After five main-stage debates of 10 and even 11 candidates, we finally have an effort to cull the Republican presidential field. Here's how Fox Business Network says it's going to winnow its main stage for the Jan. 14 debate in North Charleston, S.C. to six:
Fear not! The kids' table, perhaps the finest innovation of this election cycle, will live on for the remaining candidates. Though it will be much less interesting without U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
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That January debate of GOP presidential candidates will take place only a few miles from Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine worshipers were massacred in June. And in the same town where a police officer now faces murder charges for gunning down a middle-aged black man.
But evidence suggests it’s doubtful that either event will shift current GOP talking points when it comes to firearms. From the Associated Press:
Cruz also criticized a decision by Virginia's Democratic attorney general, Mark Herring, for revoking reciprocity agreements on concealed handgun permits with 25 states.
"There are consequences when you elect Democrats in power," Cruz said at a rally in Nashville. "Because when they get to power they come and try to take your guns."
One man in the crowd shouted: "It's true!"
The Dallas Morning News, on the same campaign bus, offers this tidbit of Cruz' Volunteer State swing:
Cruz made several Tennessee-specific references. Vowing to pull the United States out of the recently agreed Paris climate accord, Cruz invoked Al Gore, the former Tennessee senator and vice president. Satellite records, he insisted, show no global warming in the last 18 years, "an inconvenient truth," as Cruz put it, referring to a movie Gore made to raise awareness about climate change. (Cruz glossed over the myriad other evidence behind the scientific consensus that the climate is changing in dangerous ways due in part to human activity.)
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Republican soothsayer Eric Tanenblatt, arguably Jeb Bush's top guy in Georgia, makes a forceful argument for tacking an anti-discrimination clause onto a proposed "religious liberty" measure in his list of year-end resolutions. Recall that many champions of Senate Bill 129 oppose the addition. From Tanenblatt's piece in the Saporta Report:
Ours is a community dually girded in faith and diversity. And it's this foundation, this Golden Rule of humanity, that compels us each to protect our neighbors — for their faith, the color of their skin, or the person they love. No Georgian should suffer prejudice for who they are, and it's the duty of our Legislature to ease those creeping concerns.
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Bloomberg View's Josh Rogin has a scoop that could very well fit into the Obama administration's softening stance when it comes to the continuing rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A taste:
The former official, Steven Simon, served as the National Security Council senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs from 2011 to 2012. He has not publicly disclosed his trip, but two senior Obama administration officials said he was not acting as a back channel between the two governments. He traveled there as a private citizen and was representing only himself. The officials said he met with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
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Another legislative session brings another push to break Fulton County in two.
North Fulton Republicans will try again to split from some of the region's poorest neighborhoods and form Milton County in the predominantly white, wealthy suburbs that crown Atlanta.
Georgia's constitution specifically limits the number of counties to 159. But H.R. 964 would lift that cap under a set of circumstances that just happens to fit the history of Milton County's absorption by its neighbor to the south in 1932 amid financial collapse. Our colleague Arielle Kass has the details:
If the county is re-created, the legislation says, the boundaries must be "generally similar" but would not have to be identical. The re-creation would have to be approved by voters in the proposed new county.
It's a perennial fight and one that has gained little traction as Republicans took control of the Legislature and state Rep. Jan Jones, a Milton Republican, rose to the top echelon of House leadership.
Democrats remain deeply opposed to a split, and critics often cite concerns about the long-standing contracts that MARTA and Grady Memorial Hospital have with the county. There's also an image issue: Some worry that a secession attempt can harm the area's reputation.
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