020, its goal is to boost Trump’s support with black voters up as much as possible — especially in battleground states.

Bush in 2004 managed to do this in Ohio, where he earned 16 percent of the African American vote by appealing to conservative evangelicals and Pentecostal voters who had not previously been engaged in politics. These voters came off the sidelines, in part, because of a state amendment outlining marriage as a union between only a man and a woman. Blackwell, a former Ohio politician and longtime conservative leader, said he was part of that effort to appeal to black voters in 2004.

“If Trump improves his take with the African American community and is able to capture 12 or 15 percent, that would be huge,” Blackwell added.

In 2016, then-candidate Trump predicted that if he won a first term and then ran for reelection, he would earn 95 percent the African American vote in 2020.

Even then, he talked about what he called the poor state of inner cities. He promised African Americans better jobs, better schools and greater prosperity.

“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” he told the audience in the largely white town of Dimondale, Mich., at a rally. “Tonight, I’m asking for the vote of every single African American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future.”

The question is whether African Americans feel like he delivered that based on his 2016 promises.

“If Trump cracks 8 percent of the black vote again, it would be a miracle,” Steele said. “We’re still a year and a half out from the election, but the evidence right now suggests that it will be hard for him to get more than that, especially with African American women lined up against him.”

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke to POLITICO Monday as part of a series of interviews with Democrats seeking to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

In addition to discussing Medicare for All, gun control and more, we asked him some lighter questions:

If you had to go on a road trip with one of the other 2020 Democrats, who would it be and where would you go?

"I definitely have a great affection for Bernie. That’s easy. I would say, I’d like to go someplace like West Virginia. I’d like to go someplace where, have a conversation with folks who think Republicans are on their side and help draw out what that’s about. To show the alternative. That would be fun."

Q: "And what kind of snacks would you take?"

A: "I like beef jerky too much. That would be one of my snacks. I’m not proud of that fact."

What is the weirdest thing you’ve done or eaten on the campaign trail so far?

"I was expecting a lot more weird food. The fair, I’m super looking forward to the fair. I’m going to eat many fried things. I don’t think I’ve had a really weird food experience so far that I can point to."

Q: "What are you looking forward to eating at the fair?"

A: "I’ve never had a fried Twinkie in my life. I don’t like Twinkies as they are, but something tells me they might be appealing fried. I’m going to try."

Do you have any tattoos? And if not, what would you get if you got one?

"No…I think I’d want something Roman. Big gladiator fan. I think I’d probably get this — just off the top — but I think I might get the Roman…SPQR. I think I’d get that…I’m just being proud of my heritage, the wellspring of democracy, and I’m also pissed off that they screwed up the Roman Republic, so I still haven’t gotten over that.

…My son Dante is — for what was, for a long time — obsessed with Roman history. And the first time we went to Rome, we go to the Coliseum, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, he’s really into Roman history. This could be a great moment for him.’ And I’m like, ‘Dante, what are you feeling?’ And I’m looking into his eyes, and he looks up with this kind of stern face. And he says, ‘I don’t like it.’ I’m like, ‘Why not?’ ‘This represents the corruption of Rome.’"
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From left to right: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.

A dozen candidates have qualified for the fourth Democratic presidential debate. They will appear together on one night, making the October faceoff the most crowded yet.

The 12 White House hopefuls who met the polling and fundraising requirements set by the Democratic National Committee are former Vice President Joe Biden; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; California Sen. Kamala Harris; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; billionaire businessman and activist Tom Steyer; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Steyer and Gabbard did not qualify in time to make the September debate stage but have since met the requirements to appear on Oct. 15 near Columbus, Ohio, with the 10 candidates from the last debate.

The DNC requirements were the same last month as they are now — candidates had to register at least 2% in four early state or national polls and acquire 130,000 unique donors. Though Steyer and Gabbard hit those marks over the last month, seven Democrats still in the race failed to qualify.

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The hosts of the debate, CNN and The New York Times, will hold the event on one night instead of two, even though the number participating now exceeds the previous 10-candidate threshold set by the DNC. In June and July, two debate nights were held each time to accompany all the candidates, but this time the stage will just grow larger, instead of being used over two nights with six candidates each.

Expect the debate casts to shrink greatly going forward. The DNC announced last month that it was raising the requirements yet again to qualify for the November debate. Candidates have to hit 3% in four early state or national polls, in addition to amassing 165,000 donors.

So far, just five candidates fulfill both those qualifications: Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, Sanders and Warren.

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Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (center) marches with other young climate activists last week outside the White House in Washington, D.C.

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Spurred by what they see as a sluggish, ineffectual response to the existential threat of global warming, student activists from around the world are skipping school Friday, for what organizers call a Global Climate Strike.

The young activists are protesting as the U.N. prepares to hold its Climate Action Summit on Monday in New York City.

The strike’s figurehead is 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who traveled from Sweden to New York on an emissions-free sailboat. A little over a year ago, Thunberg began her school strike for the climate by herself, outside the Swedish Parliament.

Support for a school climate strike has since spread across the globe. In the past year, Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian lawmakers. She’s also met with Pope Francis and lawmakers in several countries.

“We are currently on track for a world that could displace billions of people from their homes,” Thunberg warned this week as she accepted Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award. She ended her acceptance speech with a call to action: “See you on the streets!”

In New York City, thousands of students are expected to fill the streets alongside Thunberg because, as the city’s school district announced on Twitter, it is giving strikers excused absences. In Oregon, Portland Public Schools is doing the same.

Strikes also are planned in rural areas where just a few dozen protesters are expected. Nicholas DuVernay, 17, organized a protest in his politically conservative small town of La Grande, Ore.

“Since, probably, the beginning of my junior year in high school I’ve been interested in climate science and pretty passionate about environmental topics,” says DuVernay, who plans to study climate science when he attends college next year.

A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll this week shows a majority of teenagers believe human-caused climate change will cause harm to them. And a quarter of the poll respondents said they have participated in a school walk-out, a rally or contacted a government official on the issue.

There have been similar student events in the past year. But this time, students are asking adults to join them.

At the University of Nevada, Reno, Stallar Lufrano-Jardine, 36, is setting up an event on the campus where she’s an employee and student.

“I’m bothered by the lack of movement to make meaningful advances to solve the climate crisis,” says Lufrano-Jardine.

But it’s clear younger people are leading this movement. And they say most adults — especially policy-makers — are moving far too slowly.

Strike organizers have a list of demands that includes “respect of indigenous land, sustainable agriculture, protecting biodiversity, environmental justice and a just transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy,” said 17-year-old Baltimore resident and organizer Nadia Nazar.

Many of those demands are part of the Green New Deal, which was crafted by progressive Democratic lawmakers but so far hasn’t gone anywhere in Congress.

At a Capitol Hill press event this week, Nazar said she hopes the proposal defines her generation. “I am not a part of Generation Z. I am a part of Gen GND — the generation of the Green New Deal,” she said as supporters cheered.

Also on Capitol Hill this week, Thunberg and other activists testified before lawmakers. Louisiana Republican Rep. Garret Graves told them that climate change has exacerbated the loss of his state’s coastline.

“I agree that we need to take aggressive action. I agree that we need to ensure that we move forward in a sustainable, rational manner,” Graves said.

But his idea of what that means is very different than the activists’ vision.

For instance, Graves agrees with President Trump on the need to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Graves told the student organizers the pact allows China to continue emitting more carbon dioxide while the U.S. cuts emissions. “Paris and its related pledges would undermine U.S. competitiveness,” his spokesman said.

Graves got immediate pushback from the young activists, including 17-year-old Jamie Margolin from Seattle, who asked how Graves will respond to questions from his children and grandchildren about whether he did enough to address climate change.

“Can you really look them in the eye and say, ‘No, sorry, I couldn’t do anything because that country over there didn’t do anything, so if they’re not going to do it then I’m not.’ That is shameful and that is cowardly,” Margolin said.

Organizers are saying this climate strike will be the largest yet. More than 2,000 scientists around the world have pledged to join. Some companies also have signed on, including Patagonia and Seventh Generation.

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CNN will broadcast a live drawing to determine on which of two nights Democratic presidential candidates will debate later this month in Detroit.

The lineups for the highly anticipated forums will be revealed live on CNN on July 18, the network announced Monday morning. CNN, which did not specify how the field of contenders would be divided into two panels, is hosting the second pair of Democratic National Committee-sanctioned primary debates on July 30 and 31.

For the first round of Democratic debates, which took place two weeks ago in Miami, broadcaster NBC divvied up candidates via a random draw at its New York headquarters with campaign representatives present. The drawing was off camera, and candidates polling above 2 percent and below that threshold were evenly spread out across the two stages.

But unlike CNN, NBC itself decided which panel of candidates would debate first, drawing criticism for not making the entire process random. NBC chose to have the panel that featured most of the front-runners, including former Vice President Joe Biden, debate second.

Thus far, 21 candidates have met the requirements to appear in the Detroit debates by achieving 1 percent in three qualifying polls or amassing 65,000 donors. But only 20 Democrats will be allowed to participate, meaning the DNC will winnow that eligible crop by at least one.

California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who participated in the Miami debate, is the candidate most at risk of being booted off stage by the party later this month — likely to be replaced in Detroit by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a late entry into the Democratic race who did not qualify for the first debate, according to a POLITICO analysis.

CNN and the DNC will notify the candidates invited to participate on July 17, one day before the live drawing.

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Candidates seeking to elevate their standing in the campaign will likely be eager to secure a lectern on the same stage as current front-runner Biden, hoping to generate a viral moment similar to California Sen. Kamala Harris’s attack last month on the former vice president’s record on race.

During the Miami debates, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the only candidate who regularly ranks among Democratic voters’ top five choices who did not get to share a stage with other leading contenders, including Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.

The decision by CNN to carry live the candidate drawing adds yet another layer of showmanship to the much-hyped and heavily choreographed primary debates, which have become must-watch events of political television.

The first night of debates in Miami last month raked in 15.3 million viewers, NBC announced, and the second evening garnered 18.1 million viewers, becoming the highest-rated Democratic debate in Nielsen ratings history.

Joe Biden’s campaign on Tuesday said Iowa is not a must-win state on the former vice president’s path to the Democratic presidential nomination and signaled that the campaign is already “ramping up” its Super Tuesday efforts.

“Do I think we have to win Iowa? No,” a senior adviser told campaign reporters Tuesday in a background briefing. The adviser said Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest in the nation, will be “critical.”

“We think we’re going to win. We think it’s going to be a dogfight. … But we think there are several candidates in this field, there’s probably three or four, that are going to go awhile.”

Specifically, Biden’s campaign mentioned Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Sen. Kamala Harris, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Biden advisers have said they’ve laid the groundwork in early voting states but “are now ramping up for Super Tuesday and beyond,” and they have no expectation other top-tier candidates will leave the race after the first contests.

“We feel we are going to be in a very dominant spot,” after the first four early states, another adviser said.

Still, the campaign downplayed expectations in first-in-the-nation Iowa as well as in the first primary state, New Hampshire, which borders the home states of Warren and Sanders.

“As you all know, historically, there’s an incredible home field advantage for a Massachusetts candidate or a New Englander,” an adviser said.

Campaign advisers underscored Biden’s lead in the polls and argued he holds the “broadest reach” of the competitors in the 2020 field, and they repeatedly emphasized how he leads with whites, blacks and Hispanics.

Advisers also said that, looking beyond the four early nominating states and the Super Tuesday contests, Biden has the best chance of winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in the general election. An adviser then mentioned that the nation’s biggest swing state, Florida, is “always in the mix” and then mused about chances of winning in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, only to add Texas as more of an afterthought.

Campaign advisers sounded a defensive note about news coverage of Biden’s misstatements and gaffes as well as the “complete nonsense” of the 76-year-old Biden being out of step with the party. Instead, an adviser noted, Biden has the broadest multiracial base of support and that he’s most in line with Democratic voters, despite the carping heard on social media.

“The Democratic Party is not Twitter,” the adviser said.

An El Paso County grand jury has indicted Patrick Crusius, who is now charged with capital murder in connection with the shooting deaths of 22 people at the Cielo Vista Walmart on Aug. 3.

The 21-year-old white man accused of gunning down 22 people and wounded dozens of others at a Texas Walmart was formally indicted on a capital murder charge Thursday.

A grand jury in El Paso County indicted Patrick Crusius in connection with the mass shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart on Aug. 3, according to a statement from the El Paso District Attorney’s Office.

District Attorney Jaime Esparza said on Aug. 4 that he planned to seek the death penalty.

The suspect surrendered to law enforcement as he was driving away from the bloodbath, saying, “I’m the shooter.”

He has been held without bond and placed on suicide watch at the El Paso County Detention Facility, where authorities say he has been cooperating with the investigation.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Crusius confessed that he planned the rampage and drove nearly 10 hours from his home in the Dallas suburb of Allen to the border city with the intention of targeting Mexicans.

The 22 victims ranged in age from 15 to 90. Thirteen are listed as U.S. citizens; eight are Mexican nationals. One is German.

Authorities believe Crusius is the author of a 2,300-word, anti-Hispanic screed that was published to an online message board about 20 minutes before the mass shooting. The four-page posting talked about a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

If officials conclude that he wrote the manifesto, it could also prompt federal hate crime charges.