Re: “Palantir’s exit is the warning smoke,” Feb. 21 commentary

Plantir’s exit is the warning smoke. There is more than just smoke. The canary in the coal mine has croaked. Colorado ranks fifth in the country for outbound moves.

The progressive left that controls the State of Colorado has made it difficult, if not impossible, to live here. Our property taxes are 10% higher than last year. The Democrats are drafting a backdoor tax increase by modifying the state’s tax laws. The fees assessed are a death by a thousand little taxes. According to the , Colorado is the sixth-most regulated state in the country.

Want proof? Wait until you must replace your furnace. Last year, the average cost was $4,500 to $6,500. With the new regulations, it is or higher.

Traffic regulations are another example. Traffic is being reduced to one lane for bike lanes that no one uses.

And then there is the higher minimum wage. No one wants to pay $20 for a hamburger. When your next favorite restaurant closes, thank the governor.

And let����ap not forget that the Democratic left can’t stand law enforcement. In 2020, Senate Bill created a $25,000 personal liability for cops doing their job. And now the Democrats want to ban someone from serving their community if they previously . But if you break the law, you’re not going to jail anytime soon.

Unless the Democrats change course, the time to leave Colorado is now.

Jeff Jasper, Westminster

Palantir, will we even miss you?

Re: “Palantir changed address twice in February,” Feb 19 news story

It’s certainly ironic that Palantir should cite climate change in its SEC filing as one of the reasons it’s leaving Denver for Florida, especially given its support for this climate-denying administration.

Martin Berliner, Greenwood Village

Re: “Politicians caught between ICE’s violence, Palantir’s money, and the voters they represent,” Feb. 22 commentary

“More members of Congress are likely to follow suit and return their donations as the company and its political contributions come under more public scrutiny. These donations, while welcome, raise a deeper and more troubling question: Why is a company that powers mass surveillance and immigrant enforcement so deeply embedded in our political system in the first place?”

Blame the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC. The Court found that laws restricting the political spending of corporations and unions are inconsistent with the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This opened the door for businesses to donate to political campaigns.

Remember when Antonin Scalia died, and Mitch McConnell refused a hearing to replace him, so that the next President could select Scalia’s replacement? It was close to the 2016 election and McConnell wanted to protect the Citizens United ruling.

There needs to be a constitutional amendment to overturn this travesty. The only way to do it is to vote straight line for Democrats in future elections. It takes forever to get a constitutional amendment passed. Amendments by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress or by a national convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures. Ratification requires approval by three-fourths of state legislatures or state conventions.

The solution is very difficult to achieve, but it has to happen. Palantir is the model for why Citizens United is such a horrible ruling. Republicans need to get a spine and join Democrats to end it, once and for all.

As for Palantir leaving Denver, good riddance.

Mike Filion, Lakewood

What’s in a name?

Re: “Secretary on ‘freedom’ tour,” Feb. 24 photo

I’d just like to remind The Denver Post that the United States has a secretary of defense, not a secretary of war.

And if you don’t believe that, you can just go jump in the Gulf of America.

Robert Priddy, Westminster

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WASHINGTON — As Congress convenes during a winter storm President-elect election, hangs over the proceedings with an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is legitimately returning to power.

Lawmakers will gather noontime Monday under the tightest national security level possible. Layers of tall black fencing flank the U.S. Capitol complex in a stark reminder of , when a defeated Trump sent his mob to in what became on the seat of American democracy in 200 years.

in Congress are expected this time. Republicans from the highest levels of power who challenged when Trump lost to Democrat have this year after Vice President .

And Democrats frustrated by Trump’s nevertheless accept the choice of the American voters. Even barreling down on the region wasn’t expected to interfere with Jan. 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.

“Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to be in that chamber making sure this is done,” House Speaker , a Republican who to overturn the 2020 election, said Sunday on Fox News Channel.

The day’s return to a U.S. tradition that launches the peaceful transfer of presidential power comes with an asterisk as Trump prepares to take office in two weeks with a revived sense of authority. He denies that he lost four years ago, muses about staying beyond the Constitution’s two-term White House limit and some of the who have pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes for the Capitol siege.

What����ap unclear is if Jan. 6, 2021, was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or if this year’s expected calm becomes the outlier. The U.S. is struggling to cope with its political and cultural differences at a time when . Trump calls Jan. 6, 2021, a “day of love.”

“We should not be lulled into complacency,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the cross-ideological nonprofit Protect Democracy.

He and others have warned that it is historically unprecedented for U.S. voters to do what they did in November, reelecting Trump after he publicly refused to step aside last time. Returning to power an emboldened leader who has demonstrated his unwillingness to give it up “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take,” Bassin said.

Biden, speaking Sunday at events at the White House, called Jan. 6, 2021, “one of the toughest days in American history.”

“We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” the president said. What Trump did last time, Biden said, “was a genuine threat to democracy. I’m hopeful we’re beyond that now.”

Still, American democracy has proven to be resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, will come together to affirm the choice of Americans.

With pomp and tradition, the day is expected to unfold as it has countless times before, with the arrival of ceremonial mahogany boxes filled with the electoral certificates from the states — boxes that staff were frantically grabbing and protecting as Trump’s mob stormed the building last time.

Senators will walk across the Capitol — which four years ago had filled with roaming rioters, some defecating and menacingly calling out for leaders, others engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police — to the House to begin certifying the vote.

Harris will preside over the counting, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certify her own defeat — much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.

She will stand at the dais where then-Speaker was abruptly rushed to safety last time as the mob closed in and lawmakers fumbled to put on gas masks and flee, and shots rang out as police killed , a Trump supporter trying to climb through a broken glass door toward the chamber.

There are in place in the aftermath of what happened four years ago, when Republicans parroting Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent challenged the results their own states had certified.

Under changes to the , it now requires one-fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, to raise any objections to election results. With security as tight as it is for the Super Bowl or the Olympics, law enforcement is on high alert for intruders. No tourists will be allowed.

But none of that is expected to be necessary.

Republicans, who met with Trump at the White House before Jan. 6, 2021, to craft a to challenge his election defeat, have accepted his win this time.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the House floor challenge in 2021, said people at the time were so astonished by the election’s outcome and there were “lots of claims and allegations.”

This time, he said, “I think the win was so decisive…. It stifled most of that.”

Democrats, who have raised symbolic objections in the past, including during the disputed 2000 election that Gore lost to George W. Bush and ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, have no intention of objecting. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said the Democratic Party is not “infested” with election denialism.

“There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle,” Jeffries said on the first day of the new Congress, to applause from Democrats in the chamber.

“You see, one should love America when you win and when you lose. That����ap the patriotic thing to do,” Jeffries said.

Last time, far-right militias helped lead the mob to break into the Capitol in a war-zone-like scene. Officers have described being crushed and pepper-sprayed and beaten with Trump flag poles,

Leaders of the and have been convicted of and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Many others faced prison, probation, home confinement or other penalties.

Those Republicans who engineered the legal challenges to Trump’s defeat still stand by their actions, celebrated in Trump circles, despite the grave costs to their personal and professional livelihoods.

Several including disbarred lawyer and and indicted-but-pardoned met over the weekend at Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago estate for a film screening about the 2020 election.

Trump was impeached by the House on the charge of inciting an insurrection that day but was acquitted by the Senate. At the time, GOP leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege but said his culpability was for the courts to decide.

Federal prosecutors subsequently issued a of Trump for working to overturn the election, including for conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to pare back the case once the Supreme Court ruled that a president has for actions taken in office.

Smith last month withdrew the case after Trump won reelection, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.

Biden, in one of his outgoing acts, awarded the to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who had been the chair and vice chair of the congressional committee that conducted an investigation into Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump has said those who worked on the Jan. 6 committee should be .

___

Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said in a statement Friday. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

The 82-year-old lawmaker’s statement appeared to be directed at Trump’s pick for health secretary, , after a report that one of his advisers in 2022. That vaccine is widely considered to have halted the disease in most parts of the world.

McConnell’s words were a sign that Kennedy, who has long advanced the , could face some resistance in the soon-to-be GOP-controlled Senate.

“Mr. Kennedy believes the Polio Vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied,” said Katie Miller, the transition spokeswoman for Kennedy, in response to questions.

The New York Times reported that the petition was filed by a lawyer now helping Kennedy select candidates for federal health positions in the incoming administration.

Any individual or company can file a petition with the Food and Drug Administration, which typically fields hundreds of requests at any time relating to various food, drug and medical issues. Most petitions are denied, but the FDA is required to respond to each one in writing.

Vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective in laboratory testing and in real-world use in hundreds of millions of people over decades — they are considered among the most effective public health measures in history.

McConnell contracted polio at 2 years old but survived because of “the miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love,” according to the statement. He praised the “saving power” of the polio vaccine for the “millions who came after me.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a post on X that it was “outrageous and dangerous for people in the Trump Transition to try and get rid of the polio vaccine that has virtually eradicated polio in America and saved millions of lives.

He said Kennedy should clarify his own position on it.

Trump , saying Kennedy would work to protect Americans “from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives.”

But that pick was met with alarm from scientists and public health officials, who fear Kennedy would unwind lifesaving public health initiatives such as vaccines.

Kennedy has pushed other conspiracy theories regarding vaccines, such as that to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, comments he later said were taken out of context. He has repeatedly when discussing vaccines and .

Kennedy said he , an agency with sprawling reach and a $1.3 trillion budget, if he is approved. He has suggested the FDA is beholden to “big pharma,” and his anti-vaccine nonprofit has called on it to stop using COVID-19 vaccines.

During the COVID-19 epidemic, his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, petitioned the FDA to halt the use of all COVID vaccines. The group has alleged that the FDA is beholden to “big pharma” because it receives much of its budget from industry fees and some employees who have departed the agency have gone on to work for drugmakers.

Children’s Health Defense currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

Buck’s early departure at first blush seems carefully calculated to keep Lauren Boebert from becoming his successor in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District on the eastern plains. She landed in the district as a carpetbagger after almost losing to a Democrat in Colorado’s 3rd District on the Western Slope two years ago.

The evidence of such motive would be Buck’s criticism of election deniers — of which Boebert is most assuredly one — and this tweet after the 2022 State of the Union calling Boebert a “joker” after she heckled President Joe Biden:

TGIF…

— Rep. Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck)

Whether this truly is a blow to Boebert depends on what voters in CD4 make of the confusing ballots they will receive on June 25 for both the Republican primary and a general special election. Boebert has said she won’t seek the nomination of the CD4 Republican Central Committee to appear on the ballot for the special election, but she is still in the running for the primary. Who the Republican Central Committee selects will likely get a bump in the primary as his or her name will appear alone with a Democrat for the special election. Would voters be predisposed to vote for the same Republican candidate on both for the sake of continuity? Maybe. In a way it’s almost like having a Central Committee endorsement get sent out with the primary ballots.

So, did Buck leave just to make things harder for Boebert? Far more likely is that this is one of Buck’s classic moves of “protest.” Much like when he supported the first ouster of a sitting speaker of the House, Buck’s decision to resign early is purely a wrench in the gears of a system he has railed against since first taking office and writing a tell-all book “Drain the Swamp,” exposing the dirty side of perpetual fundraising and glad-handing by representatives.

Buck’s protest votes often come with high-minded words but, ironically, sometimes work in the opposite direction he intends.

When he voted to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, he said it was because McCarthy cut deals with Democrats that increased the unsustainable deficit in this country. That vote, however, helped put in power someone in cahoots with President Donald Trump, who was part of the scheme to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. Buck had previously said he would not support an election denier for the role … but here we are, several months into Speaker Mike Johnson’s rule.

Buck voted against the impeachments of Trump — even as he condemned Jan. 6 and called for justice against the Capitol’s attackers — because “This botched impeachment only fans the flames of an already out of control fire. Furthermore, we must open an investigation and hold congressional hearings to determine culpability.”

But where was Buck during the hearings run by Rep. Liz Cheney? He said leadership didn’t want him on the committee. And sure, he opposed the vote to oust her from leadership within the House, but he testified against her diligent work on the Jan. 6 Committee during the Colorado trial to label Trump as an insurrectionist unqualified to be president.

“It didn’t seem to me that the process was set up in a way that would elicit the whole truth in those hearings,” Buck said in court, giving credence to Trump’s lawyers as they attempted to discredit the damning report.

Does Buck believe what’s in the report or doesn’t he?

He believes it. He released a video in early November when he announced he would not seek re-election to a sixth term, calling out Republicans who were attempting to undermine the convictions of Jan. 6 attackers.

“Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing January 6 as an unguided tour of the Capitol, and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system … These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans confidence in the rule of law,” he said in the video.

Confused yet?

Buck railed against the ridiculous attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, calling it an abuse of procedural processes over policy, not impeachable offenses, but then turned around and introduced a resolution calling for Biden’s cabinet to remove him using the 25th Amendment based on the report by Special Counsel Robert Hur questioning Biden’s mental fitness.

So, how will the history books classify U.S. Rep. Ken Buck? Is he more like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, speaking truth to power as he fights back against Donald Trump’s big lie? Or is he more like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, blowing whichever way the winds of Trump’s fortunes seem to be faring with a shameless lack of principle and fortitude?

I do think Buck is trying to do the right thing. He’s vacillating between worlds where he is gravely concerned about the possibility of America’s collapse under $33 trillion of debt and where he fears America’s collapse under Trump’s ongoing assault on our republic, our democracy and our Constitution.

Wherever he lands after his resignation, I hope he’ll continue to use his voice to sound warning bells about the fiscal cliff America is rapidly rushing toward and the grave threat Trump’s brand of extremism poses to this country.

It’ll be easier to do both simultaneously while not worried about re-election.

Megan Schrader is the editor of The Denver Post opinion pages.

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But that����ap potentially about to change.

McConnell’s political team and Trump’s campaign have been in talks over not only a possible endorsement of the former president but a strategy to unite Republicans up and down the party’s ticket ahead of the November election, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

How, when or where McConnell would endorse Trump is less head-spinning than the idea that it could happen at all: A stunning rapprochement for two men who have not spoken since McConnell enraged Trump by declaring Joe Biden the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election.

But a fast-moving series of events ahead of Super Tuesday’s elections have been set in motion by McConnell’s own sudden announcement he would step down as leader next session and as Trump is on track to move closer toward the GOP nomination.

Taken together, it lays bare the lengths that McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader and an ever calculating politician, will go as he works to win back Republican control of the Senate in what could be among his final acts in power.

“I still have enough gas in the tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics, and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm which they have become accustomed,” McConnell said last week in announcing his decision to step aside as leader for the next session.

Not long ago, it appeared Trump would have few fans politically lining up behind his bid to return to the White House, particularly from the halls of Congress.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, key Republicans, including McConnell, signaled unequivocally they were done with Trump.

In a scathing speech during the Senate impeachment trial on charges Trump incited the insurrection at the Capitol, McConnell decried Trump’s intemperate language and the “entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe” and “wild myths” about a stolen election.

“The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things,” said McConnell after the mob siege.

Still, McConnell declined to vote to convict Trump of the impeachment charges in the Senate trial, saying it was for the courts to decide, since the defeated president by then was out of office. “He didn’t get away with anything yet,” McConnell said in the February 2021 speech.

Trump is now charged in several cases including a federal indictment of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and obstruct an official proceeding related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters trying to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election. Trump has appealed claiming immunity.

The first sign that McConnell was leaving the door open to reuniting with Trump came in early 2023 when he was asked about Trump’s potential return to the presidential campaign. At the time, McConnell suggested he would support the Republican Party’s eventual nominee, declining to name names or mention Trump.

But endorsements matter to Trump, who has assigned key campaign staff in charge of roping in support from elected officials in what has become a two-way political street. The GOP leaders are also relying on Trump to support — or at least not attack — their own nominees for the House and Senate.

As McConnell is weighing his decision to endorse Trump despite his concerns over Jan. 6, he is watching core Republican voters flock to the former president. And he is wary of being the one to try to stand in their way.

It����ap not just McConnell but the other Republican leaders on Capitol Hill who have all quickly fallen in line as Trump emerges ever so close to again becoming the party’s nominee at the top of their party ticket this November.

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson traveled to Mar-a-Lago last month to meet with Trump at his private club about House races as the new speaker works to keep his slim GOP House majority.

The other House Republican leaders endorsed Trump as the former president����ap team pushed for backing ahead of the Iowa, New Hampshire and other early contests. Senate Republican leaders did the same.

And Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the Senate GOP campaign arm who is a friend, hunting and fishing partner to the president����ap oldest son, Don Trump, Jr., had told others as far back as 2022 he hoped Trump would run again. He became the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse him.

When Daines traveled to Mar-a-Lago for his own visit in February 2023, he told Trump the most important thing he could do for Trump was deliver a Senate majority to confirm Cabinet nominees and approve conservative policies, according to another person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. Daines remains close to Trump, and the two speak often, the person said.

“I’m encouraging the Republican Party to unite behind President Trump,” Daines said in a recent statement to the media, including AP.

McConnell’s past political distaste for Trump appears to be no match for the GOP leader’s desire to win back a Senate majority for Republicans one more time as he prepares to exit the leadership stage.

The two have traded harsh words since even before McConnell’s 2021 speech, with Trump deriding the now 82-year-old as an “Old Crow.”

But in recent weeks Trump has refrained from name-calling McConnell, or using racial slurs against McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, the former Trump Transportation Secretary, who resigned in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

While representatives for McConnell and Trump had restarted the conversation, first McConnell had his announcement last week about stepping aside as GOP leader.

Once that project was done, the person said, McConnell’s team could turn its attention to this next one.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history who maintained his power in the face of dramatic convulsions in the Republican Party for almost two decades, will step down from that position in November.

McConnell, who turned 82 last week, announced his decision Wednesday in the well of the Senate, the chamber where he looked in awe from its back benches in 1985 when he arrived and where he grew increasingly comfortable in the front row seat afforded the party leaders.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

His decision punctuates a powerful ideological transition underway in the Republican Party, from Ronald Reagan’s brand of traditional conservatism and strong international alliances, to the fiery, often isolationist populism of former President Donald Trump.

McConnell said he plans to serve out his Senate term, which ends in January 2027, “albeit from a different seat in the chamber.”

He spoke at times haltingly, his emotions evident, as he looked back on his career. Dozens of members of his staff lined up behind him on the back wall of the chamber, some wiping away tears, as family and friends looked down from the gallery above. Senators from both parties — most of them taken by surprise by the announcement — trickled into the chamber and exchanged hugs and handshakes.

President Joe Biden, who has had a productive working relationship with McConnell, said he was sorry to hear the news.

“I’ve trusted him and we have a great relationship,” the Democratic president said. “We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything.”

Aides said McConnell’s announcement was unrelated to his health. The Kentucky senator had a concussion from a fall last year and two public episodes where his face briefly froze while he was speaking.

“As I have been thinking about when I would deliver some news to the Senate, I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work,” McConnell said. “A moment when I am certain I have helped preserve the ideals I so strongly believe. It arrived today.”

The senator had been under increasing pressure from the restive, and at times hostile wing of his party that has aligned firmly with Trump. The two have been estranged since December 2020, when McConnell refused to abide Trump’s lie that the election of Democrat Biden as president was the product of fraud.

But while McConnell’s critics within the GOP conference had grown louder, their numbers had not grown appreciably larger, a marker of McConnell’s strategic and tactical skill and his ability to understand the needs of his fellow Republican senators.

McConnell gave no specific reason for the timing of his decision, which he has been contemplating for months, but he cited the recent death of his wife’s youngest sister as a moment that prompted introspection. “The end of my contributions are closer than I’d prefer,” McConnell said.

But his remarks were also light at times as he talked about the arc of his Senate career.

He noted that when he arrived in the Senate, “I was just happy if anybody remembered my name.” During his campaign in 1984, when Reagan was visiting Kentucky, the president called him “Mitch O’Donnell.”

McConnell endorsed Reagan’s view of America’s role in the world and the senator has persisted in face of opposition, including from Trump, that Congress should include a foreign assistance package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine.

“I am unconflicted about the good within our country and the irreplaceable role we play as the leader of the free world,” McConnell said.

Against long odds he managed to secure 22 Republican votes for the package now being considered by the House.

“Believe me, I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time. I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them,” McConnell said. “That said, I believe more strongly than ever that America’s global leadership is essential to preserving the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan discussed. For as long as I am drawing breath on this earth I will defend American exceptionalism.”

After his speech, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, congratulated him in brief remarks, saying that she admired him “for stepping forward when it wasn’t popular to do the right thing for our country and our world.”

Trump has pulled the party hard to the ideological right, questioning longtime military alliances such as NATO, international trade agreements and pushing for a severe crackdown on immigration, all the while clinging to the falsehood that the election was stolen from him in 2020.

McConnell and Trump had worked together during Trump’s time in the White House, remaking the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary in a far more conservative image, and on tax legislation. But there was also friction from the start, with Trump frequently sniping at the senator.

Their relationship has essentially been over since Trump refused to accept the results of the Electoral College. But the rupture deepened dramatically after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. McConnell assigned blame and responsibility to Trump and said that he should be held to account through the criminal justice system for his actions.

McConnell’s critics insist he could have done more, including voting to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial. McConnell did not, arguing that since Trump was no longer in office, he could not be subject to impeachment.

Rather than fade from prominence after the Capitol riot, Trump continued to assert his control over the party, and finds himself on a clear glidepath to the Republican nomination. Other members of the Republican Senate leadership have endorsed Trump. McConnell has not, and that has drawn criticism from other Republican senators.

McConnell’s path to power was hardly linear, but from the day he walked onto the Senate floor in 1985 and took his seat as the most junior Republican senator, he set his sights on being the party leader. What set him apart was that so many other Senate leaders wanted to run for president. McConnell wanted to run the Senate. He lost races for lower party positions before steadily ascending, and finally became party leader in 2006 and has won nine straight elections.

He most recently beat back a challenge led by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida last November.

McConnell built his power base by a combination of care and nurturing of his members, including understanding their political imperatives. After seeing the potential peril of a rising Tea Party, he also established a super political action committee, The Senate Leadership Fund, which has provided more than a billion dollars in support of Republican candidates.

He is not a popular figure nationally, even among Republicans. According to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 45% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of McConnell. But he has reigned in the Senate.

“I love the Senate,” he said. “It has been my life. There may be more distinguished members of this body throughout our history, but I doubt there are any with more admiration for it.”

But, he added, “Father Time remains undefeated. I am no longer the young man sitting in the back, hoping colleagues would remember my name. It is time for the next generation of leadership.”

There would be a time to reminisce, he said, but not today.

“I still have enough gas in the tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm which they have become accustomed.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators angrily challenged Sen. Tommy Tuberville on his blockade of almost 400 military officers Wednesday evening, taking over the Senate floor for more than four hours to call for individual confirmation votes after a monthslong stalemate.

Tuberville, R-Ala., stood and objected to each nominee — 61 times total, when the night was over — extending his holds on the military confirmations and promotions with no immediate resolution in sight. But the extraordinary confrontation between Republicans, boiling over almost nine months after Tuberville first announced the holds over a Pentagon abortion policy, escalated the standoff as Defense Department officials have repeatedly said the backlog of officials needing confirmation could endanger national security.

“Why are we putting holds on war heroes?” asked Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, himself a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. “I don’t understand.”

Wrapping up for the night at almost 11 p.m., Sullivan said the senators will keep returning to the floor to call up nominations. If the standoff continues and officers leave the military, he said, Tuberville’s blockade will be remembered as a “national security suicide mission.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham told Tuberville, who mostly sat quiet and alone as they talked, that he should sue the military if he thinks the policy is illegal. “That’s how you handle these things,” Graham said.

After Tuberville objected to a vote on a two-star general nominated to be a deputy commander in the Air Force, Graham turned and faced him. “You just denied this lady a promotion,” Graham said angrily to Tuberville. “You did that.”

Tuberville said Wednesday there is “zero chance” he will drop the holds. Despite several high-level vacancies and the growing backlog of nominations, he has said he will continue to hold the nominees up unless the Pentagon ends — or puts to a vote in Congress — its new policy of paying for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care. President Joe Biden’s administration instituted the policy after the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion, and some states have limited or banned the procedure.

“I cannot simply sit idly by while the Biden administration injects politics in our military from the White House and spends taxpayers’ dollars on abortion,” Tuberville said.

Showing obvious frustration and frequent flashes of anger, the Republican senators — Sullivan, Graham, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Indiana Sen. Todd Young and others — read lengthy biographies and praised individual nominees as they called for vote after vote. They said they agree with Tuberville on the policy, but questioned — as Democrats have for months — why he would hold up the highest ranks of the U.S. military.

Sullivan said Tuberville is “100 percent wrong” that his holds are not affecting military readiness. Ernst said the nominees are being used as “political pawns.” Utah Sen. Mitt Romney advised Tuberville to try to negotiate an end to the standoff. All of them warned that good people would leave military service if the blockade continues.

As the night wore on, Sullivan and Ernst — herself a former commander in the U.S. Army Reserve and Iowa Army National Guard — continued to bring up new nominations and appeared to become increasingly frustrated. They noted that they were bringing up the nominations “one by one” as Tuberville had once called for, and asked why he wouldn’t allow them to go forward. Tuberville did not answer.

“I do not respect men who do not honor their word,” Ernst said at one point.

Sullivan said “China is smiling” as the United States blocks its own military heroes. “As an American, it almost wants to make you weep.”

The GOP effort to move the nominations came after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday morning they are trying a new workaround to confirm the officers. Schumer said the Senate will consider a resolution in the near future that would allow the quick confirmation of the now nearly 400 officers up for promotion or nominated for another senior job.

The resolution by Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona would tweak the rules until the end of this session of Congress next year to allow a process for the Senate to pass multiple military nominations together. It would not apply to other nominations.

To go into effect, the Senate Rules Committee will have to consider the temporary rules change and send it to the Senate floor, where the full Senate would have to vote to approve it. That process could take several weeks and would likely need Republican support to succeed.

“Patience is wearing thin with Senator Tuberville on both sides of the aisle,” Schumer said.

Schumer separately moved to hold confirmation votes as soon as Thursday on three top Pentagon officers affected by the holds — Adm. Lisa Franchetti to be the chief of naval operations, Gen. David Allvin to be chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force and Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney to serve as assistant commandant for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Sullivan had gathered enough signatures to force a vote on Franchetti and Allvin and spoke out in frustration about the issue at the weekly GOP lunch on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with Sullivan’s comments who requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has also criticized the holds, saying on Tuesday that they are “a bad idea” and he’d tried to convince the Alabama Republican to express his opposition some other way.

Tuberville said earlier on Wednesday he disagrees with the Democratic effort to try to get around his hold and and pass the nominations in large groups, arguing that the workaround would “burn the city down” and take away one of the only powers that the minority party has.

The new efforts to move the nominations come after the Marine Corps said that Gen. Eric Smith, the commandant, was hospitalized on Sunday after “suffering a medical condition” at his official residence in Washington. Smith, who is currently listed in stable condition and is recovering, was confirmed to the top job last month, but had been holding down two high-level posts for several months because of Tuberville’s holds.

Smith himself was blunt about the demands of serving as both assistant commandant and acting commandant for months in the wake of Gen. David Berger’s retirement after four years as the top Marine. In public remarks in early September, Smith described his grueling schedule as he juggled the strategic and oversight responsibilities of commandant and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the personnel and management duties of the No. 2 job. “It is not sustainable,” Smith said. “What doesn’t stop is the clock. The adversary doesn’t take a pause.”

When Schumer announced the vote this week on Mahoney’s nomination to be assistant commandant, he said Smith’s sudden medical emergency is “precisely the kind of avoidable emergency that Sen. Tuberville has provoked through his reckless holds.”

Tuberville has challenged Schumer to put each individual nomination on the floor. But Democrats have been hoping to force Tuberville’s hand as the number of stalled nominations has grown. “There’s an old saying in the military, leave no one behind,” Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed said in July.

That strategy has become more difficult as months have passed, and as Tuberville has dug in. In September, Schumer relented and allowed confirmation votes on three of the Pentagon’s top officials: Gen. CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Randy George, Army Chief of Staff, and Smith as commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet won his reelection bid Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press, setting him up to be one of the longest-serving senators in the state’s history.

As of about 10 p.m. Tuesday, Bennet led Republican candidate Joe O’Dea with 945,606 votes to 711,893, or 56% to 42%. About 1.7 million votes had been tallied.

The win serves as a reinforcement of Colorado’s trending Democratic tendencies in a year many Republicans hoped would be washed over in a national red wave. While it was too soon to know the partisan makeup of the U.S. Senate Tuesday night, Bennet����ap victory gives national Democrats hope of minimizing losses in the chamber.

Bennet took the stage at about 8:30 p.m. to chants of “Michael!”

“What a beautiful Election Day in Colorado,” Bennet said, noting the balmy weather and the promising outcomes for his party. He said O’Dea called to congratulate him and concede. The audience gave O’Dea a round of applause for stepping up to run.

In his victory speech, Bennet echoed themes from the campaign trail in expressing his eagerness to return to Washington.

“We’ve got to do more,” Bennet said. “I want to go back there to end childhood poverty. We need to address a health care system that still costs too much and doesn’t cover enough Americans. We’ve got to fix, finally, our broken immigration system. We have to secure the future of the Colorado River and the American West. And we have to give people a sense of economic opportunity again.”

Bennet sought his third full term in the U.S. Senate after being appointed to the seat in 2009. His first victory, in 2010, was a narrow win of less than 2 percentage points, and fewer than 30,000 votes, over now-U.S. Rep. Ken Buck. He extended his 2016 margin to more than 5 percentage points and more than 150,000 votes in a much higher turnout year.

The victory sets him up to be Colorado’s longest-serving elected U.S. senator, and with likely the largest margin of victory he’s had. Regardless of the Democrats’ good night, he said he still views Colorado as a purple swing state. While he still wanted to look deeper at the results, he said tit seemed to reinforce the state’s stance on abortion rights and economic messages like fighting childhood poverty over extending tax cuts enacted by former President Donald Trump

“I would say this state does not want to go backward to Donald Trump,” Bennet said. “That is very clear.”

O’Dea is a political newcomer who touted his upbringing as the adopted son of a Denver police officer. He left college early to found a construction company and earned millions as the owner of Concrete Express, Inc. He often described himself as just a contractor.

In his concession speech, O’Dea said the results were “a tough pill to swallow.” But he didn’t regret the race.

“I look forward to better days,” O’Dea said. “Look forward, not backward.”

The economy loomed large for both candidates throughout the race, though in starkly different ways. Bennet routinely opened his campaign stops lambasting an economy that doesn’t work for everyone; O’Dea, meanwhile, laid current economic woes of high inflation and gas prices at the feet of Bennet and President Joe Biden.

The race drew national attention as O’Dea sought to separate himself from Republican orthodoxy. He rejected conspiracy theories around the 2020 presidential election and said he wouldn’t support former President Donald Trump in the 2024 primary (though he’d likely vote for him if he were again the Republican nominee). That brought on a rebuke by the former president, who called O’Dea a Republican in name only.

He won support from others in the GOP wing, including likely presidential hopeful Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former President George W. Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell called O’Dea “the perfect candidate” for winning Colorado.

O’Dea said he’d reject an outright abortion ban, though he is personally pro-life and would vote for a ban on the procedure after about 5 months of pregnancy, with some exceptions. That brought criticism from his own party for not mounting a vigorous opposition.

Democrats sought to stoke those divisions during the Republican primary. A group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent more than $4 million on ads that promoted the conservative bonafides of state Rep. Ron Hanks of Cañon City. O’Dea pulled off the primary victory, and his campaign staff passed out a mock newspaper front page with the headline “O’Dea defeats Schumer.”

While O’Dea sought to downplay social issues, like abortion, it became a rallying cry for Bennet. The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — effectively ending the Constitutional right to an abortion and handing it back to the states to regulate. Bennet would describe it as the first loss of a constitutional right in his lifetime, and cause to send him back to serve as a bulwark against a Republican majority.

As the race wound into the summer, Democratic victories in Washington, D.C., became another rallying cry. He touted the Inflation Reduction Act’s limits on health care costs and historic environmental spending; a bill aimed at bolstering domestic microchip manufacturing; and new environmental and water protection initiatives, including bringing Biden to Colorado in October to declare Camp Hale a national landmark and protect hundreds of thousands of Colorado public lands.

Bennet also pledged to fight to bring back the monthly payments of the expanded child tax credit, and create a new windfall tax on companies.

It was a display of respect and affection toward Minority Leader Bob Michel, R-Ill., retiring after a 38-year House career served entirely under Democrats. He embraced with outgoing Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. Republicans were taking over in January under the combative Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., abandoning Michel’s consensus-building style.

Those feelings between leaders are all but gone. In their place are suspicion and even hostility, most starkly symbolized by magnetometers lawmakers must pass through before entering the House chamber.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., installed the metal detectors over GOP objections after the brutal Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Democrats also expressed concerns about Republican lawmakers who carry guns.

As I retire after nearly four decades covering Capitol Hill, that contrast and the forces behind it illustrate why I’ve loved covering Congress — and why I’ve recently felt dispirited.

___

Congress is dominated by masters of political hardball who’ve survived a Darwinian culling of the nation’s most ambitious politicians. Covering them is like attending a riveting theatrical drama, except you get to wander behind the curtain and chat up the actors.

In a moment of irony, I saw Gingrich in 1998, then speaker, lash out at the very conservatives who’d powered his own rise after they opposed his budget deal with President Bill Clinton as a surrender. Gingrich mocked them as the “perfectionist caucus,” a bow to the compromises needed in a divided government. He soon announced his retirement.

Near midnight on Sept. 11, 2001, I watched Democrats and Republicans, in a show of solidarity on the Capitol steps, spontaneously sing “God Bless America.”

Pelosi triumphantly waved the gavel aloft in 2007 when she became the first female speaker. “For our daughters and our granddaughters, we have broken the marble ceiling,” the California Democrat said.

Eight years later, I saw awe in the eyes of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, a Catholic, as he greeted Pope Francis, whom he’d invited to address Congress.

I saw shock on Republicans’ faces the very next morning as they left a Capitol basement meeting where Boehner revealed he was quitting, hounded by a new generation of hard-right conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus.

Democrats and Republicans cheered when No. 3 House GOP leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana limped into the chamber in 2017, three months after being gravely wounded when a gunman attacked a Republican baseball practice.

I’ve seen change. Since Pelosi’s 1987 arrival, the number of women in Congress has multiplied from 25 to 146. There are around 130 lawmakers of color, up from 38.

And I’ve witnessed upheaval. Starting in 2017, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and others resigned amid the #MeToo sexual harassment movement.

I had one deeply embarrassing close encounter with a freshly sworn-in president in 2001. I was assigned to a ceremonial Senate room where new presidents sign papers immediately after their inaugural address.

Someone brushed my elbow. Standing beside me was President George W. Bush. I tried drawing him out with a folksy, “So, how’d it go?” He parried what was likely his first reporter’s question as president with a nod, adding, “Good.”

___

Since coming to Washington in 1983, I’ve seen debates over wars, terrorism, recessions, government shutdowns and taxes. Three of history’s four presidential impeachment trials. Fights over social justice, abortion, a pandemic.

I still overhear Democrats and Republicans making dinner plans. The sorrow over this month’s traffic accident death of Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., and two aides was bipartisan and heartfelt.

Yet today’s common ground seems narrower, the atmosphere darker, the stakes higher.

Pelosi referred to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as a “moron” after he opposed mask mandates in the House as the coronavirus pandemic spiked. McCarthy said it would be “hard not to hit her” with the gavel if he becomes speaker. His spokesperson called it a joke.

Both parties have fewer moderates. House districts increasingly drawn for partisan advantage push Democrats left, Republicans right as they appeal to their most activist primary voters.

Voters self-sort among social media and news outlets they believe. That hardens constituents’ views, further constraining lawmakers’ willingness to compromise.

Senate filibusters requiring bills to garner 60 votes are commonplace, derailing nearly anything without broad bipartisan support.

Through early this century, most Supreme Court nominees were approved easily.

In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refused to let President Barack Obama fill a Supreme Court vacancy, citing upcoming elections a full nine months away. Then just weeks before Election Day 2020, McConnell sped a Trump appointee through the Senate, giving the court a 6-3 conservative majority and McConnell a legacy achievement that outraged Democrats.

___

None of that approximates Trump’s baseless assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a claim rejected by dozens of courts, local officials and his own attorney general.

His false construct fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection. I wasn’t in the Capitol because of the pandemic, but there is no forgetting the death, injury, destruction and disheartening sense that democracy itself had been defiled.

Just hours after the mob was dispersed, more than half of House Republicans and eight GOP senators voted against certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. McCarthy initially said Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack but later blocked a bipartisan investigation.

Many Republicans have downplayed or deflected attention from that calamitous day. Trump remains his party’s dominant figure.

Republicans have backed Trump’s claims that this month’s court-sanctioned search of his Mar-a-Lago estate was politically motivated. The FBI is led by Trump-appointed Director Christopher Wray and emerged with sensitive national security documents that are federal property.

Anti-government rhetoric by politicians is not new. But these latest assaults on faith in government and the election system underpinning it — by potent influencers like a former president and his elected supporters — come amid authorities’ warnings about increased calls for violence, even civil war.

___

Despite ever-tighter security, reporters still walk unfettered in most Capitol corridors.

I’ve bumped into celebrities from Muhammad Ali to Jon Stewart. But politicians have left the most lasting impressions.

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas wielded light-speed wit. After the newly elected Clinton dined with GOP senators in a gesture of bipartisanship, he described a novel he’d read involving a murdered Democratic senator. “A happy ending!” Dole replied.

Gingrich’s hardening of partisan enmity — he counseled describing Democrats with focus group-tested words like “traitors” and “sick” — was sometimes answered in kind. Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., angrily left one 1995 House hearing on Medicare cuts Republicans wanted. “I had to fight you guys 50 years ago,” shouted Gibbons, who parachuted into France behind Nazi lines on D-Day.

I’ve seen agreements to authorize a military response to 9/11, keep the 2008 Great Recession from getting even worse and spend trillions of dollars to counter the pandemic.

Republicans have enacted huge tax cuts and created Medicare prescription drug coverage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., recently muscled a top Biden priority to passage bolstering environment and health initiatives.

___

Trump’s norm-busting four years featured constant clashes with Congress including Republicans, from whom he tolerated no dissent.

I prodded one Republican, privately critical of Trump, to talk on the record. “He’d send me to Gitmo,” he said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., just 48, announced in early 2018 that he would retire. He later told author Tim Alberta he could not endure two more years working with Trump.

The cautious McConnell and impulsive Trump long had a fraught relationship. It was severed as McConnell, who voted to acquit Trump over Jan. 6 on the grounds that he’d already left the White House, immediately afterward blistered him as being “practically and morally responsible” for the riot.

I’ve seen lawmakers risk their jobs by backing the party line. Democrats lost dozens of seats in 1994 after rallying behind a Clinton deficit-reduction package. They lost again in 2010 after enacting Obama’s health care law.

And I’ve seen some infuriate colleagues by straying. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., elicited gasps with his decisive thumbs-down that derailed Trump’s effort to repeal Obama’s health care statute.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump over the insurrection. At least eight, including Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Trump’s most relentless GOP foe, will not be in Congress next year.

Lawmakers have recently approved accords helping Ukraine and veterans and modestly restricting guns — glimmers suggesting they can still work together.

Yet the confluence of today’s forces chipping away at faith in government institutions would not be recognizable to Foley and Michel.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Congress at https://apnews.com/hub/congress.

WASHINGTON — As Republicans continued Sunday to defend former President Donald Trump after an unprecedented FBI search of his residence in Florida, deep fissures were visible in the party’s support for law enforcement amid a federal investigation into Trump’s handling of top secret documents.

Immediately after the search, congressional Republicans, including members of leadership, reacted with fury, attacking the nation’s top law enforcement agencies. Some called to “defund” or “destroy” the FBI, and others invoked the Nazi secret police, using words like “gestapo” and “tyrants.”

On Sunday, more moderate voices in the party chastised their colleagues for the broadsides against law enforcement, making a more restrained case for defending Trump while also carrying out oversight of the Justice Department.

Many Republicans called for the release of the affidavit supporting the search warrant that was executed last Monday, which would detail the evidence that had persuaded a judge there was probable cause to believe a search would find evidence of crimes. Such documents are typically not made public before charges are filed.

“It was an unprecedented action that needs to be supported by unprecedented justification,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., a former FBI agent, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation. But he added, “I have urged all my colleagues to make sure they understand the weight of their words.”

The calls for a more cautious tone came as threats emerged against law enforcement. A gunman on Thursday attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati, and Friday, the Department of Homeland Security distributed an intelligence bulletin to law enforcement around the country that warned of “an increase in threats and acts of violence, including armed encounters, against law enforcement, judiciary and government personnel” after the search.

“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion,’” said the bulletin, which was obtained by The New York Times.

Adding to the sense of alarm, another gunman crashed a car into a barricade outside the Capitol around 4 a.m. Sunday. After he exited the car and it became engulfed in flames, he shot into the air several times before killing himself, the Capitol Police said.

Fitzpatrick said he had begun checking in with his former colleagues at the FBI “to make sure they were OK.”

“We’re the world’s oldest democracy, and the only way that can come unraveled is if we have disrespect for institutions that lead to Americans turning on Americans,” he said, adding, “A lot of that starts with the words we’re using.”

Republicans have struggled to coalesce around a unified strategy to respond to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, amid daily revelations and quickly shifting explanations, excuses, defenses and false accusations by the former president.

On Friday, a federal judge unsealed the warrant authorizing the search and an inventory of items removed from the property by federal agents. The list showed that the FBI had retrieved 11 sets of classified documents as part of an inquiry into potential violations of the Espionage Act and two other laws.

Some of the documents were marked “classified/TS/SCI” — shorthand for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information.” Such information is meant to be viewed only in a secure government facility.

Trump and his allies have argued that former President Barack Obama also mishandled documents (an allegation quickly dismissed as false by the National Archives); that the judge who signed the warrant authorizing the search must have been biased; that the FBI might have planted evidence; that the documents were covered by attorney-client or executive privilege; and that Trump had declassified the documents.

The former president has worked to cash in on the search.

Trump’s political action committee has been furiously fundraising off the FBI search, sending out at least 17 text messages to donors since Tuesday. “The Dems broke into the home of Pres. Trump,” one read. “This is POLITICAL TARGETING!” another alleged. “THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU!” a third said.

Donald Trump Jr., the former president����ap son, wrote another fundraising email Sunday: “The witch hunt continues…The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago was a DISGRACE. In fact, it����ap UNFATHOMABLE.”

On Saturday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also called for the repeal of the Espionage Act, one of the statutes that prompted the investigation.

But the shifting explanations have made it difficult for Republicans, many of whom are eager to please the former president, to come together with a unified defense. They are divided about whether to attack the nation’s top law enforcement agencies and how aggressive to be in those attacks.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whom the National Republican Congressional Committee is featuring in fundraising appeals, has begun selling merchandise that says “Defund the FBI.”

That is a much different approach from Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, who defended Trump on Sunday.

Republicans on the committee have said they continue to support law enforcement. Still, they said that tough questions remained for Attorney General Merrick Garland about his decision to take the bold step of ordering a search of the former president����ap home, and they promised to hold the Justice Department accountable.

“Clearly, no one is above the law,” Turner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Donald Trump is not above the law. And Attorney General Garland is not above the law, either. And Congress has the powers of oversight. He needs to comply.”

Turner said he had not been convinced “whether or not this actually is classified material and whether or not it rises to the level of the highest classified material,” despite the documents released by the court.

“I’d be very surprised if he has actual documents that rise to the level of an immediate national security threat,” Turner said.

Two of the laws referred to in the search warrant, however, make the taking or concealment of government records a crime regardless of whether they are related to national security. The third, which bars the unauthorized retention of material with restricted national security information, applies whether or not the material is classified.

The Republican leaders in the Senate and the House, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, have also said that Garland needs to provide answers.

Garland, for his part, held a news conference Thursday defending the way the Justice Department has handled the case.

“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor,” he said. “Under my watch that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”

The White House, trying to avoid the appearance of partisan interference, has been reluctant to comment on the investigation. “We do not interfere. We do not get briefed,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “We’re going to let Merrick Garland speak for himself and his department.”

But other Democrats immediately seized on Republicans’ anti-law enforcement statements.

“I thought in the old days the Republican Party used to stand with law enforcement,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I hope some of them do today because this kind of rhetoric is very dangerous to our country.”

She pointed out that when she reviews classified documents she must do so in a secure room. “I can’t even wear my Fitbit,” she said.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., chair of the Intelligence Committee, has called for the director of national intelligence to conduct an “immediate review and damage assessment” and provide a classified briefing to Congress about the potential harm done to national security by Trump’s handling of documents.

“The fact that they were in an unsecure place that is guarded with nothing more than a padlock or whatever security they had at a hotel is deeply alarming,” he said on “Face the Nation.”

Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, called on his panel to scrutinize Garland’s actions.

“Never has a former president and potential political opponent to the sitting president been subject to such a search,” Portman said in a statement. “The attorney general and the FBI should now demonstrate unprecedented transparency and explain to the American people why they authorized the raid.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., took a similar approach.

“I’m not one of the individuals out there that says that, you know, ‘Immediately attack the FBI or the Justice Department,’” he said on “Meet the Press.”

“But,” he added, “I think it����ap very important long term for the Justice Department, now that they’ve done this, that they show that this was not just a fishing expedition.”

This article originally appeared in .