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Republican Congressman Sean Duffys announcement Thursday that he wont run for the U.S. Senate in 2018 sets up another potentially crowded GOP primary for the seat.

The names of at least five potential candidates have emerged in recent weeks, with four of them state Sen. Leah Vukmir, state Rep. Dale Kooyenga, Madison businessman Eric Hovde and Marine veteran Kevin Nicholson telling the Wisconsin State Journal on Thursday they are considering a run.

The fifth, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, didnt respond to an interview request but tweeted praise for Duffys leadership. He previously said he would await Duffys decision before deciding whether to get in the race.

Republicans see U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Madison Democrat, as vulnerable, especially after Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Wisconsin since 1984.

The one thing that we learned during the entire presidential election cycle is the regular rules of thumb were thrown out the window, Vukmir said.

Hovde, who finished second in the 2012 GOP primary, said he plans to make a decision by this fall. He said the race will likely be very expensive and he expects he would use some of his own money, as he did in 2012.

Nicholson said he is strongly considering a run as an outsider who knows the challenges facing Wisconsin families, and the sacrifices made by those who help keep us safe.

Kooyenga said hes open to the possibility of running but right now is focused on the state budget.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabatos Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, on Wednesday rated the Wisconsin seat one of three races that leans Democrat. He said in an interview that hes giving Baldwin the benefit of the doubt as an incumbent who isnt part of the current presidents party.

When Baldwin initially got elected there was some thought that she was too liberal for a state thats kind of middle of the road, but its also elected people from all across the political spectrum, Kondik said. If Hillary Clinton were president, Baldwin would be much more clearly endangered.

State and national Republicans have already begun targeting Baldwin.

In a statement, Duffy said hes not running for family reasons.

After much prayer and deliberation, Rachel and I have decided that this is not the right time for me to run for Senate. We have eight great kids and family always comes first, Duffy said. Baldwin will be beat because her radically liberal Madison record and ideas are out of (sync) with Wisconsin. I look forward to helping our Republican nominee defeat her.

Duffys decision comes a week after stirring controversy for saying a shooting at a Canadian mosque by a white extremist was a one-off event, that shootings by white extremists are different than those by Muslim extremists and that good things came from the killing of nine members of a Charleston, South Carolina, church, namely the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds.

Duffy was recently named chairman of the housing and insurance subcommittee of the House Financial Institutions Committee, something he had been positioning himself for, and which could help him raise lots of money over the next several years, said longtime Republican lobbyist Brandon Scholz, a former party official.

Its possible Duffy is looking ahead to an open Senate seat in 2022 when U.S. Sen. Ron Johnsons second term ends, Scholz said. Johnson, an Oshkosh Republican, said during his recent re-election campaign that he wouldnt run for a third term.

Its likely by that time everybody will be looking to him as the candidate, Scholz said. Young. Money in the bank. Leader in the state. The Republican Party will wrap its arms around him.

Republicans acknowledged the big unknown in 2018 is what effect Trumps presidency will have on the midterm elections. The party not in control of the White House tends to do better in midterms, but Wisconsin has been tacking right in recent years.

Baldwins 2012 win over Tommy Thompson, the former four-time elected governor, was one of the few bright spots for Democrats since 2010. Scott Jensen, a former Republican Assembly speaker and lobbyist for the pro-voucher American Federation for Children, said Baldwin successfully ran then as a populist appealing to middle-of-the-road voters, but will have a more difficult time running with a more liberal voting record.

Last time I was warning Republicans that Tammy Baldwin was stronger than they think; now shes weaker than she knows, Jensen said. The ground is shifting underneath her.

Baldwin starts the race with a significant fundraising advantage. She ended 2016 with a little more than $1 million in the bank.

Her campaign declined comment, deferring to the state party.

The Republican establishment in Washington is scrambling to avoid a divisive, messy Republican primary in Wisconsin, said Gillian Drummond, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. No matter what circus emerges, Tammy Baldwin will continue to stand up to the powerful interests in Washington and fight for a Wisconsin economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top.

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With Sean Duffy out, Republican field for US Senate in 2018 wide open - Journal Times

You can talk all you want about Russia, said President Trump at his press conference Thursday, which was all a fake news fabricated deal to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it.

In other words: nothing to see here, no investigation necessary. A few minutes later, he made the point again: Russia is fake news.

But do Republicans in Congress agree? After insisting for months that there was really nothing to see in the web of connections between Trump and the government of Russia, theyhave come around and are finally demanding an investigation.

Behold their righteous determination to get to the bottom of this matter:

House Republican leaders are pressing the Justice Departments inspector general to investigate whether officials mishandled classified information, including leaked communications between members of the Russian government and the Trump administration that brought about Michael T. Flynns resignation as national security adviser.

In a letter to the inspector general, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) demanded an immediate investigation into whether the leaks broke protocol.

Oh. So theyre not going to investigate the scandal itself, theyre going to investigate how the scandal came to light, I suppose because, as the president says, thats the real scandal.

In fairness, over in the Senate there is talk of something resembling an actual investigation. But its centered on the Intelligence Committee, the most opaque of Congresss committees, where the light of public scrutiny is almost always barred. Republicans are obviously trying to make it seem as though theyre serious about this while actually doing everything they can to keep the scandal as quiet as possible.

We all know that if this were happening under a Democratic president, Republicans in Congress wouldnt just be investigating, theyd shut down every other bit of congressional business to do nothing but investigate. After all, they conducted seven separate investigations of the Benghazi attacks, a tragic but fairly straightforward episode, in the hopes that it could be used to bring down Hillary Clinton. When Bill Clinton was president, they opened investigations into such weighty matters as whether Bill and Hillary murdered their friend Vince Foster, whether they had misused the White House Christmas card list on that one, they heard 140 hours of sworn testimony and, I kid you not, Socks the cat. Yes, Dan Burton, of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, once demanded to know whether taxpayer resources were being used to respond to childrens letters to the presidents cat.

That was an outrage worthy of serious scrutiny. Russia manipulating our political process? Whatevs.

So theres no more doubt: This Congress is utterly incapable of conducting the investigation this scandal deserves. Were talking about a hostile foreign government intervening in an American election on behalf of one candidate even that the candidates campaign advisers allegedly had secret contacts with that hostile government. This is potentially as significant a scandal as Iran-Contra, or even Watergate.

Now maybe all this will turn out to be next to nothing. But we cant know either way if congressional Republicans are in charge of the investigation. At worst, there will be no investigation at all or an investigation thats little more than a whitewash. At best, it will devolve into the kind of partisan infighting we saw with the Select Committee on Benghazi.

Thats why we need an independent commission, not a select committee of members of Congress but a commission of outsiders with expertise, subpoena power and the budget necessary to answer the critical questions that have been raised. Here are just some of those questions:

This is just a start; there will no doubt be many other questions that arise as the investigation proceeds. But no one can claim with a straight face that Republicans in Congress can be trusted to conduct an investigation that is thorough and objective.

The only choice is to impanel an independent commission and let it do its work. Otherwise well never know what really happened.

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The Republican Congress cannot be trusted to investigate the Russia scandal - Washington Post (blog)

President-elect Donald Trump walks Labor Secretary-designate Andrew Puzder from Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in Bedminster, N.J., in November 2016.

The collapse Wednesday of Andrew Puzders nomination as US secretary of labor might turn out to be a historical footnote or it might mark a welcome turning point in the new Trump administration. Hopefully, its a sign that the Republican Senate is waking up to its responsibility to act as a check on an administration thats shown nothing but incompetence as it staggers through its first month.

Puzder, a fast-food baron, withdrew from consideration after Republican senators made it clear to the White House that he lacked the votes needed for confirmation. Hes the first, and so far only, Trump nominee turned aside by the Senate. Previously, the Republican-controlled body had rubber-stamped even obviously unqualified nominees like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

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Is Puzder just that much worse than Trumps other picks? Or is the climate in Washington changing in just the days since the vote to confirm DeVos?

The Trump administration has careered from crisis to crisis, and on Monday night National Security Adviser Mike Flynn resigned over his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Trumps fellow Republicans are getting antsy. After trying to shield the new president from oversight, senators now seem to be leaning toward a more aggressive inquiry into the administrations Russian ties.

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There were certainly good reasons for the Senates refusal to approve Puzder. The head of the company that owns Hardees and Carls Jr., Puzder had come under criticism for his business record as well as allegations of domestic violence once lodged against him by his former wife. He also acknowledged hiring an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper, the sort of infraction that has sunk cabinet nominations in the past.

While I wont be serving in the administration, I fully support the President and his highly qualified team, Puzder wrote.

In the minds of Republican senators, the argument for approving bad Trump nominees and looking the other way at his scandals boils down to party loyalty. Senator Rand Paul said as much, in an astonishingly candid comment Tuesday: I just dont think its useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party. ... Well never even get started with doing the things we need to do. Plus, given Trumps thin skin, theres no guarantee that he wont retaliate against his fellow Republicans in some fashion if they exercise their oversight responsibilities.

But the consequences of letting Trump rampage through Washington appear graver every day. His erratic foreign policy pronouncements on China, the Middle East, and Mexico have thrown international relations into turmoil. Conflicts of interest have crept into official White House communications. Congressmen have the power to mitigate the damage Trump is doing, but only if they use it. Hopefully, having drawn the line on Puzder will embolden them to do so more often.

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Are Senate Republicans finally waking up? - The Boston Globe

Not a month into Donald Trump's presidency, Republican leaders in Congress have run up against just about every speed bump imaginable in their quest to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

Deep ideological divisions have burst into the open over how much of the health care law to roll back and how quickly, as well as the fate of Medicaid expansion and federal funding for Planned Parenthood -- all as angry constituents who support Obamacare are hounding GOP lawmakers at town halls across the country.

In Republicans' telling, it was never supposed to be this difficult: No other issue has been more potent in uniting the party and galvanizing its base than gutting Obamacare, and GOP lawmakers kicked off the new Congress with a fresh thirst to exercise their newly gained power in Washington and kill the health care law once and for all.

Here are the major sticking points that have Republicans struggling on Obamacare repeal:

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers, want Obamacare repealed -- and they're unhappy it's taken this long.

They signaled to party leaders this week that there's no excuse for the party to delay a repeal vote, and that any repeal bill that's less aggressive than what the GOP approved in the past is simply unacceptable.

GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has partnered with Sanford on a replacement bill, said conservatives adamantly oppose the notion of "keep part of Obamacare."

"Most of the conservatives are saying we ought to repeal the whole thing," Paul told CNN. "We did it once in 2015. That's what we feel like we ought to be voting on."

Republicans moved quickly last month to begin the process of repealing Obamacare. But before long, rank-and-file members started to ring the alarm bell, arguing that things were moving too fast.

Repealing the sweeping health care law in the absence of a replacement plan, lawmakers said, would be a huge political liability for Republicans and constituents would blame the party for any disruptions or loss in coverage.

To quell the widespread concerns, GOP leaders committed to simultaneously "repeal and replace" parts of the law, and got to work on inserting replacement measures into the repeal package. They've also said the replacement would happen in stages.

"A lot of the delay we're seeing now is based on a disagreement over what elements of replace get included in the bill," said Dan Holler, vice president of government relations at Heritage Action for America. "Because you have to build consensus over what those things are ... all of that takes a little time."

Trump has not made the Obamacare deliberations any easier -- in fact, he often adds to the confusion.

There has also been plenty of confusion about what health care plan Trump himself may be working on -- if he's working on one at all.

Angry town halls are back.

Reminiscent of President Barack Obama's first summer in office, constituents are showing up in droves at public forums across the country seven years after Obamacare's enactment, airing concerns about the GOP's efforts to repeal the law.

The chaotic scenes of protesters, disruptions and heightened security have rattled congressional Republicans and made them increasingly wary of potential confrontations.

The coming weekend and next week's recess are likely to produce more clashes, and put further pressure on Republicans to offer reassurances that millions of people won't suddenly lose their coverage.

A major gulf exists between Republicans who hail from states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare and those who didn't.

There are more than a dozen Republican senators from expansion states and many of them are advocating to make sure that their constituents who benefited from the expansion don't lose coverage. Lawmakers must also take into consideration the 16 Republicans governors who lead states that have expanded -- several are pushing Congress to keep the provision.

The 2015 health care reconciliation bill called for phasing out Medicaid expansion, something that the House Freedom Caucus is now pushing for.

One option being laid out by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is to "freeze" Medicaid expansion -- not kick any one off but not allow new recipients to enroll. The hope is that over time, individuals will move off of Medicaid. To make it fair to states that didn't expand Medicaid, non-expansion states will continue to receive disproportionate share of payments, which the government pays hospitals for caring for people who don't have insurance.

"We don't want to just stop it, but how do you transition off that's fair to states that didn't expand?" said GOP Rep. Brett Guthrie, the vice chair for the subcommittee on health.

Conservatives have long targeted Medicaid for cuts. Many now want to overhaul the entire entitlement, turning it into a grant program that would provide a fixed level of federal funding to the states but give them more flexibility to run it.

Obamacare levied a bevy of taxes on higher-income Americans, insurers, employers with generous plans and others.

The latter is simply unacceptable to some Republicans.

"The burdens of the vast majority of these taxes are ultimately borne by patients and consumers in the form of higher costs, larger tax bills and reduced value in existing health plans and savings accounts," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said in a statement Wednesday.

But others, including some policy experts at the American Enterprise Institute, say not so fast.

Not only will killing the taxes immediately severely limit the funding for the tax credits Republicans want to use to help people afford coverage, but Congress also needs the money now to continue paying for Obamacare's subsidies and Medicaid expansion during the transition period.

Another potential non-starter for conservatives: a failure to defund Planned Parenthood.

Republicans voted in 2015 as a part of the legislation to repeal Obamacare to strip federal funding for the group. This year, some conservatives are beginning to worry that that provision could end up on the chopping block if the party starts to make any concessions on repeal.

Complicating matters is the fact that at least two pro-abortion rights senators across the Capitol -- Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- won't commit to supporting an Obamacare repeal bill if a provision to defund Planned Parenthood is included.

As if that weren't enough, Republicans are getting additional pressure from insurance companies. Their message to Congress: The clock is ticking.

This leaves Republicans with the tough task of reassuring insurance companies that Congress has a path forward on Obamacare. Insurers have to begin filing their 2018 plans and premiums in April.

GOP Rep. Kevin Brady, the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said Humana's exit is "another example of how Obamacare is not just sick -- it is in serious, serious trouble."

Republican Sen. John Barrasso pushed back on the suggestion that insurance companies are nervous because of the uncertainty created by GOP lawmakers.

"This is all the Democrats' problem. They voted for this disaster, it continues to collapse. This is their problem," Barrasso told CNN. "We're trying to repair the problem."

CNN's Tami Luhby contributed to this report.

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The many reasons Republicans are stuck on Obamacare repeal - CNN

Caltrain has a problem.

Passenger numbers are exploding thanks to the Bay Areas tech boom, and service has not kept up with demand. Peak trains are full, and it is difficult to find the capacity to run more. Service frequency is the same as it was in the late 2000s, but daily ridership has grownfrom 36,000 in 2009 to 62,000 in 2016.

Riding outside rush hour is no better: off-peak trains dont come frequently enough, and take more than an hour and a half to go between San Francisco and San Jose.

All of Caltrains problems have solutions. These involve smart investments in better service and one of the keys is the Caltrain electrification project. For $2 billion, it would wire the line between San Francisco and San Jose and buy new high-performance electric trains, reducing local travel time by twenty minutes.

And yet, the Republican Party is threatening to cancel the project.

Caltrain is seeking $647 million in federal funds, but the states entire Republican Congressional delegation sent Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao a letterdemanding that she freeze funding until California did a new audit of high-speed rail.

In effect, the Republican delegation wants the Trump administration to hold Caltrain hostage in order to force the state to cancel high-speed rail. Residents of the Bay Area and supporters of good government should be prepared to fight this move.

The Republicans do not have anything against Caltrain electrification. It is not as flashy as California High-Speed Rail, and up until now did not attract much attention from opponents of rail expansion. But it is a necessary step for bringing high-speed rail all the way to San Francisco since high-speed trains must be electric.

As a result, it is threatened with the chopping block. To the states Republican delegation, grandstanding about California High-Speed Rail is more important than solving the regional transportation woes of the Bay Area.

It is not just high-speed rail that requires Caltrain electrification. Two other regionally beneficial investments rely on the project as well.

The first is the Downtown Extension, which would bring trains from their current terminus at 4th and King to Transbay Terminal. Not many people work in Mission Bay near 4th and King; in contrast, based on analysis done by rail activist Clem Tillier, there are more than 100,000 middle- and high-income jobs within a half-mile radius of Transbay Terminal, more than within the same radius of every Caltrain station from 4th and King down to Gilroy, combined. The Downtown Extension tunnel would not be able to accommodate diesel trains because of the fumes.

Second, capacity upgrades require adding tracks. The Caltrain corridor has just two tracks, one in each direction. This means mixing express and local trains requirecarefully timing the schedules so that the fast trains dont get stuck behind the slow ones. Electric trains accelerate much faster than diesel trains, which reduces the speed difference between trains that make all stops and trains that only stop at Baby Bullet stations.

Even then, some infrastructure for timed overtakes is required for additional capacity. High-speed rail includes money for such overtakes, which is useful for Caltrain as well. Electrification reduces the required scope of investment into overtakes.

In addition to capital investment, electrification is necessary for solving Caltrains problem of poor frequency. To run the Baby Bullet express trains, Caltrain had to cut service to the local stations. Several stations have only hourly service even at rush hour, even stations that are close to many suburban homes and jobs and had high ridership until the Baby Bullet came], such as California Avenue.

Because electrification reduces the speed difference between local and express trains, it would permit Caltrain to run frequent rush hour service to these stations, in both directions, for both traditional and reverse commuters.

All of these benefits together add up. Caltrain expects 100,000 passengers per weekday by 2040. If local trains go between San Francisco Transbay Terminal and San Jose in an hour and twenty minutes, and Baby Bullets in fifty, then this ridership level is not hard to reach. Ridership is already growing, and is limited by capacity and by poor service, both of which become easy to solve if Caltrain is electrified.

There is room for making Caltrains modernization project better. Its cost per mile is very high, for technical reasons some of which can be fixed. For example, the masts holding up the catenary wires are spaced more closely than is standard, and this raises the cost of installation. However, the high benefits of the project ensure that even at the current cost, it is worth it. Per rider, the cost is only about $20,000, one of the lowest costs of any rail project in the US today; the cheapest on President Trumps wishlistis about $50,000.

The states Republican delegation is unlikely to be able to stop high-speed rail. Nor is it interested in reforming high-speed rail to be cheaper. The delegations request for an audit rings similar to rail cancellations in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin after the 2010 election brought Tea Party-supported Republican governors to this statecancellations that led the federal government to divert more high-speed rail stimulus money to California. Even with its $3.3 billion in federal funds, California High-Speed Rail is increasingly relying on state money, from the cap-and-trade fund in addition to the Prop 1A ballot money.

Instead, the Republican delegation is going after a rail extension that is much smaller in scope than high-speed rail and has less room for future cost overruns or ridership shortfalls. Its attempt to force the states hand to shrink the role of government is leading to bad government. Instead of fighting off government waste, it is fighting off worthwhile public investments in order to make a political point.

To call your elected representatives in Congress, you may use the following script:

Hi, I am [say your name] from [say where you live]. Im calling to urge you to voice your support of the Caltrain electrification project. It is more cost-effective than any mass transit project that the administration would like to fund, but Californias Republican delegation wants to choke federal funds to it, since it is a necessary component of California High-Speed Rail. Caltrain electrification has many benefits to local commuters who are stuck in traffic, regardless of what happens with high-speed rail, but the state Republicans want to hold it hostage until they get high-speed rail canceled. You owe it to your constituents to do what you can to make sure good public investments like Caltrain electrification get the funding that they need and are not held hostage to grandstanding.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committees phone number is 202-225-9446; the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committees number is 202-224-1251 for the Republican majority and 202-224-0411 for the Democratic minority.

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Congressional Republican threats to Caltrain funding could cripple Bay Area's growth - TechCrunch