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Former Gov. Paul LePage sought to limit the flow of immigrants to the state during his eight years in office, cutting public support for noncitizens seeking asylum and ending the states participation in refugee resettlement.

Gov. Janet Mills reversed many of those policies over the past four years, supporting public assistance for legally present noncitizens and speaking out about the importance of welcoming immigrants, migrants and asylum seekers as both an economic and moral imperative.

The two major party candidates running for governor have well-established, and nearly opposite, records when it comes to the emotionally charged topic of immigration. And its an issue that will be front and center again for whoever wins in November.

Business leaders struggling with severe workforce shortages say asylum seekers, refugees, seasonal migrant workers and foreign student workers are crucial to the economy of an aging state that historically has recorded more deaths than births.

At the same time, an influx of asylum seekers who must wait for permission to work is straining public resources and the availability of affordable housing in Portland and other communities, feeding opposition to taxpayer-funded assistance for noncitizens.

The race between a sitting governor and former governor offers an unusual opportunity to compare records and not just rhetoric. The third candidate on the ballot, independent Sam Hunkler, has never held public office and described only a general philosophy that Maine should welcome immigrants who arrive legally and can help fill the demand for workers.

The LePage campaign did not respond to a request to interview the former two-term governor for this story and did not respond specifically to questions sent by email.

LePages political strategist, Brent Littlefield, provided a statement criticizing Mills for supporting public assistance to asylum seekers and saying LePage supports comprehensive immigration reform to fix a broken system and allow vetted, law abiding, people into the United States and Maine. He also supports efforts to ensure that those here legally can get any required certifications quickly to become employed.

This summer, Republicans opened multicultural community centers in Portland and Lewiston as part of what the party said is a national outreach campaign to immigrant communities. And LePage has softened his rhetoric on the subject.

We are all immigrants in this country, LePage said at a campaign event in Lewiston in June. As long as we come here legally and do it right, we are one big happy family.

But LePage, who was governor from 2011 to 2019, also has continued to say he does not believe asylum seekers are here legally, even though they are allowed to remain in the country while pursuing their application for permanent status.

In an interview with the Press Herald this month, Mills discussed the important role immigrants can and should play in the states economy, saying businesses are looking for ways to better integrate new Mainers in the workforce.

And shes been pushing for immigration reforms on the national level that include addressing the immigration court backlog and shortening the waiting period before asylum seekers can work.

Many of them come here with not only availability, but skill, Mills said. Some have advanced degrees. Some have experience in the trades. Many of them have skills we need in our workforce today and thats what businesses are telling me and asking for.

COMMON GROUND

A close look at their records in office shows there is one area of agreement between Mills and LePage.

Both acknowledge the importance of both foreign students holding J-1 visas and seasonal migrants working under H2A and H2B visas.

While supportive of most of former President Donald Trumps immigration proposals, LePage did not agree with Trumps efforts to end the seasonal migrant and foreign student worker visa programs. LePage expressed his opposition in two separate letters to the president in 2017.

This tight labor market, combined with our status as the oldest state in the nation, is creating a workforce shortage, LePage wrote. If Maines workforce supported these jobs, I assure you we would hire American workers first. We are working to solve the problem of our aging workforce, but we need to stay open for business in the interim.

He added, the elimination of these programs would leave a gap in Maines tourism industry, the backbone of our economy, and would result in slowing our economic growth.

Mills also has written federal officials, requesting more worker visas, which were curtailed during the pandemic. In 2021, she wrote to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, requesting more H2B visa workers. In early January, she joined governors from seven other states in writing President Biden, calling for more J-1, H2A and H2B visa workers.

Again, we request your help to increase the flow of work-based visas as an additional tool to help address our workforce shortages and the cascading economic consequences of those shortages, the governors wrote.

LEPAGES HARD LINE

Beyond worker and student visas, however, their records mostly show they implemented opposing policies when it comes to noncitizens hoping to start new lives in Maine.

LePage staked out a hard line on immigration even before winning election as governor.

As mayor of Waterville, LePage wrote Democratic Gov. John Baldacci in 2004, blasting his executive order that prohibited state employees from asking about immigration status when providing public benefits.

One of LePages first actions as governor was rescinding that executive order and then eliminating the ability of noncitizens, including those in the country legally seeking asylum, to receive state-funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They remained eligible for federal TANF funds.

In 2016, LePage wrote to President Barack Obama, saying he was formally withdrawing Maine from participation in the federal refugee resettlement program because of concerns about screening immigrants and the burden on the states welfare programs, which supports immigrants who already have been processed and can immediately seek work and full citizenship status. The action did not stop the flow of refugees because the federal government can work directly with private resettlement agencies to do the work of placing and supporting refugees.

LePage was a vocal supporter of Trumps proposals to restrict entry into the United States of people from Muslim-majority nations and to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows the children of illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. and apply for drivers licenses, social security numbers and work permits.

LePage strongly opposed public assistance for noncitizens, sometimes incorrectly arguing they are here illegally.

Throughout his terms and while campaigning this summer, LePage has repeatedly described asylum seekers as being in the country illegally, even though federal law allows foreign nationals to remain in the country while their asylum applications are decided. Foreign nationals are eligible for asylum if they are fleeing persecution for reasons such as political or religious beliefs.

LePage repeatedly criticized Portland for supporting noncitizens and falsely described it as a sanctuary city, which generally means the city does not allow law enforcement to help immigration authorities. Portland has no such prohibition.

In 2014, he sought to punish Portland other municipalities that provided asylum seekers with General Assistance, a state-funded safety net program that provides vouchers for shelter, food and medicine for those in need.

In court, he secured a partial victory in that effort. He successfully argued that the 1996 federal welfare reform act, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, prohibited noncitizens from receiving public benefits unless a state has enacted a law specifically making them eligible. LePage accurately noted that Maine had never enacted such a law, despite years of providing assistance. And the court ruled in his favor.

The Republican-controlled Legislature responded by passing a law making asylum seekers eligible for assistance. It became law when LePage failed to veto that and 64 other bills before the statutory deadline.

LePage, however, sought to restrict eligibility through rulemaking, prohibiting some asylum seekers who are legally present in the country from receiving benefits, including victims of human trafficking.

MILLS REVERSES COURSE

Mills set herself apart from LePage well before she became governor. The pair clashed when Mills was attorney general and publicly opposed Trumps travel ban from Muslim-majority countries and his effort to end DACA.

Mills also engaged in a high-profile confrontation with LePage over General Assistance for asylum seekers. She sided with the Maine Municipal Association, Portland and other communities when LePage threatened to withhold funding.

As governor, Mills rewrote the strict, LePage-era eligibility rules for asylum seekers to receive GA to ensure that all asylum seekers who had been excluded by LePage, including the victims of human trafficking, would be eligible for assistance.Mills has supported efforts to reduce the amount of time asylum seekers need to wait before they can work.

Mills has not taken steps to unwind the state-funded TANF rule approved by the LePage administration, but she worked with the Legislature to restore MaineCare eligibility for noncitizen children under 21 and pregnant women who are not citizens.

That came in response to the sudden arrival of hundreds of migrant families that entered the U.S. through the southern border to seek asylum and traveled to Portland in 2019. Virtually all of these migrant families were from sub-Saharan Africa, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Over the last two years, the number of asylum seekers coming to Portland has grown. The Mills administration helped secure hotel rooms to shelter the migrants, and other people seeking housing, during the pandemic.

The cost of those rooms is being covered by federal funding. That funding is set to expire soon, although a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said no date has been announced. So the Legislature added $10 million in additional General Assistance funding in Mills supplemental budget to help offset costs in the event federal funding is not renewed.

And Mills allocated an additional $22 million to secure transitional housing for asylum seekers, and others experiencing homelessness. A spokesperson said that $750,000 in funding has been invested into a new partnership with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, a Portland nonprofit that helps asylum seekers with their applications for asylum and work permits.

Mills also has increased investments in English language programs, which are key to helping asylum seekers become integrated into the community and gain meaningful employment.

Mills increased adult education funding by 14 percent since taking office in January 2019, including a $1.2 million increase specifically in adult education workforce development funding, according to a 2021 release from the Department of Education.

Mills steps to support noncitizens have nevertheless fallen short of some advocates hopes.

Immigrant leaders, as well as elected and administrative officials in Portland, issued a very public call for Mills to create a new asylum settlement office and help coordinate on-the-ground services, such as transportation, food, medicine and other services that are currently being delivered by area nonprofits.

At the time, a spokesperson for Mills said the governor would consider the request.

When asked in an interview with the Press Herald last month where her administration was in evaluating this request, Mills emphasized the steps she has already taken, without committing to do more.

We have been doing a lot of things in different ways, she said.

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Records show Mills' and LePage's nearly opposite views on immigration - Press Herald

Oklahoma has 33,000 teachers who are certified, but choose not to teach. Ginnie Graham and Bob Doucette talk about the state's teacher shortage forcing districts to rely on emergency certifications and more. Plus, why are extremists harassing our county election board workers?

Leave it to Ken Burns to point out what America looks like at its best and its worst.

In his three-part docuseries The U.S. and the Holocaust, Burns sheds light on how the U.S. government walked a tight wire of helping Jewish refugees flee Nazi Germany while navigating strong anti-immigrant sentiment at home.

Burns, along with co-authors Lynn Novisk and Sarah Boststein, wrote a piece published in the Tulsa World on Sept. 18 that detailed the ways in which Nazi leadership looked to American laws on immigration policy and treatment of Black and Native peoples to fashion their own framework for what ultimately led to the Holocaust.

That column speaks for itself, so Im not going to get into that here. Instead, I want to look at what has long troubled me about our country: the conflict of its lofty ideals and its sometimes bitter realities.

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My own family history shows just how good America can be to newcomers. My mother came to the U.S. from Germany as the wife of an Air Force enlisted man. She knew little of American culture and didnt speak the language when my parents settled in Virginia in the early 1960s.

She learned the language, worked as a nurse, held plenty of other jobs and had a side business when I was in high school. Her story is one of tens of millions representing immigrants who came to the U.S. and flourished.

Thats one of the things that make America great. When were at our best, we live up to the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which say in part, Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

The unspoken clause following this line is that these people, leaving dire circumstances in their homelands, can come here and find the opportunity to build a new, prosperous and happy life.

Many have done so. Some work tough jobs and grind out a living. Others start businesses and build empires. Many of their children become entrepreneurs, teachers, physicians, soldiers, researchers and more.

The U.S. has a history of positive assimilation, one where peoples of all nationalities, faiths and ethnicities have sought and found dreams unavailable to them in the countries where they were born.

The U.S. is a microcosm of humanity, something few other countries can boast. We owe that to the high ideals of our founders that everyone is created equal, with unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as written in the Declaration of Independence.

You can see how someone living in a place where rights are fluid, or flatly denied, might be attracted to a country with such egalitarian principles.

I believe this exists here, and get confirmation of that with every story we do on naturalization ceremonies conducted in Tulsa. Each new citizen looks happy to be part of this ongoing American experiment.

Unfortunately, this rosy picture is incomplete. While our ideals are high and success stories real, the relationship we have with immigrants has been fraught with nativism, racism and fear.

For me, that hit home in 2006. Back then, I found myself concerned about how the midterm elections would pan out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not going well. I worried about what a Democratic takeover of Congress might mean for the country.

Ive long held that the country needs healthy liberal and conservative parties, but some of what I was hearing at the time from the left gave me pause.

I tuned into various pundits, looking for any sort of message that could counter the impending blue wave. Repeatedly, the answer was the same: Bash the immigrants, particularly those from Latin America or anyone hinting of Middle Eastern descent. Predictably, the issue was a loser. Democrats mopped up in the midterms, then took control of the White House two years later. For me, it struck deeper. My faith tells me that were all Gods image bearers. Demonizing foreigners was the opposite of what Christian scriptures teach. I did a lot of reevaluating in those days.

One particular truth stood out: Anyone trafficking in the politics of fear was someone of whom to be wary.

Burns documentary illustrated that. Anti-Chinese laws shut the golden door to people from eastern Asia. Italians, eastern Europeans and more were all, at various times, singled out by strict immigration quotas. Mexican immigrants were welcomed for a time, but they, too, became targets of anti-immigrant fear.

Fear-based persecution wasnt relegated to newcomers. For centuries, Black Americans werent legally recognized as people. Until emancipation, they had no rights. Afterwards, Jim Crow laws sought to claw back rights given to freed slaves and their descendants. Liberated Blacks were viewed by many as a threat.

Native Americans suffered their own horrors, between wars, displacement and relegation to reservations where many tribes teetered on the edge of extinction. Weve barely scratched the surface of confronting those traumas.

During World War II, Americans of Japanese descent were wrested from their homes and confined in bleak internment camps, their loyalties questioned solely on the basis of who they were.

To Burns point, the attitudes that birthed these calamities affected Jews as well. American sentiments toward Jewish refugees in the run-up to World War II were, at best, mildly indifferent. At worst, it was the type of callous spite that deprived beleaguered European Jews of safe harbor here during their hour of need.

State Department resistance toward offering more help cost untold thousands of Jewish lives; had we been more open, Anne Frank and most of her family may have lived out their lives in America instead of dying in Nazi concentration camps.

Id like to think weve advanced beyond those times, but American nativism has never been eradicated. It ebbs and flows.

What do we see now? I still see those stories of new Americans being naturalized in joyous ceremonies. Tulsa owes its new surge of growth and the economic opportunities that come with it to a steady rise in immigrant communities from around the world.

I see a suburban church actively helping Afghans, Burmese, Ukrainians and more begin new lives far from the troubles of where they were born.

But I also watch as politicians preen in front of the southern border, stoking fear of the foreigner. I see them equate undocumented immigrants to thugs and rapists. I hear the term invasion on repeat, even though these same elected officials do nothing about reforming our outdated and cumbersome immigration system.

As a result, all sorts of people end up in the crossfire, targets of violence at stores, synagogues, churches and on the street. All because they look, talk and believe differently.

Immigration reform is needed. The surge of people flooding our southern border attests to that, as do unheeded pleas from businesses that would love to greet a pool of eager new hires.

Such reform is hard. Its far easier to complain than it is to act.

But Id rather try to do the latter. It would mean that while were looking to satisfy our own interests, were also viewing those who want to come here as people and not problems.

And that brings me back to the two-edged sword we wield on immigration. If we live up to the core of our beliefs, America is displayed at its finest. At our worst, when fear guides our actions, we can be deadly cold.

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Bob Doucette: I've seen us at our best - and our worst - on immigration - Tulsa World

A quartet of conservative City Council members turned a hearing on the municipal governments soaring vacancy rates into an anti-vaccine mandate spectacle Friday amid buzz that Mayor Adams could be on the brink of peeling back some of New Yorks remaining coronavirus restrictions.

The hearing in the Councils Civil Service and Labor Committee featured testimony from members of Adams administration on what theyre doing to improve the city governments job vacancy rate, which stands at 8.3% more than five times higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Once their time came to grill the Adams officials, the three Republicans on the panel, joined by likeminded moderate Democratic Councilmember Bob Holden, focused exclusively on the citys municipal workforce coronavirus vaccine mandate.

Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) claimed the government would not have a job shortage if it wasnt for the mandate, which was implemented in November 2021 and requires city workers to be vaccinated against the virus that has killed more than 41,000 New Yorkers.

Enough with all this malarkey, Paladino said before calling on the city to rehire any workers who got laid off for flouting the vaccine requirement, drawing cheers from a group of rowdy anti-mandate protesters in the Council gallery.

A group of New York City workers marched from Metro Tech in Downtown Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and then made their way over to City Hall to protest ahead of their possible termination earlier this year due to their vaccination status. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/)

Paladinos fellow GOP members, Inna Vernikov of Brooklyn and Joann Ariolla of Queens, followed up by demanding that Deputy Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Barbara Dannenberg tell them how many city workers have been fired as a result of the mandate.

DCAS would not have this information, but we could certainly circle back, Dannenberg said to boos from the hecklers in the gallery.

Holden, meantime, spent his allotted time laying out why he believes the city does not need a municipal vaccine mandate anymore.

Were not in 2020, were not in 2021, the city should get back to normal, he said. The city should lift everything.

Despite their focus on the mandate, only 1,761 city employees had gotten fired for refusing to get vaccinated as of Aug. 30 a fraction of the more than 330,000 posts across all municipal agencies, according to data from the mayors office. Another 583 unvaccinated workers remain on unpaid leave while waiting on the city to review their applications for exemptions to the mandate, the data shows.

Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (Barry Williams/)

Fridays hearing came one day after the Councils five Republicans issued a statement with Holden and conservative Democratic Councilmember Kalman Yeger saying they left a recent meeting with Adams optimistic that some positive changes are forthcoming as it relates to the municipal and private workforce vaccine mandates.

Staten Island Councilmember Joe Borelli, the GOP minority leader, declined to explain what exactly Adams said in the sit-down. But he told the Daily News that the mayors willingness to meet is a good sign.

Just the fact that hes willing to meet on the issue shows that hes willing to consider changes, Borelli said.

Adams spokesman Fabien Levy also declined to say what Adams talked to the Republicans about, but stressed hes always willing to sit down with elected officials and members of the community and hear their concerns.

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City Council Republicans turn hearing on NYC job vacancies into anti ...

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MONONGAHELA, Pennsylvania Whether by design or necessity, the decision by House Republican leaders to kick off their Commitment to America in this river town on the edge of Allegheny County was quite apt.

There is no easy way to get here from Pittsburgh, or from the airport, or from our nations capital. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana laughed, saying the very point of the Commitment to America is to reach the people and places Congress neglects to the point that it needs a GPS to find them and a dictionary to spell them. The Republicans goal, he said, is to show up and hear the concerns of people in places just like this one and to commit as a party to finding solutions.

Scalise told The Washington Examiner that Republicans wanted to go into the middle of America, to a community that really does have to live with the consequences of President Joe Bidens policies, as well as the legislation moved through Congress by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They wanted to do more than just act as critics of the Democrats, he said they wanted to put forward their own solutions.

You could hear it from the families that asked questions today, theyre struggling under the weight of Bidens inflation, he said. Families are having a hard time putting food on the table. He pointed also to the local sheriff, who asked lawmakers what they would do about the escalating crime and fentanyl overdoses, in addition to families asking about their solution to soaring energy prices.

During a tour of Ductmate Industries, Scalise and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy received a few lessons in welding and high-technology manufacturing. After that, the House Republicans held a town hall event, rolling out their agenda for the country. Twenty-eight House members were in attendance as the Republican House leadership rolled out their plan to control inflation, secure the southern border and fight the escalating crime surge in this country.

McCarthy said the plan includes curbing out-of-control spending, moving supply chains away from China and increasing domestic energy production.

DMI CEO Ray Yeager, who lives in nearby Washington County, said the western Pennsylvania family-owned company has been in the Mon Valley for nearly 50 years. We have factories across the U.S., but our headquarters are in Charleroi, he said of the facility down the road in Washington County.

Yeager said it made sense for the Republicans to come here, despite the curving back roads and deep hollows you have to navigate no matter what direction you are coming from. There is a very deep sense of place here, and the people who work here and live here embody all that is good about the country in terms of work ethic and giving back to the community, he said. I will add, it is the people who live in towns like the Monongahela all across who are getting hurt the most by the effects of inflation, rising energy costs and the fentanyl crisis.

DMI makes accessories primarily for commercial duct systems for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry. There were over 400 people working in the facility last Friday. Many of them told me they have been here more than 10 years several said over two decades. Almost all said they live within 20 minutes of their jobs or just down the street. Most of the workers said they learned their skills for the job at a trade school, in shop class or as an apprentice.

Scalise said DMI is emblematic of so many other small businesses in America: They have to live with the consequences of Pelosis far-left agenda, he said. So, when they push the Green New Deal, it crushes manufacturers in America who actually have the best environmental standards in the world, and it emboldens countries like China. Because when Pelosi shuts down manufacturing in America, those jobs dont just go away they go to countries like China and India.

Scalise said the Left is really good at beating up America for doing the work and releasing the emissions, but they dont acknowledge that Americans do it better and with less environmental damage than anyone else in the world. Frankly, we should be making more things in America, he said. We should be making more energy in America, not less. It shows they live in this parallel universe that is detached from reality of the small businesses and hard work and families who make America great.

Monongahela sits in the center of Appalachia. It is the second-smallest city in Pennsylvania a critical meeting place during the Whiskey Rebellion and the birthplace of former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. It is also the place where NFL great Joe Montana learned to toss a football with his father.

In the decades of the decline of coal and manufacturing, the city has lost half of its population; the median income hovers at $30,000, with nearly 14% of the population living below the poverty line.

Scalise says inflation hits people hardest in cities and towns like this one. Thats why it is one of the top priorities for House Republicans to address if they take control of the House in November. Its incredibly important for us to listen to families that we represent, who are struggling, and then go bring those concerns back to Washington and pass bills that fix their problems, he said.

The immediate reaction from the House Democrats was swift, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and every other Democrat immediately calling it an extreme MAGA agenda.

It shows how out of touch she is with average Americans, said Scalise, because those are the big complaints I hear when I go to communities all across the country. So, Im not sure what group of people shes hanging out with, but if she thinks its extremist to lower inflation and to lower energy prices and to have parents being more involved in their kids education, then maybe shes so out of touch that its time for her to be fired as speaker of the House. I think the countrys going to have a big say in November.

In the most recent ABC News poll, Republicans are favored by voters heading into the midterm elections on handling inflation, the economy overall and crime; 76% of those surveyed say inflation is a major issue, 84% say the economy and 69% say crime.

Scalise said that, as Republicans, they just cant release a document and not stand by it if they win; in fact, he says he expects voters to hold their feet to the fire on all of these issues.

Every one of the items in the Commitment to America represents issues that will be brought before committees and Congress in open view on CSPAN; bills that will ultimately come to the House floor to carry out the items and the commitment, he explained. We will pass those bills through the House, and thats where getting the public more engaged is really important. Because they go nowhere after that if everybody just walks away. We need people to then call their senators and demand that their senators pass the bills that we will get out of the House to lower inflation, and to lower gas prices, and to secure the border.

This commitment only works if the public stays engaged and holds everybody accountable, said Scalise. Including Joe Biden, who will have a choice of whether he would sign or veto these bills, he added.

As for getting any Democrats to sign on, the eternal optimist says hes ready to help make that happen.

I welcome everybody who believes in the great principles of America to vote for these bills and to express support for the Commitment to America, he said. This is going to be a referendum during the election, but also after the election, on the view that people have for America. Do you want an America that goes into decline? Where inflation is just a new norm and a border doesnt exist? Or do you want to get back to the principles that made this country the greatest nation in the history of the world? Its in jeopardy right now. We can restore it.

Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between.

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Zito: Republicans make their case to Middle America - Daily Herald

Democrats went into this midterm campaign cycle indicating that they would run on what theyve done for average Americansthings like passing a critical infrastructure plan and provisions aimed at slashing drug costs. But the party has since decided to take a new approach: warning that Republicans, should they retake one or both chambers of Congress, will turn the country into a fascist, apocalyptic hellscape where forced births are the norm, insurrections get a free pass, and every American will have a chip implanted into their brain that plays the words Hunter Biden laptop, Hunter Biden laptop on loop 24/7 for all eternity. Are we kidding about that last one? Uh, only kind of!

Why the vibe shift from the Dems? Well, the party out of power typically wins seats during the midterms, and Republicans only need five seats to retake the House and one to retake the Senate. And while the reversal of Roe v. Wade gave Democrats some hope that they wouldnt totally lose control of Congress, it was also a reminder that conservatives believe women should be treated like second-class citizens and the stakes of losing this election are pretty damn high.

What are those stakes, exactly, one might ask, if theyve been living under a rock? Heres a refresher: For starters, the GOP would undoubtedly block basically everything Joe Biden wants to get done in the second half of his first term. That this would happen should come as a shock to no one, given (1) the partys long history of obstructing things that could actually help Americans and (2) Mitch McConnells vow to do exactly that even after hed been relegated to Senate minority leader. (In May 2021, McConnell declared, One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration.) Naturally, the blockage would include judicial nominations, including in the unlikely event a Supreme Court vacancy arises, given McConnells penchant for making up rules about when a president is allowed to fill a seat on the Supreme Court.

Elsewhere, a GOP agenda, should the GOP be in power, would include a vote on a national abortion ban. Are Republicans on the record as having said that the matter should be up to the states? Absolutely, this is all they could talk about after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Are they nevertheless the biggest bunch of hypocrites on the planet? Also yes! Last month, Senator Lindsey Graham proposed a 15-week abortion ban, and while some members of his party were quick to distance themselves from the idea presumably because it came so close to the electionits obvious that conservatives are champing at the bit to further restrict reproductive rights. What else? Well, as The Washington Post notes, theres clearly an appetite from some Republicans to require Congress to reauthorize Medicare and Social Security every five years, which fits in with their worldview that government should do jack shit for people (unless theyre billionaires.) And, obviously, we should probably expect round-the-clock hearings about Hunter Biden, and a push to impeach his father, both of which are things Republicans have already vowed to do.

Of course, the GOP only needs to retake the House, and doesnt need to control the Senate, in order to impeach the president and investigate his son. As the Post reports, another thing we can expect from a GOP-controlled House are lots of other investigationslikely including Bidens border policy, the FBIs (court-authorized!) search of Mar-a-Lago, and ones that lend credence to Trumps false election fraud claims. And, naturally, theyll no doubt move to disband the January 6 committee, which has made Donald Trump and his allies look really, really bad.

Now, what would Democrats do if they stayed in power? Per the Post, they could try again to pass more climate legislation; national protections for abortion, same-sex marriage, and voting rights; and also make it harder for any future president (*cough* Trump) to clear out any dissenting voices from the federal government.

Unfortunately, the Post notes, a situation in which Democrats retain both chambers is probably the least likely, but given the stakes national abortion bans, no consequences for insurrections, etc.you can probably understand why Democrats are taking this darker tack.

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Democrats Warn That Republicans Will Turn US Into a Fascist Hellhole If GOP Prevails in Midterm Elections - Vanity Fair