JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan, who became the first female senator to represent Missouri after she was appointed to replace her husband following his death, died Tuesday. She was 90.

Carnahan, a Democrat, was appointed to the Senate in 2000 after the posthumous election of her husband, Gov. Mel Carnahan, and she served until November 2002, having lost a special election that month to Republican Jim Talent.

“Mom passed peacefully after a long and rich life. She was a fearless trailblazer. She was brilliant, creative, compassionate and dedicated to her family and her fellow Missourians,” her family said in a statement.

Her family did not specify the cause of death but said Carnahan died after a brief illness.

Carnahan was born Dec. 20, 1933, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the nation’s capital. Her father worked as a plumber and her mother as a hairdresser.

She met Mel Carnahan, the son of a Missouri congressman, at a church event, and they became better acquainted after sitting next to each other at a class in high school, according to information provided by the family. They were married June 12, 1954.

Jean Carnahan graduated a year later from George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in business and public administration, and they later raised four children on a farm near Rolla, Missouri.

She served as first lady of Missouri after her husband’s election as governor in 1992 and through his two terms.

On Oct. 16, 2000, the governor; the couple’s son, Roger (also known as Randy); and an aide, Chris Sifford; died in a plane crash on the way to a campaign event. The governor’s son was flying the twin-engine plane, and a subsequent federal probe found that he became disoriented while trying to fly through rain, darkness and fog.

After Mel Carnahan was elected posthumously three weeks later over incumbent Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, acting Gov. Roger B. Wilson appointed Jean Carnahan to fill the seat left vacant by her husband’s death.

“They were a team,” Wilson said in announcing his intention to appoint her. “There is really no other person that has been near all of the critical issues as much as she has.”

She served from Jan. 3, 2001, to Nov. 25, 2002. In 2002, Carnahan drew 48.7 percent of the vote in the special election to officially fill out the term to Talent’s 49.8.

”Most people get to Washington by winning something,” she was quoted in the New York Times in 2001 about serving in the Senate. ”I, of course, ended up there because I lost something. But I can tell you I’m getting along just fine. People come up to me, strangers even, and give me a big hug and tell me, ‘You can do it.’ And I’ve found I can. And I enjoy it and I’m proud and honored to serve.”

Progressives are frustrated with President Joe Biden for embracing the bipartisan border security deal that’s emerging in the Senate. And they’re starting to rage against it more loudly.

It’s not the only area where the left is fuming at the Biden administration — its handling of the the Israel-Hamas war has sparked public protests by progressive activists for months. Once the border deal sees the light of day, however, liberal anger is likely to boil over.

That’s partly because Senate negotiators have ruled out serious immigration concessions to the left, such as permanent status for Dreamers, a decision that effectively shifts the negotiations toward the GOP. Progressives are also watching Biden tack to the right by swearing he’ll shut down the southern border, using authority that the still unreleased bill is set to give him, if Republicans help pass it.

“The president would just do very well to remember it has never worked for Democrats to just take up Republican talking points and think that somehow Republicans are going to turn around and thank us for it,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Progressive Caucus. “That’s just not going to happen.”

It has the makings of a potential Democratic crackup, if the border proposal that’s now on the rocks in the Senate manages to stay alive. Speaker Mike Johnson is signaling the border deal is “dead on arrival” with his House Republicans, but liberal opposition could prove just as problematic even if Johnson is persuaded to act on it.

Democratic leaders have avoided any criticism that could further endanger the monthslong border talks; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday that his caucus would evaluate it once they could review bill text, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has welcomed the negotiations. But progressives are openly predicting that the entire effort could backfire by further alienating a party base that’s already disillusioned by the war in Gaza.

“It’s bad immigration policy. It’s bad for our economy. It’s not humane. It’s bad for Americans, and then I think it’s bad politics as well. I don’t think that we should be accepting a hostage-taking situation and Trump-light policies as Democrats,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).

The calculus is quite different for Democratic incumbents in battleground states and districts. They have increasingly signaled their willingness to cut a deal that could alleviate a huge electoral vulnerability by showing that the Biden administration can tackle spiking migration.

While the text of Senate negotiators’ proposed policy changes isn’t available yet, people close to the talks have signaled that the final product is likely to expand details’ expulsion authorities, restrict claims for parole and asylum, and set triggers that would close the border altogether if crossings surpass a certain daily threshold.

“You have got to make decisions based on what’s the right thing to do. And we need stronger border security,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), one of the caucus’ two endangered red-state incumbents, said that “we need to give [the president] the tools so he can do what we need to do to keep this country safe.”

In the House, where Democratic leaders are waiting for details of the border deal to firm up further before weighing in, the party’s purple-district incumbents sound much like Tester.

“I hope we get a bipartisan border security bill out of the Senate that gets put on the House floor that I can support,” said Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who said she could “absolutely” support a bipartisan deal.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) praised the emerging package as “a good deal” that would give Biden “the tools he needs to solve the problems that most of the American people are complaining about on our southern border.” If Republicans don’t put it on the House floor, he added, “this will be on them.”

Senate border negotiators still hope to present a deal to members of both parties this week. It would be tacked on to the White House’s national security emergency spending request, which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the southern border. With both chambers and the White House on the line this fall, though, the party is painfully aware that an intraparty squabble with the left could materialize.

Even beyond the Progressive Caucus, key House Democratic voting blocs are riled up about the talks and airing anxiety about what the White House might concede to Republicans. The “Tri-Caucus” of groups representing minority voters is also leery of the Senate’s deal, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus particularly outraged at its exclusion so far from the talks — though some members in Tri-Caucus groups have cracked open the door to supporting it.

“Republicans are just getting what they want on the border, but then we aren’t getting reforms on immigration. And so it doesn’t feel like there’s a give and take here,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Some progressives see a potential border deal between Biden and Republicans as a betrayal of his promises to reverse former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

Others outright argue the border security provisions Republicans have proposed, such as tightening asylum standards, would actually increase migration problems by increasing the number of illegal migrants. That would give further political fodder to the GOP, those Democrats say.

The deal risks resulting in “a lot more people either camped out on the Mexico side of the border or having to rely more on criminal organizations to migrate because we’re trying some ineffective, Republican-like policies,” Casar said.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told POLITICO in a statement that “the American people overwhelmingly agree with what President Biden underlined in his Day One reform plan: that our immigration system is broken and we have an imperative to secure the border and treat migrants with dignity.”

The intraparty tension helps explain why many Democrats are careful to put the onus on Republicans to support the mostly opaque Senate border talks, particularly as Johnson comes close to squashing the entire effort outright. Yet the tight margins in the House mean that while conservative resistance to the border deal may be louder than progressive opposition, both could prove just as perilous to a border deal.

Top Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are offering their own subtle advice to the left: Be prepared to give ground.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), his party’s lead negotiator on the border deal, predicted that “there are certainly going to be some Republicans who vote against this, and there are going to be some Democrats [who] vote against this.”

“I hope to be able to make the case that there are a lot of really important reforms to Democrats … but yes, I think this this was always going to be a true compromise,” he added.

“Obviously, this will be an issue that’s going to be discussed” during the election season, said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “That’s why it’s important for us to come to a bipartisan agreement, and certainly Democrats are willing to do that. But that means both sides gotta give.”

Speaker Mike Johnson‘s plans to get a bipartisan tax deal through the House this week are teetering on the verge of collapse after an unlikely coalition of House Republicans aired last-minute concerns during a private GOP meeting on Tuesday.

According to members who attended the meeting, Republican leaders are staring down a messy litany of complaints from both incumbents in vulnerable districts demanding state and local tax relief and conservative Freedom Caucus members who are intent on bringing border politics into the tax debate.

Then there are the lawmakers with a third type of complaint: anger that Johnson is relying on Democratic votes to pass a major piece of tax legislation in an election year.

“It’s a problem that we continue to do things under suspension of the rules,” said House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Va.), referring to a House maneuver that allows Johnson to pass the tax deal with a two-thirds majority rather than steer it through the conservative-dominated Rules Committee.

“I’m not going to support something that expands the Child Tax Credit, which is expanding the welfare state massively,” Good added. “And I’m not going to support tax credits, Child Tax Credits, going to illegals. I think that’s incentivizing this illegal invasion.”

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), one of several blue-state Republicans adamantly opposed to any tax package that wouldn’t boost the state and local tax deduction, told reporters that party leaders have not yet committed to a floor vote on the deal “in its current form.” And leadership also indicated, according to LaLota, that the deal is still open to potential changes.

The state and local tax changes sought by LaLota and other so-called SALT Caucus Republicans are otherwise unpalatable to a wide swath of the Republican conference.

The grievances from those blue-state incumbents and Freedom Caucus members complicate Johnson’s path to a floor vote. The speaker indicated on Monday that he wants to take up the bipartisan tax package on the floor under the expedited process that suspension of the House rules would afford him.

“I expect that [the vote] will be this week. I expect that it will be in the next couple days,” House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who brokered the deal with Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), said on NBC Tuesday morning.

But Johnson declined to commit to any concrete timing at a press conference later in the morning. One senior House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO that a decision on when a tax vote would occur is truly up in the air.

“There’s no decision, so we’re going to wait and see right now,” the senior Republican said.

Despite the complaints from ultra-right conservatives and Republicans seeking SALT changes, plenty of moderates also praised Smith, who outlined the bill for members at the Tuesday meeting. The tax chief has shepherded the GOP through bipartisan talks that ended with an agreement to restore three popular business tax breaks, including those that would give larger research and development deductions.

“We can’t get anything that we consider perfect through this slim majority that we have and a Democrat-run Senate and a Biden White House, but it’s strong. It brings back the Trump tax cuts,” said Rep. Daniel Meuser (R-Pa.). “It’s very, very important for small business and families.”

“As far as I’m concerned, as a small business owner and chair of the Small Business Committee, we vote on it. Business needs it,” said Small Business Chair Roger Williams (R-Texas).

With Ways and Means Republicans unanimously behind Smith in their support of the tax package — plus nods of approval from both Johnson and powerful members, such as Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) — the bill could still sail through the House with Democratic backing. However, some of LaLota’s allies in the SALT cause have suggested they might oppose their own leaders on unrelated rules for other legislation if they don’t get their way.

With the GOP’s slim majority, two Republicans (or less, in the event of absences) could effectively block a piece of legislation considered under a rule for debate by joining Democrats in voting against that rule.

Such a move would have been unthinkable as recently as last Congress, but conservatives have made it a more standard practice recently.

“I haven’t talked to the SALT caucus people, but I think there’s some merit to possibly raising the SALT limit,” Good said of LaLota’s concerns. “And I would be willing to consider that in exchange for not expanding the Child Tax Credit, not making it eligible for illegals to receive.”

Rep. Mike Garcia, a California representative in the SALT Caucus who would like to see some form of tax relief included in the package, dismissed the notion of tanking unrelated rules to force changes to the tax deal: “I don’t personally like that tactic. I think that’s a tactic of the Freedom Caucus.”

“As a team we should be passing rules, letting things come to the floor for a vote,” Garcia said.

Undocumented immigrants with U.S.-born children have long been able to get the credit, but other members like Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) have joined Good in calling on Republicans to further restrict eligibility.

Even if Johnson can placate his frustrated members, delay of the legislation is bound to make things more complicated for the IRS as it starts receiving tax returns for the 2024 filing season. Wyden had originally wanted to enact the tax package by Monday, which was the beginning of the filing season, but now lawmakers are aiming to pass something in the next few weeks.

The sense of urgency surrounding the tax package has grown particularly acute because low-income families tend to file their returns early. That increases the prospect that the agency itself will have to make changes to those returns so that parents can claim a second refund under an expanded version of the child credit.

Jordain Carney and Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.

Cori Bush ‘fully cooperating’ with DOJ campaign spending investigation

lead image

Dems urge GOP to pass border deal amid Trump’s opposition

lead image