Arizona Trump ally Kari Lake to launch U.S. Senate run for Kyrsten Sinema’s seat
PHOENIX — Republi- can Kari Lake, a Donald Trump ally who has refused to acknowledge her loss in last year’s race for Arizona governor, will soon launch her campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by independent Kyrsten Sinema, a senior adviser said Thursday. Lake will enter the race as the front-run- ner for the GOP nomi- nation.
Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, confirmed that she will open her campaign with an Oct. 10 rally. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
A charismatic former television anchor who is well known in the Phoenix mar- ket, Lake built an enthusias- tic following among Repub- licans with her unflinch- ing support for Trump and her steadfast promotion of claims of election fraud.
Lake’s star power stretches far beyond Arizona. Lake is seen as a potential running mate for Trump, who is lead- ing polls for the Republican presidential nomination.
The Arizona race is a top target for Republicans look- ing to regain the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 edge that includes Sinema, who left the Dem- ocratic Party in 2022 but still receives her commit- tees assignments from Dem- ocrats. The 2024 Senate map heavily favors the GOP, with Democratic-held seats up for grabs in three states that Trump won in 2020.
Courts have repeatedly rejected Lake’s lawsuits challenging last year’s election results. The litigation has juiced Lake’s fundraising but not advanced her claim to be the “duly elected governor” Arizona, rather than Democrat Katie Hobbs.
Lake joins Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the Republican Senate primary. Several other Republicans have considered running but have stayed out of the race while Lake considered her plans. They include Blake Masters, Jim Lamon and Karrin Taylor Robson, all businesspeople who lost 2022 races for Senate or governor.
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran and one of the most prominent Latino officials in Arizona, is the only major Democrat in the race.
Sinema is raising money for a potential reelection campaign and is stepping up her public appearances in Arizona, but she has said she’s in no hurry to decide whether to seek a second term in the Senate. Her party switch came after she had infuriated many Democrats who saw her as too close to business interests and an impediment to progressive change.
Lake’s presence in the race could help Sinema if she chooses to mount an independent campaign for reelection. Lake alienated many establishment Republicans during her campaign for governor, even telling “Mccain Republicans” to “get the hell out” of a campaign event, describing the late Arizona Sen. John Mccain a “loser.”
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy grew at a 2.1% annual pace from April through June, extending its sturdy performance in the face of higher interest rates, the government said Thursday, leaving its previous estimate unchanged.
The second-quarter expansion of the nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — marked a modest deceleration from the economy’s 2.2% annual growth from January through March.
Consumer spending, business investment and state and local government outlays drove the second-quarter economic expansion.
The economy and job market have shown surprising resilience even as the Federal Reserve has dramatically raised interest rates to combat inflation, which last year hit a four-decade high. The Fed has raised its benchmark rate 11 times since March 2022, sparking concerns that ever-higher borrowing rates will trigger a recession.
So far, though, inflation has eased without causing much economic pain, raising hopes that the central bank can pull off a so-called soft landing — slowing the economy enough to conquer high inflation without causing a painful recession.
Still, those higher rates have taken a toll. Consumer spending, for example, rose at an annual rate of just 0.8% from April through June, down sharply from the government’s previous estimate of 1.7% and the weakest such figure since the first quarter of 2022.
But business investment excluding housing, a closely watched barometer, rose at a 7.4% annual pace, the fastest rate in more than a year. And state and local government spending and investment jumped 4.7%, the biggest such quarterly gain since 2019.
Thursday’s report was the government’s third and final estimate of economic expansion in the April-june quarter.
Growth is believed to be accelerating in the current July-september quarter, fueled in part by many still-free-spending consumers. Americans, for example, flocked to theaters for the hit summer movies “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” and splurged on Taylor Swift and Beyonce tickets. Business investment is also thought to have remained solid.
Economists have estimated that the economy expanded at a roughly 3.2% annual rate in the third quarter, which would be the fastest quarterly growth in a year. Even more optimistic estimates have projected that growth from July through September exceeded a 4% annual rate, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Even so, the acceleration in growth isn’t likely to endure. The economy is expected to weaken in the final three months of the year. Hiring and income growth are slowing. And economists think the savings that many Americans amassed during the pandemic from federal stimulus checks will have evaporated by next quarter.
Traffic fatalities dropped 3.3% in the first half of the year compared with the prior-year period, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The agency said Thursday that an estimated 19,515 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the first half of 2023. There were 20,190 fatalities in the first half of 2022.
Fatalities fell in the first and second quarters of 2023. That marks five straight quarter the figure has declined.
The NHTSA estimates a there was a drop in fatalities in 29 states, while 21 states,
Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, are projected to have experienced increases.
“While we are encouraged to see traffic fatalities continue to decline from the height of the pandemic, there’s still significantly more work to be done,” NHTSA Acting Administrator Ann Carlson said. “NHTSA is addressing traffic safety in many ways, including new rulemakings for lifesaving vehicle technologies and increased Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for state highway safety offices. We will continue to work with our safety partners to meet the collective goal of zero fatalities.”
Last year, there were 42,795 people killed on U.S. roadways, which government officials described as a national crisis.
Earlier this year, nearly 50 businesses and nonprofits — including rideshare companies Uber and Lyft, industrial giant 3M and automaker Honda — pledged millions of dollars to stem road fatalities.
The Biden administration in 2022 steered $5 billion in federal aid to cities and localities to address road fatalities by slowing down cars, carving out bike paths and wider sidewalks and nudging commuters to public transit.