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Following Kentuckys primaries last month, Charles Booker will run for the Democratic Party against the incumbent Republican senator, Rand Paul. Despite Bookers strong campaigning and given the likely Republican leaning national environment this year, Anne M. Cizmar argues that he and other Democrats are unlikely to fare well in the Bluegrass State in this years midterm elections.

As it stands today, Democrats are expected to face heavy losses in the 2022 midterm elections. The state of Kentucky is no exception to this prediction. While much attention is focused on Kentuckys US Senate race between incumbent Rand Paul and challenger Charles Booker, the Republicans are likely to win this race along with five of the six US House of Representatives seats also up for election.

Kentucky Senate races have garnered attention from across the globe in recent years. The races are high profile because Democrats would like to unseat Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, and Kentuckys junior senator, Rand Paul. Based on his voting record, Rand Paul, facing re-election in November 2022, is regarded as one of the most conservative senators. He also is no stranger to using the filibuster to block Senate action on legislation or appointment confirmations. He has a high profile, even outside of the state.

Democrats have fielded a strong challenger against Paul. In the primary election on May 17, 2022, Democrats overwhelmingly supported Charles Booker to be Pauls Democratic challenger in the fall. Booker received 73 percent of the vote, easily beating three other candidates.

Booker is what political scientists refer to as a quality challenger because he has held previous elected office. He has served in the Kentucky House of Representatives since 2018 and shown he knows how to win an election. He is also making headlines already with his campaign. In a recent campaign ad, Charles Booker, who is the first Black Kentuckian to win the Democratic Party nomination for US Senate, directly addresses Pauls record on antilynching legislation. The ad has already garnered considerable media attention.

Pauls campaign responded to the ad pointing out the incumbent senators support of a bipartisan antilynching bill and working to clarify other past controversies about comments Paul made related to the Civil Rights Act and equating universal health care to slavery. Both campaigns have been responding to comments about the ad.

Bookers campaign emphasizes a New Deal frame as well, harkening back to a time when the Democratic Party was popular in Appalachia. He is attempting to tap into the old New Deal Democrat coalition that saw Democratic victories based on economic issues in what are now Republican areas. His message specifically targets generational poverty, an issue that can resonate in Kentucky as one of the states with the highest poverty percentage in the nation.

One additional boost to Bookers campaign is that he will not have to contend with Donald Trump on the ballot. The last time Paul was up for re-election in 2016, Trump was elected and garnered more than 62 percent of the vote in the Bluegrass state. Trump mobilized Republican voters in Kentucky, but he is not on the ballot this time. So far, the state has also not received campaign attention from Trump in this election cycle.

Still, incumbents are overwhelmingly favored to win in US congressional elections in general, and Kentucky in particular is a Republican-leaning state. This points to a likely victory for Paul in November.

The fundamentals of this race are against Democrats. Based on the current political climatethe uncertainty over the war in Ukraine, high inflation, high gas prices, continued supply chain issues, shortages on key products like baby formula, and moreDemocrats are looking at a rough 2022 midterm election cycle.

Democrats nationwide may see a boost in midterm support if the leaked Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is verified in the final court decision. The leaked decision, which would permit states to go forward with strict anti-abortion laws, has generated a good deal of Democratic activism. This may help candidates in some states. However, Kentucky is one of the most pro-life states in the US and even this issue may not help Democratic candidates in Kentucky.

The same trends also apply to gun controlanother issue that has again come to the forefront in the US after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Voters are divided on gun control attitudes by partisan leanings. In deeply red states, it is likely to be inconsequential to the election outcome.

Based on these fundamentals, five of six House seats in Kentucky will also stay with the Republican Party. Incumbents James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Thomas Massie, Hal Rogers, and Andy Barr are all on track to be easily re-elected to their seats. In the last midterm elections in 2018, every Kentucky US House incumbent was re-elected with at least 62 percent of the vote or more except one. There are no reasons to expect this trend will change.

The only district that was competitive in the last midterm electionsthe 6th district with incumbent Andy Barrhas a Democratic candidate on the ballot this time that is not supported by the Kentucky Democratic Party due to his past history of lawsuits and his policy stances. This means Barr should easily win re-election this time.

Yarmuth, the lone Democrat in Kentuckys congressional delegation, is not seeking re-election to the 3rd district. Democrats are favored to win this open seat race based on the partisan leanings of the district.

Democrats face an uphill battle in the 2022 midterm elections, particularly in the commonwealth of Kentucky. Still, Booker is a formidable and strong challenger in the states US Senate election and is already making headlines. This will be a race to watch in November for clues to how both parties are evolving to political changes from Trump and COVID-19.

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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.

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Anne Cizmar Eastern Kentucky UniversityAnne Cizmar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Eastern Kentucky University. Her teaching and research interests include the presidency, American political behavior, and campaigns and elections. Her work appears in Political Research Quarterly and Public Administration Quarterly, among other outlets.

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The 2022 Midterms: Kentucky is shaping up to be one of the Democrats' most uphill electoral battles this November - London School of Economics

The Senate bill passed on Tuesday would expand health care coverage for more than 3.5 million veterans.

The Democratic-controlled Senate on Tuesday advanced a bill aimed at providing adequate medical care for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during their service. But 12 Senate Republicans voted against even considering this bipartisan proposal.

By an 86-12 margin, the Senate voted for cloture on a motion to begin consideration of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022 well more than the required 60-vote supermajority.

According to Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Jon Tester and Ranking Member Jerry Moran, the bill will expand the Department of Veterans Affairs health care eligibility to combat veterans who served after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including more than 3.5 million veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals during their service. The bill will also expand research on toxic exposure and expand coverage for those exposed to Agent Orange and burn pits.

"In addition to providing historic relief to all generations of toxic-exposed veterans, this legislation will improve claims processing to meet the immediate and future needs of every veteran it serves," wrote Tester (D-MT) and Moran (R-KS) after they reached an agreement on a Senate version of the bill on May 18. "Together, we will continue working until Congress delivers on its commitment to passing long-lasting solutions and comprehensive reforms for those who served our country."

Despite the Senate's broad bipartisan support for the bill, 12 Republicans voted against advancing it: Sens. Richard Burr (NC), Bill Cassidy (LA), John Kennedy (LA), James Lankford (OK), Mike Lee (UT), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Rand Paul (KY), Mitt Romney (UT), Dan Sullivan (AK), Thom Tillis (NC), Pat Toomey (PA), and Todd Young (IN).

None of the 12 senators immediately gave a reason for why they voted against the bill either on the Senate floor or on Twitter.

The issue has been a top priority for President Joe Biden and his administration.

In his March State of the Union address, Biden noted that his own son's fatal cancer might have been caused by toxic exposure during his service in Iraq.

"When they came home, many of the world's fittest and best-trained warriors were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin," he said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. "I know. One of those soldiers was my son, Major Beau Biden. We don't know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer or the diseases of so many of our troops. But Im committed to finding out everything we can."

In April, the Biden administration announced administrative steps to allow those exposed to burn pit chemicals during their military service to get disability benefits if they contracted respiratory cancers.

The White House has also pushed Congress to enact broader legislation. In May, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Senate bill "will not only help deliver more timely access to benefits and services for veterans and their survivors, it will also ensure that the Department of Veterans Affairs can act more nimbly to add future presumptive conditions when the evidence warrants."

A similar bill passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in March, 256-174. Though 34 Republicans backed that bill along with every single Democratic representative the vast majority of the GOP caucus voted no and argued that that $281.5 billion package was too expensive.

The Senate is now likely to approve its version of the bill and send it back to the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already endorsed the Senate package as "an important victory for Americas veterans, their families and caregivers, and indeed for all of America," and promised to immediately move it through the House and to Biden's desk.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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12 GOP senators oppose bill to expand health care to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits - The American Independent

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on Sunday that a recession is likely within the next two years.

The former Obama administration official's prediction comes on the heels of an unexpected jump in the inflation rate announced on Friday. Summers's statement stands in contrast to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's claim last week that a recession is not in the works.

WHITE HOUSE TALKS UP 'HISTORIC' ECONOMY AS INFLATION-WEARY VOTERS DOUBT BIDEN

I think theres certainly a risk of recession in the next year, Summers said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. I think given where weve gotten to, its more likely than not that well have a recession within the next two years.

Summers, who served as treasury secretary under former President Bill Clintonand as director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama, has been outspoken in warning that President Joe Biden's economic policies are damaging the country.

In March 2021, Summers blasted Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as the least responsible macroeconomic policy weve had in the last 40 years and warned that it would set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation."

Inflation soared to 8.6% for the 12 months ending in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed on Friday, despite the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes.

There are concerns that the Feds aggressive interest rate hikes, in an effort to stave off inflation, could plunge the economy into a recession.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) predicted last week that the Fed would continue to raise interest rates until they reach the level of inflation.

I think the Federal Reserve is going to keep putting [interest rates] up a half a point every time they meet. I think that happens probably every four to six weeks until they reach the inflation rate," Paul said last week. "And inflation rate is 8.5%, and we're closer to the Fed funds rate being around 3% or so."

I think that that's in our future, but I think a recession and high unemployment is, too, and that's the way inflation gets cured," Paul added.

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Yellen, however, dismissed talk of a recession last week, saying, Dont look to me to announce it, while insisting that the fundamentals of the economy are strong as inflation rages.

Im not going to announce it. I dont think were going to have a recession, she said. Consumer spending is very strong. Investment spending is solid. I expect growth to slow down. We have a very strong economy. I know people are very upset, and rightfully so, about inflation. But theres nothing to suggest inflation if a recession is in the works.

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Summers: US recession likely within two years - Washington Examiner

WASHINGTON, D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will highlight Republican efforts to overturn the District of Columbias gun violence prevention laws at tomorrows Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on the nations gun violence epidemic. Without statehood, a future Republican Congress could overturn D.C.s gun violence prevention laws. In previous Congresses, Republicans have introduced legislation to eliminate D.C.s gun violence prevention laws, including its ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and its universal background checks.

With the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, I am grateful that Chairwoman Maloney is holding tomorrows extremely timely hearing, Norton said. The District of Columbia has worked to protect its citizens by enacting common-sense gun violence prevention laws, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. I am mindful that a future Republican Congress could overturn the laws of the duly elected D.C. Council and will highlight that possibility in tomorrows hearing. While I have defeated each effort in Congress to overturn D.C.s gun violence prevention laws, the ultimate remedy for congressional interference in local D.C. matters is statehood for D.C.

The following current Republican Members of Congress have introduced bills or amendments during their tenures to overturn D.C. gun violence prevention laws: Senator Rand Paul (KY), Senator Marco Rubio (FL), Senator Joni Ernst (IA), Representative Jim Jordan (OH), Representative Thomas Massie (KY), Representative Louie Gohmert (TX), and Representative David Schweikert (AZ).

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Norton to Highlight Republican Efforts to Overturn D.C. Gun Violence Prevention Laws at Hearing, Wednesday - House.gov

Anyone who has ever watched an old episode of The Untouchables or the Coen Brothers Millers Crossing (highly recommended) is no doubt familiar with the Thompson submachine gun, popularly known as the Tommy gun, a weapon favored during its heyday by the likes of Al Capone, John Dillinger and George Kelly Barnes, whose penchant for the device earned him the tantalizing sobriquet Machine Gun Kelly.

The Tommy gun was a particularly vicious piece of work, capable of ripping off 700 to 800 rounds per minute. The so-called Chicago Typewriter (gotta love that) was invented in 1918 for military use but adopted by various gangsters during the Prohibition Era for their own nefarious purposes, mowing down anyone including innocents within range.

Authorities eventually came to the conclusion that the weapons role in the ever-expanding number of dead bodies and buckets of blood rendered it hardly worth preserving. So, in 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act, which, among other things, required those possessing a Tommy gun to register it with the Treasury Department, be fingerprinted, pay a heavy tax $200, which today would come to about $4,000 and be listed on a national registry. Violating the act could result in up to 10 years in federal prison and forfeiture of all devices or firearms found in violation.

Lo and behold, miracle of miracles, sales of machine guns plummeted and the violence declined. According to The Washington Post, By 1937, federal officials reported that the sale of machine guns in the United States had practically ceased. In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law didnt violate the Constitution.

While thousands of Tommy guns remained in circulation, anyone caught violating the provisions of the National Firearms Act could have the weapons confiscated and charged with tax evasion.

It is a good example of something that is little known, which is a gun control law that was pretty effective in keeping such weapons out of civilian hands, said Dr. Robert Spitzer a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland, during an interview with National Public Radio in 2013.

Congress took matters a step further in 1986 when it considered the Firearms Owners Protection Act, a measure that made it illegal for civilians to buy or sell any machine gun. The bill passed and was signed by the patron saint of conservative Republicans, President Ronald Reagan.

For good measure, it carried the support of now get this the National Rifle Association.

Now lets move forward a bit. By the 1990s the nation faced another plague of gun violence, this one brought on by the narcotics trade, just as the violence during the Roaring 20s was brought on by bootlegging. In 1994, President Bill Clinton championed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a subsection of which banned the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms popularly known as assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines.

This time the NRA opposed what amounts to a gun safety measure. Regardless, it passed, albeit with a sunset provision that voided the law after 10 years. It passed, survived constitutional challenges in the courts, and, naturally, gun violence once again ebbed. A study that appeared in the January 2019 edition of The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, looking at data from 1981 to 2017, determined that mass-shooting fatalities were 70 percent less likely to occur during the period when the 10-year ban was in effect.

The semi-automatic weapons ban, along with the ban on large ammunition magazines, failed to survive after the 10-year period as a result of Republican opposition, and the country continues to pay the high price. Last month, for instance, Salvador Ramos, 18, entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, armed with an AR-15 style rifle in other words, an assault weapon proceeded to gun down 19 fourth graders and two teachers before members of a member of the U.S. Border Patrol tactical unit gained entry and killed the shooter.

For those keeping score at home, it was the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind the 2007 Virginia Tech University massacre that left 32 dead and 17 wounded and the 2012 annihilation at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which resulted in 26 deaths, most of them babies, aged six and seven.

Imagine the horror.

So, given the facts, it would seem logical to revive the ban on semi-automatic weapons, which really are only good for killing fellow human beings, especially with the development of the bump stock, which basically converts them into machine guns, before were once again left aghast by another Robb Elementary School.

Good luck with that.

Lets ask our old pal, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green.

I dont think banning whole types of weapons is consistent with the Constitution, Paul said during an interview with WBKO-TV in Bowling Green. I also dont think banning how much ammunition you can put into your gun at a time is something thats consistent with the principles of self-defense or the Constitution.

Nothing uttered by Paul of course, was consistent with the principles of protecting our children from being decapitated as a result of ending up on the wrong end of a fusillade of bullets. Nothing he said was consistent with the principles of protecting one young survivor from having to smear herself in a dead classmates blood to convince the shooter that she, too, was dead. And there was nothing consistent with the principle of saving devastated families from having to provide a DNA sample so their mutilated child could be properly identified.

Nope, its all about some phony baloney constitutional principle that has been rejected both in regard to the Tommy gun and assault weapons by the courts in the past. Maintaining killing machines like the AR-15 so ranchers out west can shoot prairie dogs.

Sorry, folks, but that is some sick, bloody thinking.

Then theres the old reliable, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, the pride of the 4th Congressional District, who refers to some House proposals to address the semi-automatic weapons ban as gun-grabbing legislation, maintaining during a recent floor speech that efforts to address mass shootings are unserious, unconstitutional and, most troubling, dangerous provisions.

Massies sophistry is that everyone should pack because criminals dont follow the law, a dead-end argument that fails to deal with why the nation has laws in the first place because failure to comply carries consequences. And he maintains that school children are sitting ducks, essentially because teachers cant keep guns in their desks, which would, of course, potentially open up a whole, new can of worms.

Does hardening our schools work? Massie asked. Does letting trained teachers and professional staff carry, does it protect children? We know it does because in every single school district, every school that has allowed them to carry there hasnt just been no mass shootings, there hasnt been a single shooting.

There have been any number of schools that havent been converted into a scholastic variation of Eddyville State Penitentiary that, likewise, havent experienced a fatal attack. And he fails to note that armed police were on the scene within four minutes, according to reports, before the annihilation began, and did nothing for more than an hour.

At one point about 150 officers were on the scene and sat idly by. The school had a security force but, inexplicably, a resource officer was not on campus at the time, according to reports. There has been no further explanation.

The unspeakable Uvalde tragedy gives the lie to claims that only good guys with guns defeat bad guys with guns the good guys were on the scene and did nothing. It is the wide distribution of these killing machines more than any other place on Gods earth that are killing off our children one by one and folks like Paul and Massie are so bling they cannot see.

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Bill Straub: Despite tired 'guns-don't-kill' and 'good-guys-with-guns' narratives, guns remain the problem - User-generated content