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The Slatest Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings on Aug. 7 in Washington.
Win McNamee/Getty Images Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland died early Thursday due to complications stemming from longtime health issues, the Democratic leader’s office announced.* He was 68. Cummings, who has played a high-profile role in a myriad of investigations into President Donald Trump as the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, underwent a medical procedure last month but had not yet returned to his office this week when the House was back in session. “A sharecropper’s son, Cummings became the powerful chairman of a U.S. House committee that investigated President Donald Trump, and was a formidable orator who passionately advocated for the poor in his black-majority district, which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore as well as more well-to-do suburbs,” the Associated Press notes. “Cummings’ long career spanned decades in Maryland politics. He rose through the ranks of the Maryland House of Delegates before winning his congressional seat in a special election in 1996 to replace former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who left the seat to lead the NAACP.” Cummings, whose district includes parts of Baltimore and Howard counties, was a frequent recipient of Trump’s tirades, as he had played a prominent role in the impeachment inquiry and other investigations into the administration. Correction, Oct. 17, 2019: This post originally misstated when Cummings died. It was Thursday, not Tuesday. | 0 |
Story highlightsDana Bash: Keep your eye on Senate drama; can GOP regain control?Gloria Borger: How the white vs. nonwhite vote goes could be criticalCandy Crowley: It's all about the suburbs -- and one special county in OhioPeter Hamby: Pasco County will shed light on how the Sunshine State will goA long and bitter presidential election comes to a close Tuesday when Americans choose between a second term for President Barack Obama and a new direction with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.CNN's reporters, correspondents, analysts and anchors share what they'll be watching for that might tip off how the election will go:Acosta: Romney's make-or-break stateIt's been called Obama's election "firewall." But truth be told, it's looking more and more like Romney's make-or-break state.Consider the day's agenda. Late Monday, the Romney campaign revealed the GOP nominee and running mate Paul Ryan will make public appearances in Cleveland on Election Day in one last push for undecided voters. No other state can make the same claim.What other state can boast an event in which the Romney campaign plane pulled into an aircraft hangar before thousands of cheering supporters? That bit of grandiose stage crafting was pulled off by the Romney campaign in Columbus on Monday night. Despite the campaign's confidence in winning Ohio, a Republican source close to Romney's operation in the state said the result there will be "close, very close."It might come down to Romney's opposition to the U.S. auto bailout. His "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed in The New York Times in 2008 (a headline he did not write) may prove to be his downfall in Ohio, where one in eight jobs are tied to the auto industry. Who would have thought a newspaper column, not Romney's business career nor his record as governor of Massachusetts, would have the potential of denying him the White House?Romney tried to mitigate the impact of the auto issue by making a discredited claim at an event in Ohio that Chrysler was considering moving all of its Jeep production to China. His campaign then continued to tell that story, in various renditions, in ads in the state to stinging reviews from the state's newspapers.Bash: Unexpected GOP struggles in SenateThe neck-and-neck presidential race might be dominating headlines, but there are a lot of rich dramas playing out across the country in the battle for control of the Senate.Heading into Election Day, there are nearly a dozen true toss-up races that could go either way.Republicans hold 47 seats. To retake control of the Senate, the GOP needs a net gain of four. With 23 Democratic seats up for grabs in a terrible economy, it seemed like a no-brainer that Republicans would be able to flip four. But it's now a struggle for the GOP.The central reason is that Republicans are defending several unexpected races on their own turf. Indiana's Senate race is going to be one of the evening's early bellwethers to determine the balance of power in the Senate. GOP candidate Richard Mourdock's poll numbers plummeted in this red state after he awkwardly said a few weeks ago that pregnancy from rape is a gift from God. Polls close at 7 p.m. ET, and if Democrat Joe Donnelly wins, it will set Republicans back -- especially since the GOP already expects to lose the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe in Maine. The state's popular former governor, independent candidate Angus King, is on track to win there.Here are three other nail-biters I'll be watching:Virginia: With more than $80 million spent so far, it's the most expensive Senate race in the country. Former GOP Sen. George Allen is trying to get his seat back after a narrow defeat six years ago. The man who beat him, Jim Webb, is retiring, and former Gov. and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine hopes to keep the seat in Democratic hands.Montana: Neither Republicans nor Democrats will even privately predict which way this one will go. Incumbent Democrat Jon Tester is trying to hold on for a second term in this red state. GOP challenger Rep. Denny Rehberg started out the race about 1% ahead in the polls. Now, $50 million later, they're in the exact same place -- a 1% differential between them.Massachusetts: Going into Election Day, Republican strategists were pessimistic about holding onto this red seat in the traditionally blue state. GOP Sen. Scott Brown had fallen behind his well-funded Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren -- a liberal icon who was the president's former consumer advocate. Brown's win in the race to fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat stunned the political world, and he insists he'll surprise everyone again. But the president is expected to take Massachusetts by double digits -- and with him at the top of the ticket, it may be hard for Brown to beat back a Warren win.Borger: How will the white vs. nonwhite vote splitOne important indicator I will be looking at Election Night is the question of ethnicity -- and how the white vs. the nonwhite population splits. In the 2008 election, 74% of the electorate was white. That percentage has declined recently because of the growth in the Hispanic and voting African-American population.Given the ongoing Republican trouble with Hispanic voters and the assumption that African-Americans will, once again, vote overwhelmingly for the president, Romney needs a strong white turnout to help propel him to victory.In an analysis by Republican pollster Bill McInturff, the question of the white/nonwhite divide is called the most "critical" of the election. His analysis shows that if the white percentage of the electorate drops to 72%, Obama will probably win the election.One key to watch is how the white vote itself splits between Obama and Romney. In the latest national poll CNN/ORC International, taken from Friday to Sunday, Obama received 40% of the white vote, while Romney got 57%. In 2008, Obama received 43% of the white vote, which means he is polling less than that currently.Crowley: Virginia suburbs and I-4 corridor The first thing I'll watch is the exit polls to see who's voting and where -- in particular, heavy Latino turnout in Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Florida could indicate Obama wins those states.Then, it's Virginia, Florida and Ohio.I'll watch the Virginia suburbs of Washington, particularly the female vote. Romney won't win here, but he has to hold down Obama's numbers while running up his own score in the rural area. Romney has to win Virginia.Florida is all about the Interstate 4 corridor. North of it votes Republican, south of it Democratic. The I-4 corridor decides.Everyone will tell you to watch Lake, Stark and Hamilton counties in Ohio. There are good reasons to watch all of them, reasons no doubt delineated by my colleagues. But for me, it's all about Ottawa County, which has correctly picked the presidential winner in Ohio since 1944. That's a better record than pollsters. I'll watch Ottawa.Hamby: How goes Pasco? Polls begin to close in Florida at 7 p.m. ET, and a handful of counties will report their absentee and early vote tallies immediately.Once that happens, political pros in Florida will be anxiously refreshing election board websites in a handful of those counties -- Pinellas, Duval, Orange -- in search of early clues about which way the state is trending.One of them is Pasco County, outside Tampa. Officials there are diligent about posting returns as quickly as possible. The county has a slight Republican tilt, but Obama won the early and absentee vote there in 2008 despite losing the county on Election Night. For Democrats, it was a promising sign that Obama was well on his way to being competitive statewide, even in GOP-leaning areas.In 2004, George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the Pasco early/absentee vote by eight points. Bush ended up winning the county by 10 points. In a shift four years later, Obama beat John McCain by five points in the early absentee vote. He ultimately lost the county -- but only by 3.5 points, thanks to the votes the campaign banked early.If Obama is losing Pasco by more than that Bush/Kerry margin by the time the first returns are posted, it could be a tough night for Obama in Florida."If you are looking for good news for Romney out of Pasco, if they have a 10- to 12-point lead in the absentee and early vote, that probably portends that they are going to have a really good night in suburban counties," said one top Florida Democrat.King: The suburban vote and who votes in the swing statesA narrow and then a more global point:• Watch the vote in the suburbs around Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, and in northern Virginia. These are two early-closing states; if Romney is holding his own in the suburbs, we have a competitive night. If not, it could be effectively over before we get to the Central Time zone.• Who votes determines who wins: The composition of the electorate in the swing states is the first and best clue. Does the electorate look like 2008? If so, then Obama is likely on a path to victory. But if the percentage of African-American, Latino and younger voters is down just a bit -- and the electorate looks, say, more like the 2004 presidential election -- then Romney has a shot. Preston: What happens afterward?It goes without saying that we are all looking at turnout in the key battleground states -- can Romney and Obama get their respective bases to show up at the polls and at the same time, convincing the independent voters to vote for them?What is piquing my interest is not only what happens in the next few hours but what will be the political climate for the next president-elect. Washington is already polarized, and there are great challenges facing Congress before the end of the year.Whoever wins the presidency and the parties that control the House and the Senate need to put the bitterness of this election behind them and work together.The big question: Can they do that?Steinhauser: Can Romney broaden the electoral map?This election will be won or lost in the battleground states. Or will it?Romney's presidential campaign is making a last-minute push in two states that should be safe for Obama: Pennsylvania and Minnesota.Romney campaigned in Pennsylvania on Sunday and goes back to the Keystone State on Election Day. Running mate Ryan campaigned in Pennsylvania on Saturday and in Minnesota on Sunday, and the campaign's up with ads in both states.Is this a head fake by the Romney campaign, or does it see the tightening public opinion polls in both states as evidence it might be able to turn Pennsylvania and Minnesota from blue to red?The Romney campaign says it's playing offense. The Obama campaign says the move is a sign of desperation by the Romney camp. We'll find out who's right on Election Night.Yellin: Will voters send a clear message? Have you heard? The early voter was this year's soccer mom -- the must-have vote both sides fought over.Obama appears to have won most of the early vote but not at the same margins as 2008, leaving Team Romney a window it says it can pry open. Now it's about who turns out: Will the president recreate the same coalition as he did in 2008? This is a euphemism for how white the voters will be on Election Day. If enough Latinos and African-Americans vote, Obama gets a second term. If they don't, it's President Romney.I'm not a fan of reading tea leaves to guess where this will end. Can't we wait till the votes are counted?I'll be watching for what voters are saying at the ballot box. I know -- so old-fashioned. Will whoever becomes president have a mandate? And to do what?In 2008, it was pretty clear that Americans wanted change -- a change from the Bush years. In 2010 -- the tea party midterms -- they wanted less spending, smaller government.It's not clear what the mandate might be after this campaign. Do Americans want the government to do more or less to help with tough economic times? The next president will confront tax reform and deficit reduction and changes to our health care system. These are huge issues that could prompt more gridlock in Washington -- unless there's a clear message from voters.Do voters want compromise in Washington? If so, when it gets right down to it, are they willing to compromise on the issues that matter most to them -- debt or taxes or reforming Medicare? There's the rub. | 0 |
The White House is done trying to negotiate on infrastructure with a group of Republicans after weeks of talks between President Joe Biden’s administration and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) came to an unceremonious end Tuesday.The administration is now turning its attention toward a broader bipartisan group of 20 senators, which includes Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), as they continue to seek at least some GOP support for an infrastructure package.The administration also said it was working with Democratic leaders in Congress to ensure passage of an infrastructure package this summer, aiming to alleviate anger from progressives eager for the White House to give up hope on reaching a deal with the GOP. Biden had a call with Capito Tuesday, after meeting with the lead Republican negotiator on infrastructure in the White House last week — a conversation that Capito said was the end of talks between the two parties.“I spoke with the president this afternoon, and he ended our infrastructure negotiations,” Capito said.Republicans had offered a plan half the size of what the White House has proposed on infrastructure, one that included far less in new federal spending on infrastructure projects. It also did not address key priorities sought by Democrats on climate, housing and elder care.White House officials said Biden had been willing to cut more than $1 trillion in spending from his original proposal, while Republicans had only offered $150 billion in new spending since the start of negotiations.Biden “informed Senator Capito today that the latest offer from her group did not, in his view, meet the essential needs of our country to restore our roads and bridges, prepare us for our clean energy future, and create jobs,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. In the end, Republicans refused to engage on major tax provisions — like an increased corporate tax rate — that the Biden administration initially wanted to see in the bill. Biden, meanwhile, made a major concession: offering to leave the current, historically low corporate tax rate intact in exchange for a minimum corporate tax rate. Community members gather outside of Senator Shelley Moore Capito's office as West Virginians in Charleston call for an investment in care, climate, and families on June 3.Emilee Chinn via Getty ImagesThe White House is now shifting gears to negotiations with a bipartisan group of senators who are working an alternative compromise on infrastructure. But that group, which is meeting on Tuesday, is said to be discussing an even smaller proposal that excludes the same kind of Democratic priorities Biden was pushing for in his talks with Capito. The group of 20 senators also worked, but ultimately failed to reach a compromise, on coronavirus relief late last year. The administration did emphasize it is preparing for Democrat-only infrastructure legislation, which has always been the most likely outcome. Biden spoke with both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday, saying they were coordinating to pass legislation in the House this month and move it to the Senate floor in July. “The president is committed to moving his economic legislation through Congress this summer,” Psaki reiterated in a statement. Schumer told reporters on Tuesday that Democrats were proceeding with both tracks.“It may well be that part of the bill that will pass will be bipartisan and part of it might be reconciliation, but we’re not going to sacrifice the bigness and boldness in this bill. We will just pursue two paths and, at some point, they will join,” Schumer said.Already, progressive lawmakers in Congress are getting impatient with the bipartisan talks. On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told reporters she believes the Senate should go ahead with a budget reconciliation package, which would allow Democrats to pass an infrastructure bill on party lines. “So far, we’ve got nothing,” Warren said, of what has come out of bipartisan talks.Several Democrats also voiced concerns after being briefed on the bipartisan negotiations in a caucus lunch on Tuesday, warning that continued dealing with Republicans would needlessly narrow the size of an infrastructure package.Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) also tweeted Monday that he’s “very anxious” climate legislation will be completely left out of the negotiations, saying he senses “trouble.”“Climate has fallen out of the infrastructure discussion, as it took its bipartisanship detour. It may not return,” Whitehouse wrote. “Don’t see the preparatory work for a close Senate climate vote taking place in the administration. Why not marshal business support?” | 0 |
February’s meager gain follows other signs of economic sluggishness. But there were encouraging signs in the data as well.March 8, 2019The economy’s remarkably steady job-creation machine sputtered in February and produced a mere 20,000 jobs. It was the smallest gain in well over a year and came on top of other signs that the economy was off to a sluggish start in 2019. For months, the labor market could be counted on for an upbeat counterpoint to negative developments, including a fragile global economy weighed down by trade tensions. In the United States, growth for the first quarter is expected to dance around the 1 percent bar, as the shot of adrenaline delivered by last year’s tax cuts fades. Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, said Friday’s news from the Labor Department was worrisome. “This is a disappointing report,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat it.”But the longer-term trend is what matters, and there were competing interpretations of whether the report was a troubling omen or a fluke.Beyond the month’s payroll figure, the report offered some unambiguously good news, including 3.4 percent year-over-year wage growth, the strongest in a decade. Revisions to previous months’ estimates added 12,000 jobs, bringing the average gains for December, January and February to 186,000. The official jobless rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 4 percent in January. A broader measure of employment that includes part-timers who would prefer full-time work and those too discouraged to search fell to 7.3 percent from 8.1 percent. “That’s a year’s worth of improvement in one month,” said G. Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at the private bank Brown Brothers Harriman. Aftereffects of the government shutdown and wretched weather may have contributed to anomalies in the report. “This is the strangest jobs report I’ve seen in a long time,” Mr. Clemons said. “It’s bizarre. I can’t help but think there is noise in there.” During the decade-long expansion, the economy has churned out 20 million jobs. The anemic job creation and rising wages could indicate that the pool of available workers was drying up, and employers were having trouble filling openings.“The real challenge is the shortage of people,” said Tom Gimbel, chief executive of LaSalle Network, a staffing firm in Chicago. He said he speaks to roughly two dozen hiring managers and chief executives every week, and everyone is bullish. “I haven’t had anybody in 2019 tell me that they’re not going to be adding head count,” he said. But the combination of the payroll news with the prospect of torpid first-quarter growth and stubborn trade disputes cannot be brushed off, said Mr. Tannenbaum, the Northern Trust economist. “It’s a signal we need to be cautious with the U.S. economic outlook,” he added. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was down roughly 0.2 percent on Friday. It was the fifth straight decline for the index, a marked slowdown after the first two months of the year. The fallout from the government shutdownThe labor report could reflect some of the confusion and delays prompted by the 35-day partial government shutdown, which extended through most of January. Furloughed federal workers and affected contractors had to scrounge for part-time work when their paychecks were halted. Those circumstances were reflected in January’s report, which showed that the number of workers who snagged part-time jobs for economic reasons jumped by nearly half a million and those temporarily unemployed rose by roughly 175,000.“They now have paychecks and don’t need to drive Uber to make ends meet,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton. ImageCredit...Keith Srakocic/Associated PressThe shutdown also postponed hiring both within the government and in the private sector, in part because the federal electronic service that verifies the employment eligibility of prospective workers — E-Verify — was not operating. Some of those hires, particularly in the public sector, may be in the pipeline. Government payrolls — federal, state and local — were down by 5,000.Delays in income-tax refunds may also have had an impact, if people held off with discretionary purchases, Ms. Swonk said. The leisure and hospitality showed no growth. Some of the layoffs that big retailers like Gap, JCPenney, Sears, Dollar Tree and Abercrombie & Fitch have announced may be starting to trickle through as well, with a drop of 6,100 in the retail sector.In addition, the construction industry, which is closely linked to weather conditions, shed 31,000 jobs last month.More broadly, optimism continues Outside of the government’s report, signs of employer confidence were still evident. “I’ve been in this business over 40 years, and February always presents kind of a pause,” said William H. Stoller, chairman and chief executive of Express Employment Professionals, which is based in Oklahoma City. He compared it to taking a breath during a marathon, before a second wind kicks in. “I don’t see it hitting the wall at all at this point,” he said.Other recruiting and employment professionals also expect the labor market to regain its momentum. Bill Ravenscroft, a senior vice president at the staffing firm Adecco, pointed to a growing willingness to convert temporary workers into full-time staff members. The high rate of conversion, he said, shows there is little concern that layoffs will be needed down the road.With job postings outpacing applicants, Adecco has started to offer daily pay to lure more people into the pool of potential workers. Many job seekers can’t wait two weeks for the paychecks, Mr. Ravenscroft said. Now, “if you log eight hours that day, you get paid for it.”Sanford Health’s weight-loss and lifestyle program, Profile, has been on a hiring binge, said Nate Malloy, Profile’s chief executive. He said he expected 100 new locations, many of them franchises, to open this year. “We’re adding around 50 to 100 employees a month” across locations, he said. Most are health coaches, with starting wages of $15 to $20 an hour. As has been the case throughout the recovery, job opportunities can vary widely by region. Hard-pressed rural areas have experienced the slowest growth in employment, yet residents are often unable or unwilling to abandon their homes and move to other areas. The job growth reflected in the monthly reports is spread relatively evenly across large urban areas, but the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project found that “rural counties — the majority of which were already struggling — seem to be increasingly left behind with employment barely growing over the last five years.”Nationwide, though, employers talked about their hiring plans. Ace Hardware, a cooperative of independently owned and operated hardware stores, expects an additional 160 stores will open this year, creating 2,500 jobs, said Kane Calamari, the company’s personnel chief. Of the 681 employers surveyed last month by Vistage, an association of small-business owners and executives, nearly 60 percent said they planned to increase their total staff over the next 12 months. That share is down from last year, said Joe Galvin, Vistage’s chief research officer, but is still strong.And on Twitter, President Trump continued to be an enthusiastic cheerleader for the economy. Shortly after the report’s release Friday morning, he cited a Fox News commentator’s observation that United States has “the strongest economy in the world,” writing, “So true!”Matt Phillips contributed reporting. | 0 |
Some who follow the issue say Keystone remains a tough call for the administration. Green activists aren’t resigned to losing the Keystone battle. But Friday’s latest blow was yet another disappointment in their often strained relationship with President Barack Obama. The new State Department report that discounted most of the environmental community’s warnings about the Keystone XL oil pipeline puts the final decision on the project closer to Obama’s desk, after years in which he’s been able to dodge rendering a verdict. It all may come down to which Obama makes the final call: the president who declared in Tuesday’s State of the Union that “climate change is a fact” or the one who, in the same speech, touted an “all of the above” approach to energy policy — a phrase that environmentalists had specifically urged him to stop using. ( Also on POLITICO: Greens suffer another Keystone setback) This is also the same White House that picked health care over a giant cap-and-trade bill in 2010 but three years later launched the biggest-ever regulatory attack on carbon pollution from coal-burning power plants. Adding to the tension for deep-pocketed, politically connected greens is the fact that Friday’s unwelcome message on Keystone came from a department led by one of their most passionate champions, Secretary of State John Kerry. Some environmentalists fumed, while others looked for silver linings, including some additional language in the sprawling final document that could be used to bolster their arguments. “It’s just a study; it doesn’t recommend a course of action,” said Kenny Bruno, a lead spokesman in the campaign against tapping Canadian oil sands. Pipeline critics, he said, have “the winds at our backs” because the decision is “no longer in the hands of lower-level bureaucrats in the State Department. It’s in the hands of climate champions Barack Obama and John Kerry.” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said the analysis gives Obama and Kerry “everything” they need to reject the pipeline. “We are cautiously confident that he will make the right choice,” Brune said of Obama. ( Also on POLITICO: Obama's options on Keystone) The analysis is “just an input,” billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer said. “So we don’t have an answer yet, and the fight is far from over.” But others denounced the entire review process so far as corrupt and flawed. “This document will be seen by the entire environmental community — in which I certainly include myself — as a sham,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). He was one of several Keystone opponents who complained about news reports in which oil industry groups or Canadian officials offered previews of what they had heard the study would say. “The fact that the Canadian government and the oil industry were reportedly briefed on today’s news before Congress was given the courtesy of a heads-up speaks volumes,” Grijalva said. “It encourages the already widely held impression that the fix was in from the beginning. If the administration expects to avoid the lasting stink of having ignored every red flag in the book, it needs to explain itself.” The added details in the final version will allow Obama and Kerry to use them as they see fit, said one former Obama administration official closely following the Keystone process. “I think it would be wrong to conclude that this is a rubber stamp for the project and right to conclude it provides additional information that the administration will be looking at before a final decision is made,” the former official said. “The administration is looking to keep its options open here.” ( MAP: Keystone XL pipeline) Obama has offered some hints that he thinks both sides have overstated the impact of the Alberta-to-Texas oil pipeline, which the State Department study indicates will be neither a major environmental problem nor a powerhouse job creator. But by letting the decision linger for years, Obama has also allowed pipeline opponents to elevate its political significance — adding it to the holy trinity of green litmus tests alongside drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and saving the Pacific Northwest’s spotted owl. “I don’t necessarily think that there’s a real climate change impact in this decision,” said another former administration official who worked on energy issues. “The oil is there. It’s going to be extracted. Its going to be sold to someone. By trying to frame this as a big political battle and a test of the president’s courage, I think it was a strategic miscalculation by the environmental community.” Politically, though, some who follow the issue say Keystone remains a tough call for the administration. It plays green activists and Democratic donors against each other headed into this year’s midterm elections. And several party activists offered contrasting arguments for whether a pro-Keystone or anti-Keystone decision works more to the Democrats’ benefit. The second former administration official said Obama would have reason to consider making a pro-Keystone decision now to take away a potent Republican talking point. Keystone has become “a dog whistle for their [GOP] base, probably because the environmental community made it one,” the ex-official said. But Chris Lehane, a longtime party operative who worked for Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and is now affiliated with Steyer’s anti-Keystone super PAC, said Obama would risk dampening midterm turnout among two critical Democratic voting demographics — Hispanics and under-30s — by permitting the pipeline. “If you’re talking about the raw politics of this, if you’re a Democrat and trying to maximize turnout, you have to look at which cohorts you’re trying to maximize,” he said. Lehane also recalled Obama’s recent comments to The New Yorker’s David Remnick about a president having a chance to influence only one paragraph in the history books. “This would fall square in the type of paragraph the president was addressing in that conversation,” Lehane said. Environmentalists say they aren’t conceding a loss quite yet. “Is it politically easier for him to approve this thing? Maybe,” said Roger Ballentine, a former environmental adviser to Kerry and President Bill Clinton. “But I don’t think it’s politically hard to reject it.” He argued that the need for a new pipeline to send Canadian oil to the Gulf Coast is unwarranted when U.S. oil production levels have topped exports for the first time since 1995. “If I’m a senator and someone tries to beat me up on this, I say, ‘Look, what we should be doing is focusing on the infrastructure we need to responsibly develop,’” said Ballentine, now president of Green Strategies. Obama is in a no-win situation as he weighs the appeals from greens, Republicans, industry and Canada, which is both a leading U.S. trading partner and “one of our best friends in the world,” said former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “The politics are complicated and to a large extent zero-sum,” Crowley said. “Which is why the administration is taking its time trying to manage a least-bad outcome.” On the pipeline’s merits, people on both sides said the final State Department report left Obama some room to either kill or reject the project. For instance, the report said building Keystone is unlikely by itself to cause Canada to dramatically expand production from its western oil sands, increasing greenhouse gas emissions. That may happen — or not happen — for reasons besides the pipeline. The analysis was clearly a disappointment to many pipeline critics, who wanted the State Department to deem the pipeline an outright climate and environmental hazard. But pipeline opponents also offered differing interpretations on whether the report had softened the State Department’s past view that the project wouldn’t pose significant environmental harm. “In this report, for the very first time, the State Department acknowledges a scenario in which the Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline dramatically increases carbon pollution,” said National Wildlife Federation CEO Larry Schweiger. “That’s a welcome and long overdue change, and it gives President Obama all the evidence he needs to reject Keystone XL.” Climate activist Bill McKibben, a Vermont-based author spearheading the fight against the pipeline, was less optimistic. He said the report “reflects some grudging movement” by the State Department to recognize the environmental impact of the pipeline. “They’re at the point of saying night is late afternoon,” he said. Meanwhile, at the State Department on Friday afternoon, Assistant Secretary Kerri-Ann Jones repeatedly told reporters, “Whether one pipeline specifically would affect the overall development of the oil sands, that specific answer is not in this document.” | 0 |
VideoThe Upshot’s David Leonhardt breaks down the April Jobs report in less than 30 seconds.May 2, 2014After a frustrating series of false starts since the economic recovery began five years ago, American businesses appear to be increasingly confident about hiring new workers. In the best monthly showing in more than two years, employers added 288,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said on Friday, representing three consecutive months in which payrolls grew by more than 200,000. The report, combined with other recent data, suggests the economy is poised to expand at a faster pace in the coming months, after a slow start in the depths of winter. Despite the big jump in payrolls, wages did not grow at all in April, illustrating why so many Americans remain doubtful that they will benefit from what both the Federal Reserve and the White House see as evidence of a resurgent economy.“The payroll numbers suggest that the economy is recovering from a weather-induced slowdown,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. But, he said, “we still have not reached the point where workers have negotiating power.”Even a sharp drop in the nation’s unemployment rate, to 6.3 percent from March’s 6.7 percent, provided little cause for celebration, since it was primarily because of a large decline in the number of people participating in the labor force rather than an increase in the number of Americans telling government survey workers that they had found a new job. As a result, even as President Obama sought to seize on the upswing in the job market as evidence that his policies are working, he continues to struggle to capitalize politically on the improving economy.ImageCredit...Michael Nagle for The New York TimesAlthough the unemployment rate is at the lowest level of Mr. Obama’s presidency, his job approval rating is also near a record low. Economists had anticipated a jump in hiring in April, as the bitterly cold winter faded into memory and consumer and business activity rose in tandem with temperatures, but the increase was much better than had been expected and cut across both white-collar and blue-collar sectors of the economy. Professional and business services was the single biggest gainer, adding 75,000 positions, while the number of construction jobs jumped by 32,000.In addition, government statisticians also revised upward the number of jobs added in February and March, suggesting the economy was stronger than first assumed.Month-to-month swings in hiring represent a snapshot of the economy, rather than a portrait, and frequently blur. But April’s 288,000 increase, which was adjusted to take account of normal seasonal variations and is itself subject to further revision, was well above the average monthly gain of 194,000 in 2013. “It’s as good as I could have expected,” said Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “It was either a post-winter catch up, or the start of a stronger trend. There’s no way to know yet, but I’m happy either way.”At big companies like YRC Worldwide, a trucking firm based in Overland Park, Kan., April was something of a turning point. For the first time in several years, the company’s chief executive, James L. Welch, said, YRC has hired full-time recruiters to find more drivers and is also advertising open positions and participating in career fairs again.So far this year, YRC has hired 600 people, mostly hourly workers like truckers, mechanics and dock workers, with the bulk of them coming aboard in April. If business remains brisk in May and June and the growth trajectory seems more certain, Mr. Welch said, YRC will add another 1,000 employees to its total work force of 32,000 by the end of the year. Positions like these are especially important if the recovery is to benefit all Americans, especially since a majority of workers lack a college degree. Hourly workers at YRC earn roughly $21 an hour, and benefits are fully covered by the company.But Mr. Welch is not prepared to open the doors wide just yet. “I’m very curious to see how freight levels are in May and June,” Mr. Welch said. “We’re trying to figure out if this is an overhang from the winter, or is it the economy getting better. I don’t have the answer yet.” The uncertainty faced by companies like YRC is echoed by the conflicting signals evident in Friday’s report. While most observers agreed the surge in hiring that companies reported in April reflected more confidence among executives as profits soar and stock prices rise, Washington officials as well as professional economists were divided on the deeper significance of the contraction in the labor force. Unlike the payroll data, the figures on the labor force come from a separate survey of households that is used to determine the unemployment rate. In an interview, Thomas E. Perez, the labor secretary, suggested the big drop in the number of workers in the household survey was caused by fewer new entrants coming into the job market, rather than a sudden exodus out of it. One explanation, he said, could be that last month’s survey was taken a week earlier than usual to accommodate Easter, reducing the number of seasonal workers and high school graduates who otherwise might have been counted as part of the work force. “It’s a huge Rorschach test for everyone who is reading it,” said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS. “People expecting a spring rebound are zeroing in on the payroll advance, while pessimists are looking at the household survey and the decline in the participation rate.” The pivot point in the debate, Mr. Berger added, is the course of inflation in the months ahead and how that might affect the Fed’s decisions on when to begin raising short-term interest rates. A falling unemployment rate and big payroll gains might normally suggest that wage pressures could begin to rise, but the lack of salary increases for ordinary workers and the lackluster participation rate portend otherwise.Janet L. Yellen, the new chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, and her immediate predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, have both emphasized that other yardsticks besides the traditional unemployment rate are needed to gauge the economy after the financial crisis and the Great Recession. “Yellen can hang her hat on the participation rate to argue inflation is not a threat,” Mr. Berger said.The feeble participation rate, which reflects the share of all working-age adults with a job or actively looking for one, suggests a sizable amount of slack remains in the labor force, helping keep wage gains modest because employers know they can appeal to a wide range of applicants when they have new jobs to offer. But many companies draw from a relatively specialized pool, which is good for those with appropriate skills but limits the possibilities for those who are out of work.Take the case of Synchronoss Technologies, a maker of software for cloud computing and mobile communication. The company, based in Bridgewater, N.J., is looking to hire roughly 150 workers in the next few months, many of them in positions like software development and engineering that start at $75,000 to $100,000. More senior positions pay $150,000 to $200,000.Most of those jobs require specialized skills and usually go to people with extensive experience who are nearly all currently employed or to college students and former interns. “We could get 50 résumés for a position and two to four of those people will be brought in for interviews,” said Stephen Waldis, Synchronoss’s founder and chief executive. “If we’re lucky, that might yield one hire.” | 0 |
Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators in writing Monday that neither he nor his older brother were in touch with any overseas terror groups, according to NBC's Pete Williams. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, backed Williams' report that the suspects were not involved with any Islamic terrorist groups.Boston bombing suspect tells investigators, in writing, he & his brother were not in touch w/ any overseas terror groups - @PeteWilliamsNBC— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) April 23, 2013
The news organization tweeted the information Monday night. NBC was the first media outlet to report that Suspect 2, as he was dubbed by the FBI, was captured late Friday evening.NBC also reported that Tsarnaev (whom friends called "Jahar") told authorities in writing that he and his brother discovered instructions for bomb-making on the Internet. MORE: Bombing suspect tells investigators, in writing, brothers got instructions on how to make bombs from the Internet - @PeteWilliamsNBC— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) April 23, 2013
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police, were motivated by religion, according to U.S. officials. Investigators have also been looking into Tamerlan Tsarnaev's time spent in Russia. The older brother was known to have traveled to two predominantly Muslim Russian provinces, Dagestan and Chechnya. Authorities were examining whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been influenced by the region's militant population, who have railed against Russian security forces for years. Although it was first reported that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would not receive Miranda warnings, he was reportedly read the Miranda rights after a delay, at his hospital bed Monday.GRAPHIC WARNING: Boston Marathon explosion | 0 |
(CNN)Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday morning signed into law a controversial voting bill aimed at curbing access to mail-in voting in the state, joining a host of other GOP-led states pushing new limits in connection with former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election.In signing the bill during an appearance on "Fox & Friends," the Florida Republican highlighted provisions of the bill including stricter voter ID requirements for voting by mail, creating limits on who can pick up and return a voter's ballot, and banning private funding for elections. "Me signing this bill says: Florida, your vote counts, your vote is going to be cast with integrity and transparency and this is a great place for democracy," DeSantis said after signing the bill. Local media outlets told CNN that they were not allowed to go inside the morning signing event and that it was a Fox News exclusive. Some of the restrictions created by the bill, Senate Bill 90, also include expanding partisan observation power during ballot tabulation and creating additional restrictions for drop box use.The new Florida voting law faces immediate legal challenges.A coalition that includes the League of Women Voters of Florida and the Black Voters Matter Fund announced it had filed a lawsuit within minutes of DeSantis signing the law. It challenges several provisions, including its new restrictions on ballot drop boxes and the prohibition on organizations and volunteers returning ballots on behalf of voters.A separate lawsuit filed Thursday morning by Common Cause, Florida branches of the NAACP and a disabilities rights group describes the new law as "the latest in a long line of voter suppression laws targeting Florida's Black voters, Latino voters, and voters with disabilities."Last week, after days of contentious debate and last-minute amendments bouncing between chambers, the Florida Republican-controlled state House and Senate came to an agreement and approved SB90 along party-line votes on the eve of the state's final day of the legislative session.The bill is part of a Republican-led effort nationwide to restrict voting access at the state level in the wake of record turnout in last November's elections. A tally by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found that 361 bills with provisions that restrict voting had been introduced in 47 states as of March 24.In the past month, the effort to restrict voting has intensified as state legislatures begin to head into the final months of their respective sessions.Democrats frequently mentioned the continued public fallout from Georgia's recent election overhaul bill during debate on the Florida measure, which they called a "revival of Jim Crow in this state.""That bill that was passed in the state just north of us sent us a message, and the response to that bill should let us know we should not be doing this," Democratic state Rep. Michael Grieco said during House debate, pleading, "Please do not Georgia my Florida."Florida Republicans, who have repeatedly acknowledged that their state ran a successful and secure 2020 election, said the bill would provide "guardrails" to prevent anyone from "gaming the system" in the future."We've had voter ID. It works. It's the right thing to do," DeSantis said on Fox News last week, adding that the state's 2020 election was "fair and transparent, and the reforms we have coming will make it even better."DeSantis' signature comes as former President Trump continues to cement his hold on the Republican Party.On Monday, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, publicly rejected Trump's most recent false charge that he would've won the 2020 election if not for "fraudulent" votes, her latest rebuke of the former president that has put her at odds with many members of her own party."The 2020 presidential election was not stolen," Cheney tweeted on Monday. "Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system."Cheney is now facing backlash from her fellow Republicans and is expected to be removed from her leadership position.CNN's Dianne Gallagher, Wesley Bruer, Jade Gordon, Alex Rogers and Manu Raju contributed to this story. | 0 |
NewsWorldAmericasUS politicsMcConnell accuses Democratic administration of not being interested in acting in bipartisan fashionMcConnell complains he hasn't spoken with Biden since inaugurationLeer en EspañolMitch McConnell complained during an interview on Wednesday that President Joe Biden has not spoken with him since the presidential inauguration.In an appearance on Fox News, the Senate minority leader said he had not been invited to the White House so far during this administration, claiming that Democrats are not interested in acting in a bipartisan fashion.Host Bill Hemmer asked when he had last spoken with the president, to which Mr McConnell replied: “I don’t believe I have spoken with him since he was sworn in. We had a couple of conversations before that.”Mr McConnell’s office clarified that the president and minority leader have spoken regarding the situation in Myanmar since the inauguration, but that the context of the comments remains regarding reaching bipartisan consensus on the economic agenda for the country.When Mr Hemmer noted that 10 Republicans were invited to the White House in early February, Mr McConnell said that Democrats “are not interested in doing anything on a bipartisan basis in the political centre”.Read moreBiden news live: Latest updates as Trump accused of using migrants as ‘pawns’Obama blasts ‘cowardly’ GOP for blocking gun control laws limiting ‘weapons of war’Lauren Boebert criticized for tweeting about Biden during shooting in her stateHe added: “They’d be more than happy to pick off a few of our members and do what they would like to do.”“They're going hard left,” he continued after describing the proposed $3 trillion infrastructure package as a “Trojan horse” that includes massive “tax increases”.“They misread the election. It's a 50-50 Senate and a very narrow Democratic majority in the House, not a mandate to turn America into Bernie Sanders's view of what America ought to be.”Mr McConnell was also asked about the Democratic opposition to the filibuster on the grounds it is racist.He dismissed the belief, arguing that the filibuster pre-dates debates regarding civil rights.The filibuster has been used as a legislative tool by Republicans to oppose civil rights bills on a number of occasions.Register for free to continue readingRegistration is a free and easy way to support our truly independent journalismBy registering, you will also enjoy limited access to Premium articles, exclusive newsletters, commenting, and virtual events with our leading journalistsEmailPlease enter a valid emailPlease enter a valid emailPasswordMust be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a numberMust be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a numberMust be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a numberFirst namePlease enter your first nameSpecial characters aren’t allowedPlease enter a name between 1 and 40 charactersLast namePlease enter your last nameSpecial characters aren’t allowedPlease enter a name between 1 and 40 charactersYou must be over 18 years old to registerYou must be over 18 years old to registerYear of birthI would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy noticeYou can opt-out at any time by signing in to your account to manage your preferences. Each email has a link to unsubscribe.Already have an account? sign in | 0 |
An emotional Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, was sentenced Wednesday to 3 years behind bars for what a Manhattan federal court judge called a “veritable smorgasbord" of criminal conduct, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about the president’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income.Judge William Pauley found Cohen, 52, deserved “a significant term of imprisonment” for crimes that were driven by “personal greed and ambition.”Cohen appeared to get choked up as he pleaded with the judge for mercy. He told Pauley he was taking “full responsibility” for his actions — but laid much of the blame at the feet of the former boss he once said he'd take a bullet for.“I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day that I accepted the offer to work for a real estate mogul whose business acumen that I deeply admired," Cohen told the judge, saying his blind loyalty to Trump led him to choose “darkness over light.”Michael Cohen exits the courthouse after his sentencing in New York on Dec. 12, 2018.Shannon Stapleton / ReutersHe noted that Trump had blasted him as being weak on Twitter.“It was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds," Cohen said. "My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands."Since he first pleaded guilty in August, Cohen said Trump "publicly mocks me, calling me a rat and a liar, and insists that the court sentence me to the absolute maximum time in prison.""I am committed to proving my integrity and ensuring that history will not remember me as the villain of his story."He appeared to tear up as he apologized to his family and to the people of the United States.“I am truly sorry and I promise I will be better," he said.One of the charges Cohen pleaded guilty to, lying to Congress about his dealings concerning a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's potential collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. The other eight — involving tax evasion, lying to financial institutions and violating campaign finance laws by hiding payments to a porn star and a Playboy Playmate who claimed they had affairs with were Trump — were brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos urged the judge to hand down a stiff sentence against Cohen, whose crimes "portray a pattern of deception, of brazenness, and of greed." He also said he'd failed to completely cooperate with investigators, despite the guilty plea.A prosecutor with the Special Counsel's Office, Jeannie Rhee, struck a kinder tone, and told the judge that Cohen had "provided consistent and credible information about core Russia-related issues under investigation" by their office. The former fixer "has provided valuable information, investigative information, to us while taking care and being careful to note what he knows and what he doesn't know," she said.A sentencing memo filed by Mueller’s office said Cohen had provided federal investigators with information about his contacts with people connected to Trump and the White House.Cohen lawyer Guy Petrillo argued his client deserved a break for having stood up to the president."He came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country," knowing he would be subjected to a "barrage of attack by the president," Petrillo told the judge, according to NBC New York.He argued in court papers that Cohen should be spared jail time, while prosecutors said he should get a little less than the approximately five years called for by federal sentencing guidelines.Pauley sentenced him to a total of 36 months behind bars, and three years of post-release supervision. The judge order him to pay $1.4 million in restitution and forfeit $500,000, while fining him $50,000 for lying to congress. Cohen must turn himself in to start serving his sentence by March 6.The judge said Cohen deserved some credit for his decision over the summer to admit guilt and cooperate in the Russia probe. In what sounded to be pushback against Trump's criticism of "rats" and "flippers," Pauley said, "Our system of justice would be less robust without the use of cooperating agreements with law enforcement." But, the judge said, Cohen's assistance "does not wipe the slate clean.""Somewhere along the way Mr. Cohen appears to have lost his moral compass," the judge said. "As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better."Cohen's daughter broke down in tears after the judge handed down his sentence, and was comforted by her glum looking father.After the proceeding, the U.S. Attorney's office in New York revealed it had struck a non-prosecution agreement with National Enquirer publisher AMI earlier this year for its $150,000 payout to one of the alleged Trump mistresses, former Playboy model Karen McDougal."As a part of the agreement, AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election," prosecutors said. "AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election."In court as a spectator for the packed hearing was Michael Avenatti, whose porn star client Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump. He said the "nation owes a sense of gratitude" to the actress for having spoken out about Cohen and Trump.Trump, who insists the affairs never happened, argued on Twitter earlier this week that the payments to the women were "a simple private transaction," not a campaign contribution. And if it was a prohibited contribution, Trump said, Cohen is the one who should be held responsible."Lawyer's liability if he made a mistake, not me," Trump wrote, adding, "Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!"Trump refused to answer questions about Cohen and his "dirty deeds" charge as he was leaving a signing ceremony at the White House later Wednesday.Daniels, meanwhile, took to Twitter to celebrate the news. She noted that she was performing at a club in North Carolina. "Tonight's strip show will also be a victory dance!" she tweeted.After the sentencing, Cohen's former lawyer, Lanny Davis, promised that his client would release everything he knows about the president once Mueller completes his investigation.“That includes any appropriate congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lies. Mr. Trump's repeated lies cannot contradict stubborn facts,” Davis said in a statement.Davis later in a phone interview compared Cohen to Richard Nixon's former White House Counsel John Dean, who helped investigators unravel the Watergate cover-up.“It's just beginning,” he told NBC News.The charges Cohen pleaded guilty to:Charges brought by the Southern District:Count 1-5: Evasion of assessment of income tax liability for pleading guilty to failing to report more than $4 million in income from 2012 through 2016.Counts 6: False statements to a bank for Cohen pleading guilty to understating debt from his taxi medallion business in the process of applying for a home equity line of credit with a bank.Count 7: Causing an unlawful corporation contribution for when he pleaded guilty to orchestrating a payment made by American Media to Karen McDougal for her “limited life story”, an allegation that she had an affair with Donald Trump.Count 8: Excessive campaign contribution for when he pleaded guilty to making an excessive political contribution when he paid adult film actress Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her story and silence about Clifford’s alleged affair with Donald Trump.Charge brought by Robert MuellerCount 1: False statements to Congress for when Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress on Aug. 28, 2017, when he sent a two-page letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as well as during testimony before Congress. | 0 |
Washington (CNN)A small number of M1 Abrams tanks and other armored vehicles will participate in President Donald Trump's July Fourth celebrations in Washington on Thursday, US defense officials have confirmed to CNN.However, they will not parade down Pennsylvania Avenue due to the need to protect roads and bridges.Trump later confirmed tanks would be present during remarks in the Oval Office."I'm going to be here and I'm going to say a few words and we're going to have planes going overhead, the best fighter jets in the world and other planes too and we're gonna have some tanks stationed outside," Trump said while also acknowledging that measures would need to be taken to protect infrastructure."You've got to be pretty careful with the tanks because the roads have a tendency not to like to carry heavy tanks so we have to put them in certain areas but we have the brand new Sherman tanks and we have the brand new Abrams tanks," Trump added.While the US continues to operate the M1 Abrams tank the US military has not used World War II-era M4 Sherman tanks since the 1950s."We have some incredible equipment, military equipment on display -- brand new. And we're very proud of it," Trump said.The event is being referred to as a "Salute to America," and will feature fireworks and a speech from Trump.A US defense official said that the current plan is to have a very small number of armored vehicles participate as part of a "static display" at the event on the National Mall. The vehicles will not be moving thereby reducing the chance of damaging local infrastructure. The number of vehicles will be very small with the current plan to have two M1 Abrams tanks, two Bradley fighting vehicles and an armored M88 Recovery Vehicle, along with an "appropriate" number of accompanying personnel.Multiple US military aircraft will participate in the celebrations as well, according to two defense officials, including the B-2 stealth bomber and F-22 fighter jets.CNN had also previously reported that the Blue Angels demonstration team, which typically flies F/A-18s, would be present along with F-35 stealth jets and that the VC-25, the aircraft that serves as Air Force One when the President is on board, also will participate.Earlier in his administration, Trump had announced his intent to hold a military parade on Veterans Day in Washington, DC, however he canceled those plans following estimates that put the cost of such a parade at tens of millions of dollars.Trump blamed local Washington officials for the high costs of the canceled parade.Military planners had determined that the now-canceled parade was not going to feature tanks or other tracked vehicles due to concerns they could damage infrastructure.A Pentagon memo said the parade will "include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks," adding that "consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure."By not having the tanks and Bradleys drive on DC streets as part of the July 4th festivities, planners hope to avoid any potential damage. As there are currently no armored vehicles stationed in DC, the vehicles are likely to be brought into DC via trains and transported to the location on the back of trucks.The Washington Post was first to report Trump wanted tanks to take part in the July 4 event. Other military assets will participate including the US Navy's flight demonstration team the Blue Angels and ceremonial units such as the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, the US Army Band ("Pershing's Own"), and the United States Marine Corps Silent Drill Team.One military official told CNN that F-35 stealth jets will also likely participate.The Pentagon declined to comment on any costs associated with the July 4th celebration and with the units associated.A spokesperson for the military's National Capital Region/US Army Military District of Washington referred CNN to the Department of the Interior, which did not respond to questions.Officials told CNN that the White House has been actively involved in the planning of the celebration and had asked the Pentagon not to discuss details prior to the event. A US military official told CNN last week that the cost of using military assets in this year's July Fourth celebration was estimated to be less than $1 million and that the military personnel involved are to be drawn from units based in the Washington area, helping to drive down costs.The Department of Interior previously confirmed that Trump will give his "Salute to America" address on the National Mall this July Fourth, an unusual move by the President.Trump and other presidents have previously held events at the White House to celebrate the nation's birthday, but typically have not been present at the traditional large celebrations on the Mall. | 0 |
Vision benefits are among those that will now be available to same-sex spouses. The same-sex spouses of federal employees can begin applying for benefits including health insurance and retirement accounts immediately, the Obama administration said Friday, two days after the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act. The Office of Personnel Management offered the guidance in a letter to the heads of executive departments and agencies, detailing access to many of the benefits to which legally married same-sex spouses will now have the same access heterosexual married couples do, including health, life, dental, vision and long-term care insurance. The memo, signed by acting director Elaine Kaplan, does not go into detail about the benefits available to same-sex couples who marry in one state but live in another where those unions are not legal. By omitting a specific reference to state laws, and repeating that benefits will be available to all legally married couples, OPM appears to be making the case that couples will have access to the listed benefits regardless of the state in which they live. ( PHOTOS: Reactions to Supreme Court’s gay marriage rulings) President Barack Obama said Thursday that, “speaking as a president, not a lawyer,” he believes couples married in one state should be treated as married in all 50 states, but that his administration is working on the legalities of making that reality. In a statement Friday, the president applauded the expansion of access to federal benefits. “This is a critical first step toward implementing this week’s landmark Supreme Court decision declaring that all married couples — gay and straight — should be treated equally under federal law,” he said. “Thousands of gays and lesbians serve our country every day in the federal government. They, and their spouses and children, deserve the same respect and protection as every other family. Under the president’s direction, the Justice Department is leading the implementation of the repeal of Section 3 of DOMA. After the high court’s Wednesday ruling, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also said that the Pentagon will move quickly to expand benefits to same-sex couples. Attorney General Eric Holder welcomed Friday’s announcement. “Americans in same-sex marriages are entitled to equal protection and equal treatment under the law,” he said in a statement. “By extending health insurance and other important benefits to federal employees and their families, regardless of whether they are in same-sex or opposite-sex marriages, the Obama administration is making real the promise of this important decision.” The changes announced Friday “will make a meaningful, positive difference in the lives of many,” Holder said. “As the president directed, the Department of Justice will continue to coordinate with other federal agencies to implement this ruling as swiftly and smoothly as possible. I look forward to sharing additional information as it becomes available..” | 0 |
Far-fetched? Hardly. Beating Trump in November does not require an electoral juggernaut. This is because Trump himself, despite his frequent boasts to the contrary, is no electoral juggernaut. The president won the Electoral College in 2016 by a whisker. He carried three states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania—by a combined 77,744 votes. Notably, in those states, Clinton won roughly 600,000 fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012. The reason: a failure to mobilize black voters, and dismal performances among both affluent suburbanites and working-class whites.
The question that has hung over this Democratic race is one of electability—the search for someone who could address those specific shortcomings, in those specific states, and defeat Trump. Biden still has plenty of detractors in the party. He still makes many Democrats queasy every time he starts speaking off the cuff. But after Tuesday, there can be no disputing his capacity for winning in November. Last night proved it beyond doubt: Joe Biden is no Hillary Clinton. And that may be enough to take down Trump.
On March 9, 2016, the morning after the Michigan primaries, I published a reported analysis in National Review: “Michigan Shows Trump Could Redraw Electoral Map vs. Clinton.” This wasn’t clairvoyance, by any stretch: Between studying the exit polls and splicing the election results, it was impossible to ignore the storm brewing in my home state. Trump was supercharging turnout and forging a unique appeal with independents and white working-class voters; Clinton was flopping with those same groups while struggling to energize black voters and young people, two vital pieces of the coalition that had lifted Obama to victories in 2008 and 2012. If this was happening in Michigan, I wrote, it was happening in Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, too.
Nothing I’ve ever written provoked so much scorn. Emails rained down by the hundred. Didn’t I know about the “Blue Wall” of states Democrats couldn’t possibly lose? Yes, I sure did. But the evidence of change was too compelling to ignore. And so, even though I reserved the right to change my mind—which I did, buckling to the onslaught of lopsided polling and predicting that Trump would lose in November—there was ample reason to suspect that those primary results might foreshadow the November election.
In that sense, Tuesday felt like a mirror image of 2016.
There is no question Trump has advantages heading into the fall: He has a sprawling campaign apparatus, an unprecedented amount of money, and, as always, the attention of the world and a knack for knowing how to exploit it. By every tangible metric, the president will be tougher to beat as an incumbent than he was as a rookie candidate.
And yet, the evidence of his vulnerability is too compelling to ignore. This is particularly true of a match-up with Biden in the three states that will help determine the outcome this November. If the 2016 primary “resembled a giant, mitten-shaped red flag” for Democrats, as I wrote the other day, this 2020 primary resembled a giant, mitten-shaped red flag for Trump.
Start with the suburbanites. Livingston County isn’t the only longtime GOP stronghold with a new Democratic congresswoman. One county over, in Oakland, Haley Stevens won the 11th District much the same way Slotkin did in the 8th—by limiting her losses in the most conservative precincts. Running for governor on the same ticket, Gretchen Whitmer won Oakland by a whopping 17 points—more than twice Clinton’s margin of victory in 2016, bending sharply the trajectory of a county that for decades has been a bastion of country club, center-right Republicanism.
If Tuesday was any indication, things won’t get easier for the GOP this fall. Voters overran the polls in Oakland County. Four years after a total turnout of roughly 180,000 in the Democratic primary, Oakland had counted more than 250,000 votes on Tuesday—with 90 percent of precincts reporting. When the final votes are tabulated, Oakland will have witnessed a turnout increase in the neighborhood of 45 percent.
The story isn’t just the voting spike, but Biden’s concurrent performance. Unofficially, he beat Sanders by 22 points in Oakland County, where Clinton beat Sanders by just 4 points in 2016. And whereas Clinton won roughly 92,000 votes there, Biden is on pace to win more than 150,000. It was a similar story in neighboring Macomb County, a more downscale suburb of Detroit, where turnout soared and Biden vastly outperformed Clinton. Nearly 130,000 people participated in the Democratic primary, up 33 percent from 2016. And whereas four years ago Clinton and Sanders fought Macomb to a virtual draw, with Clinton winning some 47,500 votes, Biden topped Sanders by 17 points, collecting more than 66,000 votes in the process.
Biden’s performance among the wealthier suburbanites in these counties should be highly worrisome to Trump. These voters—particularly whites with college degrees—are accepting of the former vice president in a way they never were of Clinton. Four years ago, exit polling of Michigan’s primary showed Sanders winning college-educated whites by 11 points; Biden beat Sanders among that demographic by 14 points on Tuesday, a 25-point swing.
If more of those upper-scale suburbanites are found in Oakland, then Macomb is home to more middle-class Metro Detroiters. Interestingly—and just as worrisome for Republicans—both groups behaved the same way at the polls. Sanders, who won whites without a college degree by 15 points over Clinton, lost them by 10 points to Biden. That’s an identical 25-point swing. This was visible not only in Southeast Michigan, but in Mid-Michigan, Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, conservative rural areas that were dominated by Sanders four years ago. With most of the votes counted, Biden appeared poised to win every single one of those counties north of Ingham, many of them by healthy margins, an astonishing feat.
The story of The Trump Realignment has been an exchange between the two parties: More of the well-educated suburbanites fleeing the GOP for the Democratic ranks, with more of the blue-collar rural and exurban voters joining the Republican Party. This tradeoff, while unsustainable for the GOP over future election cycles, never figured to torpedo Trump’s reelection. But what Biden demonstrated on Tuesday was an ability to have it both ways—accelerating the GOP’s exodus in the suburbs while stopping his party’s bleeding in the exurban and rural areas beyond. If he can do that in November, he’ll win. But there’s an even more pressing imperative for Biden next fall: mobilizing black voters. For all his successes in Michigan on Tuesday, here’s an area where he failed to distinguish himself from Clinton—and thus, an area where his campaign might want to worry. Exit polls showed black voters accounting for 18 percent of the primary electorate, down slightly from 21 percent four years ago. Biden carried this group by 39 points, essentially identical to Clinton’s 40-point win.
Making this all the more intriguing was turnout. In Wayne County, the Democratic beachhead that’s anchored by Detroit, participation was up—but only by 41,612 votes over 2016, a modest 15 percent increase. (The statewide voting increase will clock in at more than 400,000 votes, or roughly 35 percent overall, once the final precincts are tallied.) It was a similar story in Genesee County, home to Flint, where turnout bumped up just a few thousand votes from 2016. The numbers were better for Democrats in Ingham County and Saginaw County, both of which have sizable black populations. But given the well-documented failures of Clinton to energize this core constituency in Michigan—and considering Trump’s determination to whittle away at those all-important margins, particularly among black men—this is a problem Democrats need to address. It might be meaningless that exit polls show Biden winning blacks by far bigger margins in the South than in the Midwest. But it’s not something Democrats can leave to chance.
Setting aside these mixed results with black voters, the breadth of Biden’s win in Michigan suggests he’ll be formidable in November. He won men and women, college graduates and non-college graduates, middle-income voters and high-income voters, union households and non-union households. There is room for improvement, not just with blacks but with young people and self-described progressives as well. But the truth is, no Democratic nominee in recent memory has had so much of the party consolidated around them this early in the nominating process.
This electoral climate is historically volatile. Having been impeached only months ago, and now presiding over a reeling economy and facing a potential pandemic as the novel coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, the president will be walking through a minefield all the way to November. Trump has proved to be such a masterful political Houdini, escaping from one jam after another, that he has taken on an aura of invincibility. His inner circle has come to believe Trump cannot be defeated. Nothing, they say—not the Mueller investigation, or the crisis at the southern border, or the government shutdown, or the Ukraine whistleblower, or the blue wave in the midterm elections, or even the early primary results—has demonstrated any capacity for the Democrats to take down the president.
That might be true. But Tuesday felt different—a day we’ll look back on if, in fact, Trump loses. There are six to eight battleground states that will decide the election this fall, and three that will continue to receive the most attention by far: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Finally, one of them has voted, giving us a long-awaited window into November. If the president was looking, he couldn’t have liked what he saw. | 0 |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In the last days of his life, former Vice President Walter Mondale received a steady stream of phone calls of appreciation. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris all called to say goodbye and thank you. It was a sign of respect for a man many Americans remember largely for his near-shutout defeat for the White House in 1984. But well after his bruising loss, Mondale remained a revered liberal elder — with a list of accomplishments that are still relevant today. As a young senator, he co-wrote the Fair Housing Act of 1968, a pillar of federal civil rights legislation. He later engineered a 1975 bipartisan deal that ended the two-thirds rule for stopping filibusters, so that 60 senators instead of 67 could cut off debate. Under President Jimmy Carter, he became the first vice president with a day job, as adviser to the president, not just a bystander. He called it the “executivization” of the vice presidency.And as a Democratic presidential nominee, he chose the first female nominee for vice president from a major party.Harris, who won the job 36 years later, specifically thanked him for all he did to change the office, according to a person familiar with the calls who asked for anonymity to discuss the private conversations. Mondale, 93, died Monday at his home in Minneapolis, as the city awaits a verdict in a murder trial that has forced the nation to again wrestle with structural racism. He welcomed that debate, his family said in a statement: “We are grateful that he had the opportunity to see the emergence of another generation of civil rights reckoning in the past months.”Mondale was appointed senator from Minnesota to succeed his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, who resigned to become vice president. He won Senate elections in 1966 and 1972, and stepped down to become vice president in 1977. Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Mondale went into private law practice — while beginning his own campaign for the presidency. He won the nomination in 1984, chose Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate, and was crushed in the landslide that reelected Reagan, carrying only Minnesota and the District of Columbia.Mondale was ambassador to Japan from 1993 until 1996. In 2002, at 74, he was drafted for a political reprise, running a truncated campaign for the Senate after Sen. Paul Wellstone, the Democratic nominee, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election. Mondale was favored at first, but he lost the election.And it cost him one record that had consoled him in earlier defeat — until then, he had won every time he was on the ballot in Minnesota. Instead, he got another, unwanted, record: the only man to lose elections in each of the 50 states.After his 1984 defeat to a former actor, Mondale said one of his campaign problems was that “I’ve never really warmed up to television and ... it’s never really warmed up to me.” Even his supporters said he came across as plastic and bland. His wife, Joan, said he was not a showman, just stable, hardworking and honest. “We call it Norwegian charisma,” she said.Even so, Mondale has some striking moments on television, none more so than in a 1984 campaign debate against Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, whose primary upsets threatened Mondale’s front-runner standing for the Democratic nomination. “You know, when I hear your new ideas I’m reminded of that ad ‘Where’s the beef?’” he told Hart, using a fast-food chain’s slogan to question the substance of his rival’s campaign proposals.Suddenly, the bland candidate had delivered a telling quip and created a slogan that stuck. It was no ad-lib and it wasn’t original — a Mondale campaign ally had used it before. But no matter, it was a boost as Mondale limped through the presidential primaries, losing more states than he won, but steadily gaining delegates to capture the nominationAgainst the favored Reagan, Mondale’s best opening came when the president’s age, 73, became an issue. The president seemed disengaged and even confused in early campaign debates. Reagan undid that one with his own quip in the final debate. Asked about it, the president said: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”Mondale could only smile as the audience laughed. But he said later he was smiling through tears because he knew from that moment that his quest was hopeless.Full Coverage: Walter MondaleThen there was the 1984 Mondale line Republicans made into a telling issue against him. In accepting his nomination, Mondale said that whoever won the election, taxes were going to be increased. “Let’s tell the truth,” he said. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” Republicans translated that into a Mondale campaign promise to raise taxes. He said he was just being honest. His forecast was accurate.Mondale, “Fritz” to some of his friends, was a dedicated liberal. He used the label in the subtitle of his 2010 memoir, “The Good Fight.” As attorney general of Minnesota and in the Senate, his major causes included civil rights, consumer protection, education, housing and the problems of migrant workers.The son of a Methodist minister and a music teacher, Walter Frederick Mondale was born Jan. 5, 1928, in tiny Ceylon, Minnesota, and grew up in several small southern Minnesota towns.He was only 20 when he served as a congressional district manager for Humphrey’s successful Senate campaign in 1948. His education, interrupted by a two-year stint in the Army, culminated with a law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1956.Mondale began a law practice in Minneapolis and ran the successful 1958 gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Orville Freeman, who appointed Mondale state attorney general in 1960. Mondale was elected attorney general in the fall of 1960 and was reelected in 1962.As attorney general, Mondale moved quickly into civil rights, antitrust and consumer protection cases. He was the first Minnesota attorney general to make consumer protection a campaign issue.As Clinton’s ambassador to Japan from 1993-96 he fought for U.S. access to markets ranging from cars to cellular phones. He helped avert a trade war in June 1995 over autos and auto parts, persuading Japanese officials to give American automakers more access to Japanese dealers and pushing Japanese carmakers to buy U.S. parts.Mondale kept his ties to the Clintons. In 2008, he endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, switching his allegiance only after Barack Obama sealed the nomination.In 2002, state and national Democrats looked to Mondale when Wellstone died less than two weeks before Election Day. Mondale was working at the Minneapolis law firm of Dorsey & Whitney — he returned to the firm after the brief campaign — and serving on corporate and nonprofit boards.He agreed to stand in for Wellstone, and early polls showed him with a lead over the Republican candidate, Norm Coleman.But the 53-year-old Coleman, emphasizing his youth and vigor, out-hustled the then-74-year-old Mondale in an intense six-day campaign. Mondale was also hurt by a partisan memorial service for Wellstone, in which thousands of Democrats booed Republicans politicians in attendance. One speaker pleaded: “We are begging you to help us win this election for Paul Wellstone.”Polls showed the service put off independents and cost Mondale votes. Coleman won by 3 percentage points.“The eulogizers were the ones hurt the most,” Mondale said after the election. “It doesn’t justify it, but we all make mistakes. Can’t we now find it in our hearts to forgive them and go on?”Years after the 2002 defeat, Mondale returned to the Senate to stand beside Democrat Al Franken in 2009 when he was sworn in to replace Coleman after a drawn-out recount and court battle. Mondale and his wife, Joan Adams Mondale, were married in 1955. During his vice presidency, she pushed for more government support of the arts and gained the nickname “Joan of Art.” She had minored in art in college and worked at museums in Boston and Minneapolis.The couple had two sons, Ted and William, and a daughter, Eleanor. Eleanor Mondale became a broadcast journalist and TV host, with credits including “CBS This Morning” and programs with E! Entertainment Television; she died in 2011. Ted Mondale served six years in the Minnesota state Senate and made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1998, and William Mondale served for a time as an assistant attorney general. Joan Mondale died in 2014 at age 83 after an extended illness.While he lacked the charisma of his mentor Humphrey, Walter Mondale had a droll sense of humor. When he dropped out of the 1976 presidential sweepstakes, he said, “I don’t want to spend the next two years in Holiday Inns.”Reminded of that shortly before he was picked as Carter’s running mate, Mondale said, “I’ve checked and found that they’re all redecorated, and they’re marvelous places to stay.”___Mears reported from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. | 0 |
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President Obama said during his end-of-the-year news conference Friday that the NSA surveillance program would likely see changes in the year ahead. (The Associated Press) President Obama signaled Friday that he may halt the National Security Agency’s collection and storage of millions of Americans’ phone records and instead require phone companies to hold the data. Speaking at a White House news conference near the end of a very difficult year, Obama said that he would have a “pretty definitive statement” on proposed NSA reforms in January, following his family’s annual holiday break in Hawaii. His remarks suggested that Obama’s views have changed significantly since details of the NSA’s far-reaching surveillance programs were publicly revealed in June. He said he believed his administration has struck the right balance between intelligence gathering and privacy protection but acknowledged that concerns about the potential for abuse may make it necessary to rein in the programs to restore public trust. “The environment has changed,” Obama said. He said that it “matters more that people right now are concerned,” and added, “Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we necessarily should.” During the 60-minute news conference, Obama also reiterated his claim of personal responsibility for the disastrous rollout of his health-care law. In addition, he expressed optimism that he could advance his agenda in 2014, beginning with immigration reform. In his end of year news conference Friday, President Obama recapped his administration's achievements in 2013 and previewed what's to come in the next year. (The Associated Press) “I think 2014 needs to be a year of action,” Obama said. The president said his NSA review, based on the assessments of intelligence officials and other officials inside and outside of the federal government, would determine which programs to maintain or eliminate, both domestically and internationally. An independent White House panel released a report this week questioning whether the NSA’s sweeping collection of personal data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks. A federal judge also ruled that the data collection was probably unconstitutional. Obama acknowledged that the United States needs to provide “more confidence” to the international community amid widespread outrage over revelations of U.S. spying on many foreign allies. “What has been more challenging is the fact that we do have a lot of laws and checks and balances and safeguards and audits when it comes to making sure that the NSA and other intelligence communities are not spying on Americans,” Obama said. “We’ve had less legal constraint in terms of what we’re doing internationally.” He added, “In a virtual world, some of these boundaries don’t matter anymore.” Obama defended the NSA, saying that he has seen no evidence that the agency “acted inappropriately” with the billions of call records it has assembled in a secret database, a claim that is at odds with compliance reports and other documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Obama all but endorsed one of the White House panel’s proposals, which would require phone companies to hold the data that the NSA has been collecting. “It is possible that some of the same information . . . can be obtained by having private phone companies keep those records longer” and allowing the government to search them under tight guidelines, Obama said. That prospect has drawn fire from privacy advocates and technology experts, who say it would be as bad as or worse than having the NSA hold the records. Phone companies also do not want to be the custodians of data sought by law enforcement or civil attorneys. “Mandatory data retention is a major civil liberties problem and something that other groups would oppose categorically,” said Rainey Reitman, activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Currently, phone companies keep call records for periods ranging from six months to 10 years. “Requiring by law that companies retain call records longer than they do for business reasons subjects those records to risk of theft by hackers and subpoena by state and local law enforcement and by civil litigants,” said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Because many entities other than the NSA would gain access, it is a step backwards for privacy.” During the news conference, Obama sought to grapple with a year of partisan turmoil in Washington and his inability to advance an ambitious second-term domestic policy agenda through Congress. Initiatives on gun violence and immigration failed or stalled in the face of Republican opposition, and the president was unable to prevent broad spending cuts known as the sequester or a partial shutdown of the federal government. When asked whether 2013 had been the worst year of his presidency, Obama laughed off the suggestion. “We have had ups and we have had downs,” Obama said. He added, jokingly, “I think this room has recorded at least 15 near-death experiences.” He said that despite the disastrous rollout of the online insurance exchanges at the heart of his signature health-care law, more than 1 million people have signed up for new health-care insurance since October. Obama also noted that statistics released Friday showed the fastest economic growth in two years and said that this month’s budget deal with Congress could be a sign of greater cooperation in Washington. “It’s probably too early to declare an outbreak of bipartisanship, but it’s also fair to say that we are not condemned to endless gridlock,” Obama said. Recent polls suggest that record numbers of Americans disapprove of Obama’s job performance and that his earlier advantages over Republicans in Congress have eroded in many areas. Obama dismissed the importance of the results, saying, “My polls have gone up and down a lot through the course of my career.” Obama defended his selection of openly gay athletes to lead the U.S. delegation at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, considering Russia’s discriminatory laws. “When it comes to the Olympics and athletic performance, we don’t make distinctions on the basis of sexual orientation,” Obama said. He added that this was “a value at the heart of not just America, but American sports.” David Nakamura and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report. | 0 |
Though long a symbol of responsible parenthood — model TV dad, doctor of education, proud supporter of Temple University — Bill Cosby etched his legacy in stone with a speech in 2004 that took black parents to task. It became famous as the “Pound Cake” speech for this passage:“Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals,” Cosby said. “These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.’ What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?”While many lauded Cosby for tackling a delicate subject so directly, it wasn’t long before the trouble began. Before the allegations of sexual assault surfaced, critics lambasted his conservative prescriptions for black America. After the accusations mounted over the past year, the Pound Cake speech was seized upon as an example of gross hypocrisy.Now, the Pound Cake speech has resurfaced in yet another incarnation that no one could have predicted. It was cited by a U.S. district judge as a legal justification for unsealing a deposition that was deeply damaging to Cosby, the same document made public yesterday by the Associated Press that showed that Cosby acknowledged in 2005 that he intended to give Quaaludes to young women with whom he wanted to have sex, as The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi reported.In his memorandum, Judge Eduardo C. Robreno said the speech, and Cosby’s general posture as a “public moralist,” made the deposition a legitimate subject of public interest sufficient to override Cosby’s objections to its disclosure. “The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct, is a matter as to which the AP — and by extension the public — has a significant interest,” the judge wrote.The deposition was made public largely because Cosby crowned himself a moral crusader.Bill Cosby’s life and careerLAS VEGAS, NV - SEPTEMBER 26: Comedian/actor Bill Cosby performs at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino on September 26, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)It was a stunning — and deeply ironic — chapter in the story of one of the more enduring and controversial utterances in the past 15 years by an African American about African Americans. And its reappearance in a legal matter so potentially detrimental to Cosby, who has decried the allegations against him as baseless, may also go down in history as a case study in the costs of hypocrisy.The occasion for Cosby’s talk about black parents’ failures was an NAACP awards ceremony in Washington on May 17, 2004 — no less an occasion than the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision ruling school segregation illegal that paved the way for the civil rights victories of the 1960s.“In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on,” Cosby said. “In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.”He asked hard questions.“I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit,” he said. “Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?”Then came the confection that gave Cosby’s most famous address its unusual name, which presaged the debate over Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, Mo., 10 years later.“I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else,” Cosby went on. “And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said, ‘If you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.’ Not: ‘You’re going to get your butt kicked.’ No. ‘You’re going to embarrass your mother. You’re going to embarrass your family.'”Self-abnegation despite the prospect of free pound cake in Mom’s name. It was a nice bit of rhetoric — one that earned Cosby praise in some quarters and criticism in others. The Pound Cake speech left no small mark. Books were written about it; it was discussed in the pages of the Harvard Educational Review.“If Cosby’s call-outs simply ended at that — a personal and communal creed — there’d be little to oppose,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in the Atlantic in 2008. “But Cosby often pits the rhetoric of personal responsibility against the legitimate claims of American citizens for their rights. He chides activists for pushing to reform the criminal-justice system, despite solid evidence that the criminal-justice system needs reform. His historical amnesia — his assertion that many of the problems that pervade black America are of a recent vintage — is simply wrong, as is his contention that today’s young African Americans are somehow weaker, that they’ve dropped the ball.”“A man who was running around the country yelling at women for how they were conducting their sex lives, a man who held his own marriage up as a model of functional commitment, had in fact been repeatedly unfaithful,” Rebecca Traister wrote in the New Republic last year. “To have gone further — to have really dealt with the possibility that this extremely rich man lambasting poor people for everything from stealing pound cake to wearing low-slung pants to how they named their children — might have drugged and raped more than a dozen women would have made our heads pop off.”Eleven years after that speech, Robreno of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania had to decide whether Cosby could block the release of a deposition related to the comedian’s alleged molestation of a Temple University employee in 2005. (The civil claim was settled; Cosby denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.) The AP intervened last year to request that the record be made available to the public “after more recent allegations of similar misconduct by [Cosby] gained public attention,” as Robreno put it.One the major issues: Cosby’s right to privacy — what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called “the right to be let alone.” Cosby, after all, is not a public figure in the sense that President Obama is; the comedian “does not surrender his privacy rights at the doorstep of the courthouse,” as Robreno wrote. The judge added: “Were this so, well-known nongovernmental public figures, visible in the public eye but pursuing strictly private activities, would be subject to spurious litigation brought perchance to gain access to the intimate details of their personal lives.”So: Would Robreno give Cosby a pass and leave the documents sealed because he is not a legislator, but a funnyman?No.“This case, however, is not about Defendant’s status as a public person by virtue of the exercise of his trade as a televised or comedic personality,” the judge wrote. “Rather, the defendant has donned the mantle of public moralist and mounted the proverbial electronic or print soap box to volunteer his views on, among other things, childrearing, family life, education, and crime.”At this point, Robreno, in a footnote, pointed to a number of Cosby’s public statements. Item No. 1: “See, e.g., Pound Cake Speech.” The address the comedian used to shame others was now being used to shame him.Robreno continued: “To the extent that Defendant has freely entered the public square and ‘thrust himself into the vortex of [these public issues],’ he has voluntarily narrowed the zone of privacy that he is entitled to claim.”In conclusion, Robreno said the AP wanted the documents not for “commercial gain or prurient interest.” Instead, the news organization sought the dirty details in service of the greater good.Without the speech, Cosby would still stand accused of drugging and raping women, and his decades-old legacy would be endangered if not in tatters.But without Pound Cake, it is unlikely that the public would know that, when Cosby was asked “When you got the Quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these Quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?” in 2005, he said, “Yes.” | 0 |
Credit...Sarah Silbiger/The New York TimesJan. 17, 2019WASHINGTON — A bus emblazoned with the United States Air Force logo was idling outside the Capitol on Thursday, members of Congress on board, ready to depart for Joint Base Andrews and a waiting military aircraft. Inside, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in her office making final preparations to lead the congressional delegation on a secret visit to American troops in Afghanistan with a stop in Brussels.Then came word from the White House: President Trump was grounding their plane and killing the trip.Mr. Trump’s decision to upend Ms. Pelosi’s travel plans was a remarkable bit of one-upmanship in an increasingly bitter government shutdown drama in which Mr. Trump and Ms. Pelosi, the newly elected Democratic speaker, are the main antagonists.The day before, Ms. Pelosi had suggested that the president cancel or delay his State of the Union address this month, citing security concerns amid a prolonged partial shutdown that has forced thousands of federal employees to work without pay. Mr. Trump at first said nothing, but 24 hours later, without mentioning her request, the president released a sarcasm-tinged letter in which he told her the trip was off.“In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I also feel that, during this period, it would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the strong border security movement to end the shutdown.”“Obviously,” Mr. Trump added, she still had the option of flying commercial.[Read more on how Nancy Pelosi’s aides are accusing the Trump Administration of leaking her travel plans.]The letter amounted to the latest reminder, if any was needed, that the stalemate over Mr. Trump’s demand that Democrats support his request for $5.7 billion to build a border wall has reached such a poisonous pitch that even the most tradition-bound rituals of government — the president’s annual address to a joint session of Congress, lawmakers’ periodic trips overseas to gather facts and perform oversight — have been consumed in a storm of ill will and competing agendas.It came on the 27th day of the shutdown, a day on which there were once again no negotiations between the two sides. But there was some indication that House Democrats, increasingly concerned that they have not sufficiently countered Mr. Trump’s demands for a wall with ideas of their own, were privately weighing offering their own plan for more effectively securing the border.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe move would be something of a shift in strategy for the Democrats, who have steadfastly refused to engage in a debate with Mr. Trump about border security as long as the government remains shuttered.“There have been concerns by some members saying we need to tell our constituents what we’re for and what it would look like in terms of border security,” said Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that handles homeland security. “That is probably a way to respond to that, and a way that does not violate what we are saying: open up the government and then we will talk about border security.”Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who told a group of committee chairmen at a closed-door meeting on Wednesday that it was time for their party to go public with its own border security ideas, reiterated the idea in an interview.The president, he said, “is making this about border security, but what he is proposing would not provide real border security — it’s a stupid, static wall which is a symbol, and it’s not a great symbol, and it would be ineffective.”Among the investments that Mr. DeFazio said should be made instead are more money for Coast Guard equipment and personnel to intercept maritime drug shipments, better technology to scan vehicles legally crossing the border to detect illegal drugs, resources for costly reconfiguration of border crossings to make them more secure, and funds for additional personnel to police them.“It’s a horrible waste of money when we have real needs,” Mr. DeFazio said of Mr. Trump’s wall, “so I just want to highlight the real needs to counter his fake proposal.”Ms. Pelosi hinted at such a proposal in a morning news conference on Thursday, where she also said that Mr. Trump had yet to respond to her request about delaying his speech. “Very silent more than 24 hours,” the speaker told reporters.But the lull did not last long.Mr. Trump’s decision to revoke Ms. Pelosi’s military transport drew howls of outrage from Democrats and some Republicans, and threw into disarray a long-planned trip by the speaker and senior lawmakers — including the chairmen of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees — to visit American allies and troops stationed overseas.Democrats, newly in control of the House and eager to use their power to challenge Mr. Trump, vowed that they would not be bullied into scrapping the trip altogether.“We’re not going to allow the president of the United States to tell the Congress it can’t fulfill its oversight responsibilities, it can’t ensure that our troops have what they need whether our government is open or closed,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the intelligence panel.“We are a coequal branch of government,” Mr. Schiff said, suggesting that the president apparently did not understand the new reality in Washington. “It may not have been that way with the past two years when he had a Republican Congress willing to roll over anytime he asked, but that is no longer the case.”Mr. Schiff was on the bus outside the Rayburn House Office Building near the Capitol when Mr. Trump fired off his letter, along with Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and several other lawmakers in what made for an unusual tableau.Instead of heading for Joint Base Andrews and boarding a military plane, the lawmakers sat stunned on their bus, unsure of what to do next, until it eventually drove slowly to the Capitol driveway — some journalists jogging or riding electric scooters to keep up — to disgorge its perplexed passengers. At one point, the House sergeant-at-arms, the chamber’s chief law enforcement officer, turned up to puzzle over the security arrangements for the lawmakers, whose secret travel plans were now public. And the speaker, holed up in her office with aides as reporters mixed near the Rotunda with tourists oblivious to the drama, calmly plotted her next steps.In the hallway one floor below, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, sputtered with anger.“It’s petty, it’s small, it’s vindictive,” Mr. Hoyer said. “It is unbecoming of a president of the United States, but it is unfortunately a daily occurrence.”White House officials — including Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff — had been irked by Ms. Pelosi’s invocation of security concerns as her premise for urging Mr. Trump to move his speech, and sought to put her in her place after she had emphasized that she represented a coequal branch in governing, according to aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.Depriving Ms. Pelosi of an aircraft was the easiest way to remind her, they said. So Mr. Trump made a play for dominance and one-upmanship reminiscent of his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York. White House aides were tickled by the move, even as some acknowledged that Republican House members might fear for their own trips going forward.Some of Mr. Trump’s usual allies were less amused.“One sophomoric response does not deserve another,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement.“Speaker Pelosi’s threat to cancel the State of the Union is very irresponsible and blatantly political,” he added. “President Trump denying Speaker Pelosi military travel is also inappropriate.”[Read the letter here.]Later in the day, the Trump administration had some good news for State Department employees, announcing that despite the stalemate it was asking furloughed workers to return to work on Tuesday, citing the department’s vital national security mission.It was the latest instance of the administration determining that an agency or department has a critical mission and its employees should return to work. But unlike in other parts of the government, the State Department employees will be paid, at least for work performed in the next pay period.Military planes are traditionally provided to congressional delegations for foreign trips, which are typically kept secret because of security concerns, particularly when lawmakers are heading to war zones and the delegation includes high-ranking congressional leaders. The White House has known about the trip since early last week, when it was brought to its attention by the Defense Department, according to White House officials.A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, Drew Hammill, noted that Mr. Trump had traveled to Iraq to visit with American forces there during what he referred to as the “Trump Shutdown.” He added that the trip by the congressional delegation had a similar purpose.“The purpose of the trip was to express appreciation and thanks to our men and women in uniform for their service and dedication, and to obtain critical national security and intelligence briefings from those on the front lines,” Mr. Hammill said.A White House spokesman said that all coming official visits by lawmakers, known as congressional delegations or “codels,” would be canceled until the shutdown is over, and by day’s end on Thursday, officials announced that Mr. Trump had also canceled plans to send Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.But Melania Trump, the first lady, kept her plans to fly on a military jet to West Palm Beach, Fla., to go to the family’s Mar-a-Lago compound.As of late Thursday, multiple congressional officials could not say, citing security concerns, whether Ms. Pelosi’s trip to Afghanistan was still on. | 0 |
“We are the firewall, not just for the U.S. Senate, but the future of our country,” Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is facing Warnock in the special election, told a crowd of about 100 people packed into a restaurant last week to hear from her and Republican Sen. David Perdue. The last time a Georgia Senate race went to a runoff, in 2008, Republican Saxby Chambliss crushed Democrat Jim Martin by 15 percentage points — just a month after he only edged Martin by 3 points in the Obama-fueled November election.
Both parties are mobilizing for a two-month sprint that will focus the entire political world on Georgia and easily cost more than $100 million. But the odds are stacked against Democrats: The runoff system itself is a relic of the Jim Crow era, when the white majority wanted to prevent candidates from winning with a plurality of the vote.
Ossoff, Warnock and their allies are well aware of their party's history of losses. They think they can defy it by out-organizing Republicans and reminding their voters that they have the chance to deliver a Democratic Senate.
"This is a very different state than 2008," Warnock said during a press conference last week. "The issue is not with the voters as much as it is with those who are trying to discourage and demoralize certain parts of our electorate," he added.
Democrats have identified thousands of potential new voters they’re working to register, and tens of thousands of volunteers are already mobilizing voters who showed up on Election Day to turn out again. “There’s a huge surge of momentum and enthusiasm, a feeling of invigoration here,” Ossoff said in an interview last week, standing in the dark outside the local Civic Center in Columbus following a massive drive-in rally, the third of eight events he held across the state in the past week to re-rev up voters still jubilant from Biden’s win.
“It’s going to be about who works harder, who inspires more people to come back out, who does the voter registration work and who has the energy,” Ossoff said.
Throughout his first week of events, the speakers who introduced Ossoff continually hit on one theme: Biden’s win proved Georgia can go blue after a three-decade losing streak, but it’ll take serious work for that to translate into success in January. Daniel Blackman, who is in a runoff for public service commissioner, told the hundreds gathered in a parking lot in Columbus, just across the Chattahoochee River from Alabama, the work “can’t stop, it can’t slow down” and there would be time to sleep on Jan. 6. Tonza Thomas, the first vice chair of the Muscogee County Democrats, said after the event repeating Biden’s success required putting money into the communities and groups who were already familiar with how to turn out the state’s voters. “It’s nothing but a repeat of what we’ve just done,” she said. “If we want it bad enough, we will get back out and do it.” Volunteers for Ossoff’s campaign have already made more than 220,000 phone calls in the days since the runoff was declared, and 21,500 volunteers already signed up for shifts. Warnock’s campaign had 10,000 people sign up to volunteer since the day after the election, doubling their volunteer database. Democrats say they are laser-focused on registering voters and pushing them to vote early or absentee. Nse Ufot, who leads the New Georgia Project, a group focused on voter registration, told POLITICO earlier this month they identified upwards of 100,000 potential voters to register ahead of the Dec. 7 runoff deadline. Ossoff’s campaign estimated more than 20,000 potential new voters became eligible after Nov. 3. They’re relying on a cadre of groups, from those like The New Georgia Project and Fair Fight, founded by 2018 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, to help on the ground, along with the state Democratic Party and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has announced a multi-million dollar field program focused on mobilizing voters.
Abrams has raised at least $9.8 million through an ActBlue page allowing donors to split between Fair Fight and the Ossoff and Warnock campaigns. Organizers all the way down to the local level are preparing for the sprint. James Williams, the president of Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council, spoke at Warnock’s first press conference of the runoff, held in the parking lot of an IBEW headquarters in Atlanta last week. Williams told POLITICO his organization would hit the ground Monday with literature, phone calls and text messages, sending out mailers and registering union members. “We’re going to basically pull everything we can out of the woodworks for this,” Williams said. He and others have emphasized early and absentee voting, which Democrats used heavily this month and will be even more important in the runoffs, which take place right after the New Year's holiday. Abrams tweeted Sunday that 600,000 Georgians had requested absentee ballots already.
“You could be sitting there at the Christmas dinner table, filling our your ballot and getting it ready to go,” Williams said. Republicans are also mobilizing on the ground. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has a dozen staff members in the state partnering with the campaigns and is planning a field program including 21 regional directors and 1,000 field staff organized throughout the state. They’ve already raised a combined more than $32 million through the committee, the two campaigns and a joint fundraising committee, primarily through digital fundraising. Other GOP groups are in: The Club for Growth announced a $10 million investment in the two races, partnering with a handful of Republican senators and other conservative organizations. The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which ran digital advertising and door knocking campaigns for Republican senators this cycle, already has dozens of staff on the ground in Georgia. “What we have to do now, though, is not persuade people,” Perdue said at the event with Loeffler. “What we have to do is get the vote out.”
But Democrats are equally optimistic that the voters are out there for another win — though recent history is against them. The 2008 runoff blowout was an example of the worst-case turnout scenario for the party. But in 2018, Democrats Lindy Miller and John Barrow, the former congressmembers, lost runoffs for public service commissioner and secretary of state by larger margins than in the general election the month before. Those runoffs came after Abrams lost the governor’s race, and without any high-profile Democrat or national implications driving voters.
Miller credited the long-term organization in the state with limiting drop-off in her race, which had much higher turnout than expected, and she anticipates even more voters to participate this time. She said the key now, alongside the surge of money coming to the state, is to ensure they can scale their operations proportional to the national attention.
“That is a very high level of sophisticated activism we're seeing now, where people are ready and willing, and they want to go out there,” Miller said. “That is the tip of the iceberg and a signal for why we should be so optimistic.”
Republicans acknowledge they’re in a fight. But the combination of their success in past runoffs, their performance on Nov. 3 despite Trump’s defeat and the threat of complete Democratic control of Washington are all reasons they expect their voters to be there in January. “Runoffs are all about turnout. It’s not about changing people’s minds in most cases,” said Scott Johnson, a state Board of Education member and former GOP chair of Cobb County. He spoke to POLITICO in the parking lot of the county GOP headquarters after Loeffler’s kickoff event with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), which packed more than 100 supporters into the offices. “We’re going to work hard. We’re going to turn out,” Johnson added. “I’m not believing for one minute the other side isn’t going to work hard and turn out, too. Because they will. Because the stakes are high here.” | 0 |
The jobs recovery is chugging along, but the labor market remains far from fully healed from the crisis. The U.S. economy added 288,000 jobs in April, the strongest month for job growth in two years, the Department of Labor said Friday. That number blew away economists' forecasts, and stocks rose following the news, although they have since fallen back. The oft-quoted unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, down from 6.7% in March. The severe winter had been holding back many economic statistics, as snowstorms slowed the housing market, retail sales and manufacturing. On Friday, the jobs numbers were revised higher for both February and March, showing the economy is over that winter lull. "I'm very happy. It's good to see the economy kicking into gear and that we've really gotten past the weather issue," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo. Related: U.S. economy slows to stall-speed That said, the unemployment rate told a more discouraging story. That number, which comes from a survey of households, shows fewer Americans are joining the labor force and fewer people report they're employed. These trends led to the unemployment rate falling to 6.3%, its lowest level since September 2008. "The drop in participation is not due to discouraged workers leaving the labor force," a Department of Labor spokesperson noted, "it's due to re-entrants and new entrants who we expected to see flowing into the labor force, and who didn't this month." This could mean fewer young people are entering the job market for the first time, and more seniors are retiring and staying that way. That said, participation also fell among the prime working-age population, and that's a discouraging sign, said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Mesirow Financial. "These are our 'learners and earners' in society," she wrote in a blog post. "They should be in the prime of their careers; instead, they are un- or underemployed, struggling with a debilitating overhang of student debt and in a sad reflection of our economy, some are giving up entirely." Related: Class of 2014 faces tough job market Economists also caution not to read too much into just one month of data. The big picture remains the same. "The employment data can fluctuate from month to month, and while this month's report happens to be above expectations, it is still broadly consistent with the recent trends we have been seeing in the labor market," Jason Furman, top economic adviser to President Obama, wrote in a White House blog post. (Political reaction) Given the millions of jobs lost in the financial crisis, even solid hiring is still not enough to put the huge backlog of unemployed Americans back to work right away. The jobs recovery has dragged on for four years now, and long-term unemployment remains elevated with 3.5 million people out of a job for six months or more. Related: Recovery on track, but still slow and steady Economists estimate it could take at least another two years until the job market returns to its pre-recession health, when the unemployment rate was around 4% to 5%. The good news is, the recovery is now broad-based across many industries. One of the strongest sectors for job growth, for example, is professional and business services. The industry added 75,000 jobs in April. Over the last 12 months, it has added more than 660,000 jobs. Many of these are likely to be office jobs paying mid- to high-level wages. Retail, restaurants and bars -- traditionally low-wage industries -- have also accounted for strong job growth, and blue-collar industries like manufacturing and construction are on the upswing. The only major sector that continues to cut jobs is the federal government, which slashed 83,000 positions over the last 12 months. CNNMoney (New York) First published May 2, 2014: 8:44 AM ET | 0 |
The debate over if — and how — to reprimand Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has exposed sharp divides within the caucus along generational, religious and ideological lines. | AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal allies stepped up their defense of the freshman Democrat.
A vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in response to controversial comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar is set to slip past Wednesday amid intensifying pressure from the left both inside and outside the House Democratic Caucus.
An array of progressive groups declared their support for Omar, while both the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus — two of the most important factions among House Democrats — wanted more time to review the situation, lawmakers and aides said. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that the vote would likely happen Thursday. They also said a draft resolution would be updated to include additional language rejecting anti-Muslim bias, although some Democratic sources believe that an entirely new document might be crafted.
What is clear, however, is that the furor over Omar's remarks — the second time in two months the Minnesota Democrat has made comments that were condemned by her own colleagues as anti-Semitic — is threatening to overshadow everything else happening in the House. House Democrats are set to pass a major anti-corruption package that deals with ethics and campaign finance reform initiatives and voting rights, but much of the attention is on Omar and how party leaders respond to her comments.
"We're still discussing it," Hoyer said on Tuesday. "The sentiment is that it ought to be broad-based. What we're against is hate, prejudice, bigotry, white supremacy, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism."
"Yes, we're strongly against anti-Semitism, but we're strongly against prejudice directed at any group," Hoyer added.
“People are working through the draft. Not everyone has seen the draft,” added House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries. “I support the notion that we need to respond, and we’re figuring out the appropriate way to respond.”
Pelosi and Omar spoke over the weekend as staffers for Pelosi and other top Democrats began crafting the resolution.
The debate over if — and how — to reprimand Omar for saying pro-Israel advocates have “allegiance to a foreign country” has exposed sharp divides within the caucus along generational, religious and ideological lines. The resolution is being taken up after senior Democrats, including some prominent Jewish lawmakers like New York Reps. Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey, have publicly criticized Omar and demanded she apologize. "I condemn all forms of hatred," said Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a panel that Omar joined in January. "We're talking about anti-Semitism because my colleague said some very hurtful things. But I think we need to be aware all attempts to demean any group of people, whether it's Muslims or LGBT people. We have to be very strong and forceful in condemning it."
Engel did not endorse kicking Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee, as Republicans have demanded.
"I don't think the Foreign Affairs Committee should be used as punishment for anybody," Engel told reporters. "But I do think [Omar] needs to understand what she said is very hurtful. Whether she is on the committee or not is not the issue."
An array of prominent liberal allies like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and outside progressive groups has rallied to the Minnesota Democrat's defense.
Senior Democrats in key caucuses were also pushing party leaders to pause floor action related to Omar, at least temporarily, so members have time to digest the content of the resolution. The CBC is set to discuss the measure at its weekly meeting Wednesday, while progressives are also expected to meet on the issue.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, confirmed that some of her group's members have discussed the resolution with Democratic leaders "to make sure we can have caucus unity on whatever we propose."
Liberals had pushed for language condemning Islamophobia after Omar was targeted in a poster displayed at an event sponsored by the West Virginia GOP. It appeared to link her to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and included a photo of the World Trade Center buildings on fire and a photo of Omar below it.
The draft resolution doesn't mention Omar by name but is a direct response to her most recent comments and comes after a string of Israel-related remarks that her colleagues have claimed are anti-Semitic.
Ocasio-Cortez fired off a series of tweets throughout Tuesday, criticizing what she sees as hypocrisy in Democrats' planned reprimand of Omar. She argued that Democratic leaders should have addressed the issue privately before Omar was "called out" publicly.
Omar exited her Capitol Hill office on Tuesday night with her phone to her head and without taking questions from reporters. A coalition of several Muslim and progressive Jewish organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and IfNotNow, is set to hold a news conference Wednesday morning outside of the Supreme Court in support of Omar. And the Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent out a mass fundraising email in support of Democratic lawmakers who are publicly defending Omar. Other prominent progressive groups and activists, including Democracy for America, CodePink and Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg, underscored their support for Omar on Twitter, using the hashtag #StandWithIlhan.
"One of the things that is hurtful about the extent to which reprimand is sought of Ilhan is that no one seeks this level of reprimand when members make statements about Latinx + other communities (during the shutdown, a GOP member yelled 'Go back to Puerto Rico!' on the floor)," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri in January apologized to Rep. Tony Cárdenas for yelling “Go back to Puerto Rico!” in a tense situation on the House floor during the government shutdown. Smith, however, claimed the remark was not racially motivated and instead was referring to 30-member event in Puerto Rico that occurred during the shutdown, which was heavily covered by conservative media and even drew ire from President Donald Trump.
A senior Democratic aide countered Ocasio-Cortez's criticisms on Tuesday by saying a resolution on the House floor is far from the most severe punishment Democratic leaders could pursue. Republican critics of Omar have demanded she be pulled off of the Foreign Affairs Committee, something Democratic leaders have so far resisted. Some senior GOP lawmakers are even considering offering a censure motion against Omar. "There’s clearly people that are calling for her to be removed from the committee," the Democratic aide said. "This resolution doesn’t mention her name even, this is pretty mild given that she’s a repeat offender." Ocasio-Cortez, who has defended Omar in the past, said on Tuesday that she is not trying to tell people how to feel "or that their hurt is invalid," but questioned why there have not been "resolutions against homophobic statements? For anti-blackness? For xenophobia? For a member saying he’ll 'send Obama home to Kenya?'"
Ocasio-Cortez also called on addressing inappropriate remarks with someone privately before they are called out publicly.
"In this administration + all others, we should actively check antisemitism, anti-blackness, homophobia, racism, and all other forms of bigotry," she tweeted. "And the most productive end goal when we see it is to educate and heal. It’s the difference btwn 'calling in' before 'calling out.'"
Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the resolution falls under "calling out" and should be "one of the measure of last resort," and should only be done after "repeated attempts to 'call in' are disrespected or ignored."
"I believe that Ilhan, in her statement a few weeks ago, has demonstrated a willingness to listen+work w/impacted communities," the New York congresswoman tweeted.
Omar also received backlash last month after she questioned the political influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee by tweeting the phrase "It's all about the Benjamins baby." The congresswoman has since apologized for that statement.
After that remark, House Republicans last month pushed a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, although it did not specifically mention Omar. The measure was overwhelmingly approved on the floor, and it won Omar's vote as well.
Rebecca Morin contributed to this report. | 0 |
CLEVELAND — Donald Trump’s acceptance speech hit the mark Thursday night, drawing accolades from a number of GOP political insiders who had doubted his competence to lead the Republican ticket this fall.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of operatives, activists and strategists in 11 battleground states surveyed immediately following Trump’s speech. Fifty-six percent of Republican insiders said Trump’s speech — a forceful indictment of those responsible for what he perceives as a country in decline, along with an assurance that he is uniquely qualified to solve the nation’s ills — made them feel more confident in his candidacy. “Trump gave a simple message and expanded the Republican Party: law and order, economic populism and defeat the rigged system,” said one Iowa Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously.
“I felt Trump gave a very good speech and struck on issues and policies that people wanted to hear about,” added a Colorado Republican. “His family and friends did an excellent job of showing the softer side of Donald Trump and gave America a good view of his family, which says a lot about him as a person. I think he is absolutely right — this is a movement, not a ‘normal’ campaign. People have had enough of tired politicians. I think they are going to give him the chance to run the country.”Added a Pennsylvania Republican: “He talked to the people he needed to very effectively. The speech defined the race and made him a voice for the people — something he should have done months ago.”
For many of the GOP insiders, Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday night helped overcome other, rockier moments this week, including Ted Cruz’s speech, in which the Texas senator declined to endorse Trump, despite angry protestations from the crowd at Quicken Loans Arena.
Fifty-nine percent of Republicans picked Trump’s acceptance speech as the “defining moment” of the convention, far more than the 28 percent who said Cruz’s televised snub defined the week.
The Cruz speech received poor marks from those same Republican insiders. Four-in-five said it was a “selfish act” to address the convention without getting behind Trump. Only 20 percent described it as a “principled stand.”
Cruz “showed his true colors as just another craven politician willing to put his own political ambition ahead of the interests of the party and the country,” a Colorado Republican said. “It's a risky bet — if Hillary wins in November as a result of the divisions Cruz continues to foment within the party, the GOP will hold the senator from Texas partially responsible for the multiple justices that Clinton will appoint to the Supreme Court, undermining the very conservative principles and constitution Ted Cruz claims to champion.”
“Cruz almost looks like he trying to ensure that Hillary will win so he can run against her in 2020,” added a Virginia Republican.
“It was beyond selfish,” a Wisconsin Republican said. “It was beyond stupid and showed Ted Cruz for what he is. Cruz’s speech was a head-shaking moment. And, he's toast in 2020. Compare him to Ryan.”Trump certainly still has his Republican critics: Twenty percent said the speech made them less confident in him. And a number of them were despondent in what they saw as an apocalyptic view of the country, when voters want to be inspired.
“It's not morning in America; it's midnight in America, according to Trump,” a Colorado Republican said. “This was a long, depressing speech that did not focus on issues that most Americans are concerned about, specifically, the economy.”
Added a New Hampshire Republican: “We have handed our Party over to a narcissistic, feckless, classless RINO strongman wannabe who is the only candidate that actually gives the horrid Hillary Clinton a chance to win.”
Democrats largely agreed: The consensus among insiders wasn’t that Trump will emerge from Cleveland as a stronger candidate. Instead, many of them believed he delivered a dark, angry speech that served as the capstone of an unusual and damaging convention for the GOP.
“As a Democrat, I heard Trump describe a post-apocalyptic country that I don't live in — full of fear, terror, and pending economic collapse,” a Colorado Democrat said. “It seemed like a speech to white America, or those in white America, who fear the social, cultural, and economic change in our country.”
“The whole thing was a dumpster fire,” a Florida Democrat said of the convention, “but Trump's dark, troubling and borderline anti-American speech will define it.”
In fact, the vast majority of Democrats, 63 percent, said Cruz’s nonendorsement was the defining moment of a convention that, in their eyes, left the GOP more divided than united. It “was a defining moment of an ill-conceived and poorly executed convention,” one Iowa Democrat said.
But there were some signs that Trump struck a chord with some of his tougher GOP critics. One Nevada Republican called it “shockingly measured with populist lines that real people will like.”
Another New Hampshire Republican called it the “best speech” Trump has given thus far.
“But probably still not good enough,” the Republican said.
These are the members of The POLITICO Caucus, not all of whom participated in this survey:
Colorado: Ryan Call, Laura Carno, Matt Chandler, Will Coyne, Adam Eichberg, Mark Ferrandino, Cole Finegan, Michael Fortney, Andrew Freedman, Ted Harvey, Craig Hughes, Owen Loftus, Pete Maysmith, Frank McNulty, Karen Middleton, Christopher Murray, BJ Nikkel, Josh Penry, Rick Ridder, Alan Salazar, Janice Sinden, Pat Steadman, Pat Waak, Steve Welchert, Taylor West, Roxane White, Rob Witwer
Florida: Fernand Amandi, Scott Arceneaux, JP Austin, Tim Baker, Dennis K. Baxley, Slater Bayliss, Dave Beattie, Wayne Bertsch, Ron Book, Pamela Burch Fort, Jose Calderon, Kevin Cate, Kelly Cohen, Gus Corbella, Brian Crowley, Elizabeth Cuevas-Neunder, Justin Day, Judith Diaz, Nelson Diaz, John Dowless, Ryan Duffy, Jessica Ehrlich, Joe Falk, Alia Faraj-Johnson, Mark Ferrulo, Damien Filer, Marty Fiorentino, Rich Heffley, Nick Iarossi, David Johnson, Eric Johnson, Marian Johnson, Eric Jotkoff, Chris Korge, Jackie Lee, Susan MacManus, Beth Matuga, Fred Menachem, Jon Mills, Joe Mobley, Ben Pollara, Andrea Reilly, Steve Schale, April Schiff, Max Steele, Roger Stone, Richard Swann, Kevin Sweeny, Christian Ulvert, Steve Vancore, Ashley Walker, Andrew Weinstein, Andrew Wiggins, Ryan Wiggins, Rick Wilson
Iowa: Tim Albrecht, Brad Anderson, Rob Barron, Jeff Boeyink, Bonnie Campbell, Dave Caris, Sam Clovis, Jerry Crawford, Sara Craig, John Davis, Steve Deace, John Deeth, Derek Eadon, Ed Failor Jr., Karen Fesler, David Fischer, Ben Foecke, Doug Gross, Steve Grubbs, Tim Hagle, Bob Haus, Joe Henry, Drew Ivers, Jill June, Lori Jungling, Jeff Kaufmann, Brian Kennedy, Jake Ketzner, David Kochel, Chris Larimer, Chuck Larson, Jill Latham, Jeff Link, Dave Loebsack, Mark Lucas, Liz Mathis, Jan Michelson, Chad Olsen, David Oman, Matt Paul, Marlys Popma, Troy Price, Christopher Rants, Kim Reem, Craig Robinson, Sam Roecker, David Roederer, Nick Ryan, Tamara Scott, Joni Scotter, Karen Slifka, John Smith, AJ Spiker, Norm Sterzenbach, John Stineman, Matt Strawn, Charlie Szold, Phil Valenziano, Jessica Vanden Berg, Nate Willems, Eric Woolson, Grant Young
Michigan: Jill Alper, Saul Anuzis, Andrea Bitely, Lori Carpentier, Howard Edelson, Jordan Gehrke, Steve Hood, Joe Lehman, Dennis Lennox, Katie Packer, Ronna Romney McDaniel, John Truscott, Stephanie White, John Yob
Nevada: Mac Abrams, Greg Bailor, Barbara Buckley, Yvanna Cancela, Bob Cavazos, Linda Cavazos, Jim DeGraffenreid, Andrew Diss, Peter Ernaut, Ryan Erwin, Chip Evans, Jay Gerstema, Oscar Goodman, Ryan Hamilton, Dan Hart, Pat Hickey, Zach Hudson, Jeremy Hughes, Megan Jones, Lindsey Jydstrup, Adam Khan, Peter Koltak, Roberta Lange, Sam Liberman, Laura Martin, Michael McDonald, Chuck Muth, Erven Nelson, Kristen Orthman, Neal Patel, Nick Phillips, Jon Ralston, Andres Ramires, Emmy Ruiz, Scott Scheid, Mike Slanker, James Smack, Paul Smith, Jack St. Martin, Mari St. Martin, Daniel Stewart, Brendan Summers, Riley Sutton, Robert Uithoven, Michelle White, Ed Williams, Heidi Wixom
New Hampshire: Charlie Arlinghaus, Arnie Arnesen, Patrick Arnold, Rich Ashooh, Dean Barker, Juliana Bergeron, D.J. Bettencourt, Michael Biundo, Ray Buckley, Peter Burling, Jamie Burnett, Debby Butler, Dave Carney, Jackie Cilley, Catherine Corkery, Corriveau, Fergus Cullen, Lou D’Allesandro, James Demers, Mike Dennehy, Sean Downey, Steve Duprey, JoAnn Fenton, Jennifer Frizzell, Martha Fuller Clark, Amanda Grady Sexton, Jack Heath, Gary Hirshberg, Jennifer Horn, Peter Kavanaugh, Joe Keefe, Rich Killion, Harrell Kirstein, Sylvia Larsen, Joel Maiola, Kate Malloy Corriveau, Maureen Manning, Steve Marchand, Tory Mazzola, Jim Merrill, Jayne Millerick, Claira Monier, Greg Moore, Matt Mowers, Terie Norelli, Chris Pappas, Liz Purdy, Tom Rath, Colin Reed, Jim Rubens, Andy Sanborn, Dante Scala, William Shaheen, Stefany Shaheen, Carol Shea-Porter, Terry Shumaker, Andy Smith, Craig Stevens, Kathy Sullivan, Chris Sununu, James Sununu, Jay Surdukowski, Donna Sytek, Kari Thurman, Colin Van Ostern, Deb Vanderbeek, Mike Vlacich, Ryan Williams
North Carolina: Don Davis, Francis X. De Luca, Anita Earls, Jonathan Felts, Tami L. Fitzgerald, Dylan Frick, Taylor Griffin, Robin Hayes, Morgan Jackson, Patsy Keever, Theresa Kostrzewa, Michael Luethy, Ray Martin, Thomas Mills, Melissa L. Reed, Chris Sgro, Paul Shumaker, Dee Stewart, Brad Thompson, Bruce Thompson, Charlie Wallin, Doug Wilson
Ohio: Jerry Austin, Greg Beswick, Matt Borges, Erica Bruton, Tim Burke, Janet Carson, Jai Chabria, Martha Clark, Bob Clegg, Damareo Cooper, Jo Ann Davidson, Michael Dawson, Bill DeMora, Cindy Demse, Kathy Dicristofaro, Katie Eagan, Michael Gonidakis, Wes Goodman, Joe Hallett, Ian James, Melissa Klide Hedden, David Leland, Nick Martin, Rhine McLin, David Pepper, Molly Shack, Mark R. Weaver
Pennsylvania: Chris Borick, Larry Ceisler, Valentino DiGiorgio, Jason Ercole, Dan Fee, Charlie Gerow, Marcel Groen, Leslie Gromis Baker, Mark Harris, Nan McLaughlin, Aubrey Montgomery, Christopher Nicholas, Nachama Soloveichik, David Sosar, Todd Stephens, Doc Sweitzer, David Thornburgh, Ray Zaborney
Virginia: Ray Allen, Sandra Brandt, Marc K. Broklawski, Patsy Brown, Janet Carver, John Cosgrove, Brian Coy, Doris Crouse-Mays, Tom Davis, Julie Dime, Abbi Easter, Mike Farris, John Findlay, Joe Fitzgerald, Sean Harrison, Margo Horner, Robert Hurt, Gaylene Kanoyton, Chris LaCivita, Sue Langley, Frank Leone, Robert G. Marshall, Tucker Martin, Ed Matricardi, Susan J. Rowland, Peter Snyder, Susan Swecker, Jo Thoburn
Wisconsin: Meg Andrietsch, Mary Arnold, Kevin Barthel, Mike Basford, Rebecca Bonesteel, Barry Burden, Terri Burl, Jim Camery, Patrick Guarasci, Robert Hansen, Gary Hawley, Marian Krumberger, Emily Nehring, Jason Rae, Brandon Scholz, John Zapfel
Kristen Hayford contributed to this report. | 0 |
President Trump’s preferred candidate for governor of Georgia won the Republican nomination Tuesday, setting the stage for a marquee November showdown encapsulating the divisions that have deepened during his presidency.Secretary of State Brian Kemp, an immigration hard-liner who won Trump’s support less than a week before the vote, defeated Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in a runoff that resonated loudly beyond the state’s borders. Kemp led Cagle by more than 2 to 1, with most of the votes tallied.“We had the momentum in this race, but those endorsements by the president and the vice president poured gasoline on the fire,” Kemp said in his victory speech.Kemp advances to a showdown against Democratic Party nominee Stacey Abrams, who, if she wins, will be the first female African American governor of any state. The victory by Kemp instantly turned the general election race into a sharp contrast capturing the cultural, racial and political divides that have gripped the country in the Trump era — all in a rapidly diversifying state.With both parties trying to put their best foot forward for November's general election, here are five things to watch in this summer's preliminary elections. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)In a morning tweet, Trump congratulated Kemp on his “very big win” and launched a broadside against Abrams, calling her “crime loving” and “weak” on the military, among other things.Congratulations to Brian Kemp on your very big win in Georgia last night. Wow, 69-30, those are big numbers. Now go win against the open border, crime loving opponent that the Democrats have given you. She is weak on Vets, the Military and the 2nd Amendment. Win!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2018
Abrams soon fired back on Twitter, saying she was “proud to join the company” of three other Democrats — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Sen. Doug Jones (Ala.) and Rep. Conor Lamb (Pa.) — whom Trump had “campaigned against all the way to victory.”Kemp’s victory served as the latest indication of Trump’s dominance in the Republican Party. His endorsement has proved to be a valuable commodity in primaries from the Deep South to the Northeast in recent months.In Georgia, however, Republicans were left to ponder whether Trump was strengthening the party’s hand ahead of the November election or weakening it. Kemp ran as a Trump-style conservative in a state where the president only narrowly eclipsed the 50 percent mark in 2016. The president’s move put him at odds with many Republican elected officials, including outgoing Gov. Nathan Deal, who backed Cagle.Cagle conceded the race to Kemp just 90 minutes after polls closed. “I committed to him my full, undivided support,” he said.As voters headed to the polls Tuesday morning, Trump reiterated his choice, tweeting: “Today is the day to vote for Brian Kemp. Will be great for Georgia, full Endorsement!”The president first gave his political blessing to Kemp last Wednesday, backing the candidate running as a self-described “politically incorrect conservative
.” Over the weekend, Vice President Pence flew to the state to campaign for Kemp, arguing that he would “bring the kind of leadership to the statehouse that President Donald Trump has brought to the White House.”The White House imprimatur came as a blow to Cagle, the longtime favorite for the nomination. He finished first in the May 22 primary, but his edge faded in a contest that was shaped by embarrassing audio recordings, accusations of “fake news” and Trump’s involvement.As he navigated his way through the crowded primary, with rivals tagging him as the “establishment” candidate, Cagle made moves to appease the right, including a fight to punish Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines for its criticism of the National Rifle Association, as well as support for a tax break for private schools in an effort to weaken another candidate for governor.That became a genuine controversy in June, when conservative gubernatorial challenger Clay Tippins released a recording of Cagle admitting that he had backed the measure specifically to hurt a third candidate, Hunter Hill.“It ain’t about public policy. It’s about . . . politics. There’s a group that was getting ready to put $3 million behind Hunter Hill,” Cagle said on the recording. “Is it bad public policy? Between you and me, it is.”Cagle began to dip in the polls after that recording was aired; Hill would go on to endorse Kemp as the candidate who “won’t sell public policy to the highest bidder.” And Tippins wasn’t done, wounding Cagle again with audio of the front-runner saying that Kemp was running to be the “craziest” candidate in the race.“It sounds like Casey Cagle’s gotten like Hillary Clinton,” Kemp told reporters this month. “I would ask all those crazies to vote Brian Kemp for governor in the Republican runoff.”Kemp has eagerly waded into the culture wars in his campaign, running ads bragging that liberals did not like it when he stood for the national anthem or displayed his guns.In perhaps his most famous spot, released before the first round of voting, Kemp boasted about having a big truck — “just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself.”Cagle fought back by portraying himself as the true conservative in the race. In his final attack ad, he accused Kemp, who has been secretary of state for eight years, of “20 years of failure.” In another ad, Cagle was pictured rallying a crowd of conservatives — a few wearing “Make America Great Again” caps — against the negative stories.“Dirty tricks and fake news are what we’ve come to expect,” Cagle said. “I’ll never apologize for outlawing sanctuary cities or for stopping liberals from taking the values that make our country great.”Georgia Republicans have held the governor’s mansion since 2003, with legislative majorities that have made Democrats largely irrelevant in state politics. But the smash-mouth nature of the contest has emboldened Democrats, who think that the GOP’s race to the right will alienate the suburban voters who are drifting away from the party in the Trump era.“The race for #GAGov may change, but our values never will,” Abrams tweeted after Kemp’s win. “Service, faith & family guide our vision for GA: Affordable health care. Excellent public schools for every child. An economy that works for all.”Abrams has raised a hefty $6 million for the race — nearly $3 million of it since winning the primary. Trump’s 50.44 percent share of the vote in the 2016 election was the lowest for a Republican presidential nominee in two decades. Democrats have increased their share of the vote since then in local elections.A former minority leader of the Georgia House, she won the Democratic primary while surrounding herself with leaders representing women, labor, the LGBT community and causes on the left — predicting at one rally that a rising coalition of minorities and liberal whites would “turn the state of Georgia, and the nation, blue again.”Georgia’s Hispanic population has grown to nearly 10 percent of the state’s, according to a recent Census Bureau estimate. African Americans make up nearly a third of the state’s population.Kemp and fellow Republicans on Tuesday started accelerating efforts to tie Abrams to national Democratic figures, including former presidential nominee Clinton. Their strategy is in line with the GOP’s playbook in other states that Trump won.Further down the ballot Tuesday, Democrats were picking nominees in two suburban Atlanta congressional districts that were crafted to elect Republicans but swung away from the president’s party in 2016.In the 7th Congressional District, former congressional aide Carolyn Bourdeaux defeated education company chief executive David Kim for the right to challenge Rep. Rob Woodall (R). In the 6th Congressional District, where first-time candidate Jon Ossoff lost a close special election last year, gun-control activist Lucy McBath defeated Kevin Abel.Until 2016, neither district was particularly competitive. While Rep. Karen Handel (R) defeated Ossoff in the 6th District, Trump won just 48.3 percent of the vote there and just 51.1 percent in the 7th District — down from the 60 percent that Mitt Romney had won in both districts in 2012.John Wagner contributed to this report. | 0 |
Day of Seesaw Talks Produces No Accord on Fiscal CrisisCredit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesDec. 30, 2012WASHINGTON — Senate leaders on Sunday failed to produce a fiscal deal with just hours to go before large tax increases and spending cuts were to begin taking effect on New Year’s Day, despite a round of volatile negotiations over the weekend and an attempt by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to intervene. In seesaw negotiations, the two sides got closer on the central issue of how to define the wealthy taxpayers who would be required to pay more once the Bush-era tax cuts expire. But that progress was overshadowed by gamesmanship. After Republicans demanded that any deal must include a new way of calculating inflation that would mean smaller increases in payments to beneficiaries of programs like Social Security, Democrats halted the negotiations for much of the day. The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, made an emergency call to Mr. Biden in hopes of restarting negotiations, and the White House sent the president’s chief legislative negotiator to the Capitol to meet with Senate Democrats. Soon after, Republicans withdrew their demand and discussions resumed, but little progress was made.Lawmakers will be back on Monday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said the Senate would return at 11 a.m. Monday and then left the Capitol just after 6 p.m. “Talk to Joe Biden and McConnell,” Mr. Reid told reporters when asked if negotiations were continuing.ImageCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesIn the balance are more than a half-trillion dollars in tax increases on virtually every working American and across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to begin Tuesday. Taken together, they threaten to push the economy back into recession.“It looks awful,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat. “I’m sure the American people are saying, with so much at stake why are they waiting so late to get this done?”Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who had said early Sunday that he thought a deal was within reach, said later on his Twitter feed, “I think we’re going over the cliff.”Weeks of negotiations between President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner inched toward a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, while locking in trillions of dollars in deficit reduction over 10 years and starting an effort to overhaul the tax code and entitlement programs like Medicare. But earlier this month, Mr. Boehner walked away from those talks.Instead he tried to reach a much more modest deal to avoid a fiscal crisis by extending the expiring tax cuts for incomes under $1 million. When Mr. Boehner’s own Republican members revolted, he ceded negotiations to the Senate. But compromise has proved equally elusive in that chamber. Absent a last-minute deal, Mr. Reid is expected to move on Monday to bring to a vote a stopgap measure pushed by Mr. Obama, which would retain lower tax rates for incomes below $250,000 and extend unemployment benefits. But it was not clear that would even get a vote. The objection of a single senator on Monday would run out the clock on the 112th Congress before a final tally could be taken.Mr. Obama appeared on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday and implored Congress to act. “We have been talking to the Republicans ever since the election was over,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers.”ImageCredit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressHe added, “Now the pressure’s on Congress to produce.”After the talks broke down over the inflation demand, Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting on Sunday afternoon to declare the issue off the table for now. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said that holding the line against raising taxes on high-income households while fighting for cuts to Social Security was “not a winning hand.”Then they mustered a new talking point, saying Democrats want to raise taxes only to spend more money. Their new objection: Democrats are seeking a one- to two-year “pause” for across-the-board spending cuts and an extension of expired unemployment benefits for two million people.“We raise taxes, and we spend more?” asked Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas. “It’s business as usual.”For their part, Democrats beat back the inflation proposal, and then promptly proclaimed themselves incensed that Republicans would not soften their position on a generous level of taxation on inherited estates and an insistence that a final deal permanently prevent the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system meant to ensure that wealthy people pay more, from expanding to affect more of the middle class. Democrats were also demanding that across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs — known as the “sequester” — at least be delayed.“We’re not here to defend government, we’re here to make sure of the defense of our country,” said Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, whose state would be hit particularly hard. “Sequester has consequences.”Senate Democratic aides were openly making legislative plans for later this week, to press Democratic proposals after the fiscal deadline is breached — and after the next Congress is sworn in on Thursday with more Democrats in both the House and the Senate. But officials close to the negotiations said the talks were continuing, centered for now on a new axis, Mr. McConnell and Mr. Biden. Much of the umbrage was oddly discordant. Mr. Obama has long advocated for a permanent fix to the alternative minimum tax, which must be “patched” each year to keep it from applying to middle-income families. Until this weekend, both Democrats and Republicans appeared willing to let the across-the-board cuts take effect, at least temporarily, while a larger deficit deal is negotiated early next year. Indeed, many Republicans were the loudest in protesting the cuts. Now that Democrats want them canceled, Republicans equate that position to raising taxes in order to spend more.On some of the biggest sticking points, the two sides are now inches apart. Barely a week after House Republicans refused to vote to allow taxes to rise on incomes over $1 million, Senate Republicans proposed allowing tax rates to rise on incomes over $450,000 for individuals and $550,000 for couples. Democrats countered with a proposal to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts up to $360,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. For both sides, that meant major movement. Mr. Obama has been holding firm at a $250,000 threshold.Of course, a big question hung over the negotiations in the Senate: even if the Senate can find an accord, would it pass the House?Even on the estate tax, the two sides are not far apart, although their language is. Republicans want to tax estates valued above $5 million at 35 percent. Democrats want to tax inheritances above $3.5 million at 45 percent.If that sounds like a bridgeable divide, Democrats are not conceding an inch. “The net result is that 6,000 Americans would get a $1-million-a-year tax break on their estate tax,” Mr. Durbin said. “The Republicans once again are ready to shut us down over not 2 percent of the population, but 0.1 percent of the population.” | 0 |
The Orlando gunman's wife feared he was going to attack a gay nightclub overnight Saturday and pleaded with him not to do anything violent — but failed to warn police after he left, NBC News has learned.Omar Mateen's wife, Noor Zahi Salman, told the FBI that her husband assured her he was simply going to see friends, although she believed he was actually planning to unleash terror at the Pulse nightclub, a two-hour drive north from their home in Port St. Lucie.Mateen, 29, opened fire at Pulse early Sunday, leaving 49 dead and 53 injured.Twenty-seven victims remained hospitalized Tuesday. Six were in critical condition, according to hospital officials who said the death toll was still at risk of rising because one or two of those patients were “profoundly ill.”Noor apparently had an inkling about her husband's sinister plot after she told the FBI she once drove him to Pulse because he wanted to scope it out.In addition, she said she was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster, several officials familiar with the case said.Authorities are considering filing criminal charges against Noor for failing to tell them what she knew before the brutal attack, law enforcement officials say, but no decision has been made.She is cooperating with investigators, several officials add, but worry that once charges are filed, she may stop talking.Mateen, who was carrying a handgun and a Sig Sauer MCX, died in a shootout with police following the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history — and the most deadly act of terror in the country since 9/11.Related: Several Vexing Questions Remain in Orlando MassacreHe told police negotiators during the three-hour siege that he admired the leader of ISIS, as well as the brothers who bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon and a fellow Floridian who became a suicide bomber for the Nusra Front in Syria.Orlando Police identified the suspect in the Pulse Nightclub shootings as Omar Mateen, 29, a U.S. citizen born in New York.via Orlando PoliceFederal officials said the FBI's analysis of electronic devices belonging to Mateen has so far not turned up anything that would shed light on why he committed the massacre.Mateen had a Samsung cellphone, a computer and a digital camera. Investigators found that he downloaded terrorist-related material, including sermons from Anwar al-Awlaki, the notorious al Qaeda propagandist killed in 2011, and videos of ISIS beheadings. But they have not found anti-gay material or anything written by Mateen that would illuminate his motive or choice of target.Mateen was born in New York to Afghan immigrants described by one family friend as loving, close-knit and "very respectful" of America. His clan ended up in Florida, where he attended Indian River State College near his home.He graduated with an associate of science degree in criminal justice technology in 2006, and later got a job as a private security guard. He was fascinated with law enforcement, people who knew him said.He was married twice, and was the father of a 3-year-old boy.Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, based in Washington.Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit.Jonathan Dienst is a reporter for WNBC-TV in New York, leading its investigative reporting team and covering justice and law enforcement issues.Ken Dilanian is a correspondent covering intelligence and national security for the NBC News Investigative Unit. | 0 |
June 7, 2014WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday will take executive actions to ease the burden of college loan debt for potentially millions of Americans, in a White House event coinciding with Senate Democrats’ plans for legislation to address a concern of many voters in this midterm election year. Before an East Room audience, Mr. Obama is scheduled to announce “new steps to further lift the burden of crushing student loan debt,” said a White House official, who declined to be identified describing the actions in advance of the president’s event. Despite past actions by the administration, borrowers’ debt load is growing and retarding the ability to buy homes, start businesses or otherwise spend to spur the economy, economists say.Mr. Obama’s main action will be to expand on a 2010 law that capped borrowers’ repayments at 10 percent of their monthly income. The intent is to extend such relief to an estimated five million people with older loans who are currently ineligible — those who got loans before October 2007 or stopped borrowing by October 2011. But the relief would not be available until December 2015, officials said, given the time needed for the Education Department to propose and put new regulations into effect. Also, Mr. Obama will announce that the department will renegotiate contracts with companies that service federal loans to give them additional financial incentives to help borrowers avoid delinquency or default. The Education and Treasury Departments are to work with the nation’s largest tax-preparation firms, H&R Block and Intuit Inc., to ensure that borrowers are aware of repayment options and tax credits for college tuition.The president said in January, in his State of the Union address, that he would use his “pen and phone” to take executive actions and enlist private institutions on matters when disputes with congressional Republicans block legislation.But legislation generally is more far-reaching, so Mr. Obama will also urge passage of a measure that the Democratic-led Senate plans to take up this week. He plans to discuss the proposal at his Monday event and in a Tuesday question-and-answer session about student loan debt on the Tumblr social-networking website.The Senate bill, sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, would allow an estimated 25 million Americans to refinance student loans, federal and private, at lower interest rates. Reduced interest payments would cost the government about $58 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but the legislation would raise $72 billion by imposing a new tax on some high-income individuals. Because of the tax and the bill’s overall cost, it is unclear whether Democrats can muster enough Republican support to get the 60 votes needed. Even if they succeed, the Republican-controlled House is likely to ignore the measure. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Senate Democratic leader who worked with the White House on the issue, said, “Even though our bill goes further, the president’s action means something will be done even if Republicans block it.” In his weekly address, Mr. Obama defined the choice before Congress in political terms: “Protect young people from crushing debt, or protect tax breaks for millionaires.” About $1 trillion in federal student loans or loan guarantees is outstanding, on top of more than $100 billion in outstanding private student loans that are not federally guaranteed, the Congressional Budget Office reported. While economists argue that a postsecondary education is an investment that pays off, average tuition at four-year public colleges has more than tripled over the past three decades, according to the administration, and 71 percent of those who graduated with a bachelor’s degree carried debt, which averaged $29,400. | 0 |
DES MOINES, Iowa — Bernie Sanders, riding an updraft of insurgent passion in Iowa, has closed to within 7 points of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race.She’s the first choice of 37% of likely Democratic caucusgoers; he’s the pick for 30%, according to a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll.But Clinton has lost a third of her supporters since May, a trajectory that if sustained puts her at risk of losing again in Iowa, the initial crucible in the presidential nominating contest.This is the first time Clinton, the former secretary of state and longtime presumptive front-runner, has dropped below the 50% mark in four polls conducted by the Register and Bloomberg Politics this year.Poll results include Vice President Joe Biden as a choice, although he has not yet decided whether to join the race. Biden captures 14%, five months from the first-in-the-nation vote Feb. 1. Even without Biden in the mix, Clinton falls below a majority, at 43%.“This feels like 2008 all over again,” said J. Ann Selzer, pollster for the Iowa Poll.In that race, Clinton led John Edwards by 6 percentage points and Barack Obama by 7 points in an early October Iowa Poll. But Obama, buoyed by younger voters and first-time caucusgoers, surged ahead by late November.In this cycle, Sanders is attracting more first-time caucusgoers than Clinton. He claims 43% of their vote compared with 31% for Clinton. He also leads by 23 percentage points with the under-45 crowd and by 21 points among independent voters.Sanders, a Vermont U.S. senator, has become a liberal Pied Piper in Iowa not as a vote against Clinton, but because caucusgoers genuinely like him, the poll shows. An overwhelming 96% of his backers say they support him and his ideas. Just 2% say they’re motivated by opposition to Clinton.Back in January, half of likely Democratic caucusgoers were unfamiliar with Sanders, who has been elected to Congress for 25 years as an independent. He has jumped from 5% support in January to 30%. Clinton, a famous public figure for decades, has dropped in that period from 56% to 37%.“These numbers would suggest that she can be beaten,” said Steve McMahon, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns dating to 1980.“But,” he added, “it’s still early, and Hillary Clinton’s done this before. She knows what it takes to win.”If Clinton survives the caucus and primary gauntlet to become the nominee, nearly two-thirds of likely Democratic caucusgoers say they’re “mostly confident” she can win the general election. About 24% are mostly nervous, and 9% aren’t sure.Wild card: Will Biden decide to join race?The open question is what Biden will see in these results. Will he see a teetering front-runner in distress? Or that Sanders has already consolidated a big share of the support available to a Clinton alternative?In a May Iowa Poll, just before his eldest son, Beau, died of brain cancer at age 46, 8% of likely caucusgoers listed Biden as their first choice for president.A Biden bid also would open a two-front war for Clinton. If he were to declare a candidacy, he’d almost certainly get a bump in his numbers.The vice president saps support from both Clinton and Sanders, the poll shows. Without Biden in the mix, Clinton is at 43% and Sanders is at 35%.“So, Biden takes 6 points from Clinton and 5 points from Sanders,” Selzer said.The Iowa Poll of 404 likely Democratic caucusgoers was conducted Aug. 23-26 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.Voters shrug about Clinton email controversyWhat’s driving Clinton’s downward slide and Sanders’ surge?“Voters right now are flocking to the angry, authentic outsiders and moving away from the cautious or calculating establishment insiders,” McMahon said.Clinton has been dogged by media questions and an FBI investigation about whether her use of a private, home-based email server while secretary of state undermined U.S. security.In Iowa on Wednesday, she said use of personal email “clearly wasn’t the best choice.” But Clinton, who says voters don’t bring up the issue, downplays the investigation as “about politics.”Selzer said Clinton is right about the unimportance of the email controversy at this point in the caucus race — 76% of her supporters and 61% of all likely Democratic caucusgoers say it’s not important to them. The emails are at least somewhat important to 28% of all likely caucusgoers, with an additional 10% saying the issue is very important.“The stuff with the emails — that doesn’t bother me,” said poll respondent Craig Glassmeyer, 50, a screen printer from Cedar Rapids. “It’s just being politicized, as well as Benghazi. How could it have been her fault, you know? They really don’t want Hillary in there, and so they’re fighting as hard as they can to block her nomination.”Still, Glassmeyer is one of the 14% who say they’re not sure who their choice is yet or are uncommitted. He’s trying to decide between Clinton and Sanders, “who may be too liberal for me,” he said.Meanwhile, three candidates are in danger of not meeting viability thresholds in the Democratic caucuses.Martin O’Malley, who campaigns on the progressive results he achieved as Baltimore’s mayor and Maryland’s governor, has 3% support.Jim Webb, a former U.S. senator from Virginia who stresses his military experience as a Marine and later a Pentagon official under President Ronald Reagan, is at 2%.And Lincoln Chafee, an ex-Republican and former Rhode Island governor with an anti-war message, gets 1%.The love for Sanders runs deep, the poll shows.Selzer noted that 39% of likely caucusgoers say their feelings about Sanders are very favorable, with another 34% saying mostly favorable. Only 8% have a negative view of Sanders.Contrast that with Clinton: Fewer feel very favorable about her (27%), and twice as many view her negatively (19%).Still, she’s doing better than in fall 2007, when she was viewed negatively by 30% of likely Democratic caucusgoers.Poll respondents say they’re wild about Sanders because of his authenticity, refusal to run a negative campaign and his big ideas, which include government-paid college tuition and health care for all.“He doesn’t sugarcoat anything, and he has answers to actual questions. He doesn’t just use talking points,” said Deb Bolfik, a 41-year-old grocery store worker from Des Moines who intends to support Sanders in the caucuses.Contributing: Jason Noble of The Register | 0 |
Credit...Scott Olson/Getty ImagesMarch 26, 2016Senator Bernie Sanders routed Hillary Clinton in all three Democratic presidential contests on Saturday, infusing his underdog campaign with critical momentum and bolstering his argument that the race for the nomination is not a foregone conclusion.Mr. Sanders found a welcome tableau in the largely white and liberal electorates of the Pacific Northwest, where just days after resoundingly beating Mrs. Clinton in Idaho he repeated the feat in the Washington caucuses, winning 73 percent of the vote. He did even better in Alaska, winning 82 percent of the vote, and in Hawaii, he had 71 percent with a few precincts still be counted, according to The Associated Press.Washington, the largest prize Saturday with 101 delegates in play, was a vital state for Mr. Sanders, whose prospects of capturing the nomination dimmed after double-digit losses to Mrs. Clinton across the South and weak showings in delegate-rich Ohio, Florida and North Carolina this month. As of Saturday evening, Mrs. Clinton had roughly 280 more pledged delegates, who are awarded based on voting, and 440 more superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — than Mr. Sanders.At a rally in Madison, Wis., late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Sanders assured supporters that his victories had cleared a viable path to the nomination. “We knew from day one that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South,” Mr. Sanders said. “But we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”ImageCredit...Elaine Thompson/Associated PressNoting the “huge” voter turnout — in Washington, party officials estimated more than 200,000 people participated on Saturday, close to the record set in 2008 — he told the crowd, “We are making significant inroads into Secretary Clinton’s lead.”The victories on Saturday only slightly narrowed the gulf with Mrs. Clinton in the quest for the 2,382 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.But the wins are likely to bestow on the Sanders campaign a surge of online donations with which to buy advertising in the expensive media markets of New York and Pennsylvania, which hold primaries next month. The victory will also embolden Mr. Sanders to stay in the race and continue challenging Mrs. Clinton on her ties to Wall Street and her foreign policy record.Republicans did not hold any contests on Saturday. The next nominating battle for both parties will be the April 5 primaries in Wisconsin, followed by the April 9 Democratic caucuses in Wyoming, another contest that plays to Mr. Sanders’s strengths.His victories on Saturday were not unexpected. All three states have relatively low percentages of the black and the Latino voters who have bolstered Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and Washington and Alaska held caucuses, the type of voting in which he has done well.ImageCredit...Monica Almeida/The New York TimesYet the results also highlighted the uphill climb Mrs. Clinton would face in winning over the young and liberal voters who have flocked to the Vermont senator, and who often express concerns about her fund-raising and speechmaking practices.On Saturday morning, the auditorium at Eckstein Middle School in North Seattle burst with more than 1,400 caucusgoers holding lattes, pushing strollers and wearing “H” or “Bernie” lapel pins. Bleachers were set up onstage to accommodate the crowd. “This is what democracy looks like,” Janet Miller, the caucus organizer, said from the auditorium’s stage.Mr. Sanders won that precinct on Saturday, and many others. “I appreciate Bernie’s fervor and honesty,” said Ian Forrester, 25, a barista and rock musician who caucused for Mr. Sanders. “We’ve all seen the poor and the middle class suffer during this economic downfall, and we need someone who cares about them, not about corporations.”The Sanders campaign blanketed Washington with $1 million in ads. Mr. Sanders found a sweet spot of support among Seattle’s young voters. A video clip of his rally on Friday, just over the state line in Portland, Ore., went viral after a delicate songbird perched on his podium, inspiring the Twitter hashtag #BirdieSanders. “I think there may be some symbolism here,” Mr. Sanders said to a roar of applause.Mrs. Clinton will have a chance to regain momentum, and a wash of delegates, when the Democratic primary moves to her adoptive home state, New York, on April 19. Her national campaign headquarters is in Brooklyn; on Saturday, Mr. Sanders opened an office in the borough’s Gowanus neighborhood, just a few miles from where he grew up.Lately on the campaign trail, Mrs. Clinton, bracing for some losses in the caucus states, seemed to have grown annoyed by the commentary from political rivals that Mr. Sanders’s campaign has drawn far more enthusiastic supporters. “I totally respect the passion of my opponent’s supporters, absolutely respect it,” Mrs. Clinton said while campaigning on Tuesday in Washington.“And here’s what I want you to know,” she continued, “I have, as of now, gotten more votes than anybody else, including Donald Trump. I have gotten 2.6 million more votes than Bernie Sanders,” and “have a bigger lead in pledged delegates, the ones you win from people voting, than Barack Obama had at this time in 2008.”Mrs. Clinton has shifted her focus and her words to taking on the Republicans in November, but given Mr. Sanders’s influence over liberal voters she would need in a general election, she has been cautious how she discusses domestic and foreign policy.With Mr. Sanders’s focus on income inequality and taking on Wall Street, Mrs. Clinton has continued to reach out to working-class voters, including holding a rally on Tuesday at a machinists and aerospace workers union hall at the Boeing factory in Everett, Wash.“I was made an honorary machinist some years ago, so I feel a particular connection here to my brothers and sisters in the machinists,” she told the crowd. “I am no person new to this struggle. I am not the latest flavor of the month. I have been doing this work day in and day out for years.”ImageCredit...Scott Olson/Getty ImagesShe also knocked Mr. Sanders for not supporting the Export-Import Bank, the government-backed agency that provides low-interest loans to help companies doing international business, like Boeing, and which Mr. Sanders and some Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, have opposed as “corporate welfare.”And as Mrs. Clinton sought to demonstrate her toughness and preparedness to be commander in chief in response to the terrorist attacks on Tuesday in Brussels, she also had to avoid inflaming liberal primary voters who still associate her with her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the Iraq war.On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton said the responses to the Brussels attacks by the leading Republican candidates, Donald J. Trump and Mr. Cruz, amounted to “reckless actions” that would alienate American allies, demonize Muslims and embolden Russia.Mr. Sanders ran an emotional 90-second ad in Hawaii, called “The Cost of War,” featuring Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran from Hawaii who reminded viewers that Mr. Sanders voted against the Iraq war.“Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars and invest it here at home,” an impassioned Ms. Gabbard said, against scenic views of Hawaii.Foreign policy was what motivated Warren Jones, 65, a retired software engineer, to caucus for Mr. Sanders on Saturday in Seattle. “She was wrong on Iraq, and proved she didn’t learn from that experience, but was wrong on Libya, too,” Mr. Jones said. “I think in large part she is responsible for ISIS, though there’s plenty of blame to go around.” | 0 |
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert has been chosen as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President Donald Trump confirmed Friday following multiple reports.The former Fox News host had been Trump’s top pick for the spot since mid-October, shortly after Nikki Haley surprised the White House by announcing her departure by the end of the year. Trump was reportedly looking for a loyal candidate who had a willingness to defend him, according to CNN.Trump called his U.N. pick “very talented, very smart and very quick” as he spoke to reporters in front of the White House, praising her work at the State Department.“I think she’s going to be respected by all,” he said.Haley had insisted that her ambassadorship be a Cabinet-level role, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly has asked that Nauert’s position not be so high-level. Nauert was criticized over a “stunningly tone deaf” Instagram photo she shared in October depicting her smiling in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh shortly after Pompeo arrived there to discuss the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident. The Saudi government would later admit that Khashoggi had been murdered.Sara Boboltz contributed to this report. | 0 |
When a moderate goes against his party, the political media are drawn like moths to a flame. Such was the case with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Sunday, as he appeared on NBC’s, CNN’s and ABC’s Sunday talk shows to explain his opposition to the budget reconciliation bill at the center of President Biden’s legislative agenda.The West Virginia senator came with plenty of rationalizations. He expressed concern about inflation and the national debt. (“Do we have the urgency to spend another $3.5 trillion right now?” he asked on CNN.) He rejected the idea that the bill needed to be moved in tandem with the bipartisan infrastructure deal he helped broker. “We don’t have the need to rush into this and get it done within one week because there’s some deadline we’re meeting,” he said on NBC of the reconciliation bill. By contrast, he told CNN, “the president went out and campaigned on [the infrastructure deal]. That’s his bill.”But these arguments apply equally to the infrastructure deal and the budget reconciliation bill. Any concerns about the debt or inflation should surely also apply to the $1 trillion for infrastructure, and there’s no deadline that necessitates rushing it, either. President Biden has campaigned for both bills.In September, Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shared their perspectives on a multi-trillion dollar spending package. (The Washington Post)As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on ABC, “Physical infrastructure is terribly important. But I happen to think that the needs of the human beings of our country, working families, the children, the elderly, the poor are even more important, and we can and must do both.” That’s why, though Manchin claims otherwise, the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress have consistently stated that the two bills are linked.So what, then, really distinguishes the two bills for Manchin? The answer seems to lie in an answer he gave on ABC, when asked whether neither bill may end up passing. “If you don’t need bridges fixed or roads fixed in your state, I do in West Virginia,” he replied. “I need Internet in West Virginia. I got water and sewage problems. I have got all the problems that we have addressed in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.”I, I, I. This isn’t unusual phrasing for Manchin. In a recent New Yorker profile, he described his concerns about West Virginia’s economy as “I can’t lose one job. I don’t have one to spare,” as though his Senate office is the state’s employment center. The decisive factor for Manchin isn’t the debt, the pandemic or the inflation rate. It’s that one bill has what he wants, and the other doesn’t.This “me first” selfishness has served Manchin well for many years, and not just as a blue politician surviving in a red state. A new report from Type Investigations and the Intercept on the coal companies that made his fortune found that “for decades,” Manchin’s coal firms “have relied on mines and refuse piles cited for dozens of Mine Safety and Health Agency violations, multiple deaths, and wastewater discharging that has poisoned tributaries feeding into the Monongahela River, as hundreds of thousands of tons of carcinogenic coal ash are dumped across Marion County.”While Manchin doesn’t own the mines and power plants polluting the state, his businesses have benefited handsomely from them. Since he joined the Senate 10 years ago, the investigation found, he has “grossed more than $4.5 million” from his firms, according to financial disclosures. As the article notes, Manchin has said his ownership interest is held in a blind trust.No doubt Manchin would bristle at the suggestion that his opposition to the reconciliation bill and its climate provisions would have anything to do with their impact on his personal wealth. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, the theme remains the same: Manchin gets his, while everyone else can fend for themselves.Luckily, Manchin hasn’t gotten what he wants yet — and that gives the White House and the left leverage. Manchin is famously prickly about pressure campaigns, but his desire for the bipartisan infrastructure bill is palpable. Democrats shouldn’t be shy about threatening to tank both bills if one won’t pass.Similar dynamics have already played out in the House. As the Intercept’s Ryan Grim has reported, for example, progressives on the House Education Committee shut down moderates’ attempts to water down a robust child-care benefit by refusing to vote for a more modest benefit. Sticking to the two-track path is the best chance to ensure that not only does Manchin gets his, but also all Americans get theirs. | 0 |
Former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer announced Saturday night that he was ending his campaign for the Democratic nomination after a disappointing finish in the South Carolina primary.“I said if I didn’t see a path to winning that I would suspend my campaign, and honestly, I don’t see a path where I can win the presidency,” Steyer said at an event in Columbia, adding that he would “of course” be supporting the eventual nominee, because they’re all “a million times better than Trump.”“When the Lord closes a door, he opens a window,” he continued. “I will find that window and crawl through it with you, I promise you that. I love you very much. This has been a great experience, I have zero regrets. Meeting you and the rest of the American people is the highlight of my life.”Steyer had spent over $22 million in South Carolina, far more than his competitors, but he may not secure a single delegate from the state, after finishing third behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders. He also invested heavily in Nevada, but finished a disappointing fifth in last weekend’s caucuses, with just 4.7 percent of the vote. Steyer spent $253 million of his personal fortune on the race as of the end of January.Tom Steyer at a town hall meeting on rural healthcare issues on Feb. 27 in Orangeburg, S.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)The billionaire was a late entrant in the race, changing his mind after initially saying he wouldn’t run, and jumping into the field in July. Using his personal fortune to solicit donors on social media and leaning on the email list he had put together during his campaign calling for the impeachment of President Trump, Steyer was able to qualify for the October debates, leading to complaints from some of the other candidates in the race that he had bought his placement with the frontrunners.Steyer made it his focus to try to attract African-American voters, stating in nearly every debate that he was the only candidate on stage in favor of reparations for slavery. His expenditures in South Carolina divided Democrats there, with some accusations that he was attempting to buy support. Steyer was also outspoken in his support for emergency action on climate change, which he also tied to race.“I believe that in every major policy area, there is an unspoken area about race,” Steyer said in a January interview with Yahoo News. “For instance, I’m saying climate is my No. 1 priority. I’m also saying our climate plan is called a justice-based climate plan. And it starts in the communities, like say, Denmark, S.C., or Flint, Mich., where people can’t drink the water. We know who lives there: African-Americans. We know who lives in the San Joaquin Valley, where people can’t drink the water safely out of the taps: low-income Latinos.”Compared to the vitriol faced by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the second billionaire to enter the Democratic race, Steyer was generally well-received by his fellow candidates. He briefly became a meme after an awkward moment after the conclusion of January’s debate, where he was attempting to say hello to Sanders while the senator was in conversation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In another debate moment, Steyer said he disagreed with the assertion of the former nominee Hillary Clinton that nobody liked Sanders.Last year, Steyer also went out of his way to defend former Vice President Joe Biden after Trump urged foreign governments to help investigate Biden and his son Hunter, eventually leading to the president’s impeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senate.“This is an attempted smear by the Trump campaign. Just the way he tried to smear Hillary Clinton,” Steyer said in a September interview with Yahoo News. “I think that Mr. Biden should be left out of this. I don’t think he’s done anything wrong. I think a bunch of newspapers looked at it and decided he hadn’t done anything wrong.”_____Read more from Yahoo News:Full coverage, FAQs & more: 2020 Election CenterPompeo appeared to coordinate with Giuliani on Ukraine, new documents showWith information from China scarce, U.S. spies enlisted to track coronavirusLatinos, Sanders's secret weapon in Nevada, could make him unstoppable on Super TuesdayIs Bezos's $10 billion pledge as generous as it seems? | 0 |
This is the most serious hurricane risk in New England in 30 years.Hurricane and storm surge warnings were in effect for portions of Long Island and southern New England.Forecasters said Henri would make landfall at or near hurricane strength on Sunday.The northeastern U.S. is bracing for its first direct hit from a hurricane in years as Hurricane Henri continued to barrel north Saturday.The system, which was upgraded to a hurricane with winds of 75 mph as of 8 p.m. Saturday, is forecast to slam into Long Island or southern New England on Sunday at or near hurricane strength, with winds that could approach 80 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for parts of New York, including Long Island, New York City and Hudson Valley. He asked people to take warnings seriously at a Saturday news conference.Threatening to bring damaging winds, 3 to 6 inches of rain with isolated totals of up to 10 inches and up to 5 feet of storm surge, Henri could be the first significant hurricane to affect the region in years."This is the most serious hurricane risk in New England in 30 years, since Hurricane Bob in 1991," AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jon Porter said. Bob was a Category 2 storm that killed at least 17 people.Hurricane and storm surge warnings were in effect for portions of Long Island and southern New England, the National Hurricane Center said. Over 5 million people live where a hurricane warning is in place, the National Weather Service reported."Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion," the Hurricane Center said. Tropical storm warnings were also issued for much of southern New England, Long Island and southern New York, including New York City itself.Henri was centered Saturday afternoon about 290 miles east-northeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and about 255 miles south of Montauk Point, New York. It was moving north-northeast at 18 mph.The weather service warned of the potential for damaging winds and widespread coastal flooding from Henri, and officials in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York cautioned that people could lose power for a week or even longer. Authorities urged people to secure their boats, fuel up their vehicles and stock up on canned goods.Cuomo said he is deploying 500 members of the state's National Guard and placing swift water rescue teams on standby. He said the state has also deployed 500 national guard members and have 1,000 state police officers on duty in affected areas, as well as FEMA teams.Cuomo drew ominous parallels between the approaching hurricane and 2012's catastrophic Superstorm Sandy, which killed more than 100 people and created billions of dollars in damage. In New York City, Sandy flooded streets, tunnels and subway lines and caused power outages throughout the city.But he said, unlike Sandy, residents have had less notice ahead of Hurricane Henri because of recent changes in the storm's trajectory."So if you have to move, if you have to stock up, if you have to get to higher ground, it has to be today," he said.Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee signed an emergency declaration Friday ahead of the storm, the governor said at a Saturday news conference.McKee said residents should prepare for flooding, high winds and rip currents. State beaches and parks will close Sunday and perhaps Monday, he said. He suggested securing homes and boats, gathering supplies like extra food and water, charging electronic devices and preparing flashlights and generators.Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday urged people vacationing on the Cape to leave well before Henri hits, and those who planned to start vacations there to delay their plans. “We don’t want people to be stuck in traffic on the Cape Cod bridges when the storm is in full force on Sunday,” he said.Henri (pronounced ahn-REE) will remain offshore of the mid-Atlantic beaches as it moves northward through Saturday. Beaches from Savannah, Georgia, to Atlantic City, New Jersey, can expect some indirect impacts from the storm, including rough surf and the chance of dangerous rip currents. Grace strikes Mexico a second time; at least 8 killedHurricane Grace crossed over Mexico's Gulf shore as a major Category 3 storm early Saturday, drenching small fishing towns and beach resorts as it made its second landfall in the country in two days. At least eight people were confirmed dead, authorities said.The storm had lost power while crossing over the Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, swirling through Mexico's main tourist strip, but it rapidly drew in power from the relatively warm Gulf of Mexico as it moved toward the country's mainland.The Hurricane Center said Grace had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph Saturday when it made landfall about 30 miles south-southeast of Tuxpan. As of 5 p.m., Grace had weakened to a disturbance, heading west 65 miles away from Mexico City at 13 mph with maximum sustained winds of 25 mph.The eight dead included children, said Cuitláhuac García, governor of Mexico’s Veracruz state. In addition, at least three were missing after mudslides and flooding. Power is gradually being restored to the 33,000 who lost power in the storm.Forecasters said Grace would quickly lose strength as it swirled inland over a mountain range carrying its heavy rains toward the heart of the country, including the Mexico City region. Forecasters said it could drop 6 to 12 inches of rain, with more in a few isolated areas – bringing the threat of flash floods, mudslides and urban flooding."Although Grace has dissipated, its remnants will likely move into the eastern North Pacific by Sunday afternoon, where it is likely to develop into a new tropical cyclone next week," the National Weather Service said.Contributing: The Associated Press | 0 |
It’s not often that you interview a subject who has no interest in being famous. But recently, I did just that when I sat down with Lisa Page the week before Thanksgiving in my hotel room in Washington, D.C. Page, of course, is the former FBI lawyer whose text-message exchanges with agent Peter Strzok that belittled Donald Trump and expressed fear at his possible victory became international news. They were hijacked by Trump to fuel his “deep state” conspiracy.For the nearly two years since her name first made the papers, she’s been publicly silent (she did have a closed-door interview with House members in July 2018). I asked her why she was willing to talk now. “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she says. The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11. That was the moment Page decided she had to speak up. “I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she says. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.” She is also about to be back in the news cycle in a big way. On Dec. 9, the Justice Department inspector general report into Trump’s charges that the FBI spied on his 2016 campaign will come out. Leaked press accounts indicate the report will exonerate Page of the allegation that she acted unprofessionally or showed bias against Trump.How does it feel after all this time to finally have the IG apparently affirm what she’s been saying all along? She said she wouldn’t discuss the findings until they were officially public, but she did note: “While it would be nice to have the IG confirm publicly that my personal opinions had absolutely no bearing on the course of the Russia investigations, I don’t kid myself that the fact will matter very much for a lot of people. The president has a very loud megaphone.”Page, 40, is thin and athletic. She speaks in an exceedingly confident, clear, and lawyerly way. But having been through the MAGA meat grinder has clearly worn her down, not unlike the other women I’ve met who’ve been subjected to the president’s abuse. She is just slightly crumbly around the edges the way the president’s other victims are. “It’s almost impossible to describe” what it’s like, she told me. “It’s like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.” “But it’s also very intimidating because he’s still the president of the United States. And when the president accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he’s still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me.”Does it affect you in your normal day-to-day life?“I wish it didn’t,” she said. “I’m someone who’s always in my head anyway—so now otherwise normal interactions take on a different meaning. Like, when somebody makes eye contact with me on the Metro, I kind of wince, wondering if it’s because they recognize me, or are they just scanning the train like people do? It’s immediately a question of friend or foe? Or if I’m walking down the street or shopping and there’s somebody wearing Trump gear or a MAGA hat, I’ll walk the other way or try to put some distance between us because I’m not looking for conflict. Really, what I wanted most in this world is my life back.”Rising Through the RanksLisa Page did not aspire to fame or fortune. She was, she says, “one of those nerdy kids who from very early on knew I wanted work for the government and make the world a better place.” Born in the San Fernando Valley, she and her family moved to Ohio in her teens. She went to American University in Washington, D.C., and then moved back home to central Ohio to attend law school, living with her parents so she could save money. After graduating from law school, she was one of an elite group selected for admission in the Department of Justice Honors Program in 2006—and the only woman in her class of five entering the Criminal Division. She worked as a federal prosecutor for six years before moving across the street to the FBI’s office of general counsel. Soon after her arrival, the deputy general counsel over national-security law hired her for a new special-counsel-type position in 2013.Once there, her path begins to be set.“I start [in the role] in early 2013, and there are two big events that kind of set the trajectory for the rest of my career at the FBI: the Boston bombing in April 2013, and Edward Snowden’s leaks in June of the same year,” she told me. “And those are both significant in their own ways, because the Boston bombing introduces me to Andy McCabe, who at the time was the head of the counterterrorism division at the FBI. Two months later, the Snowden leaks hit, which became a transformative moment for the intelligence community, setting off a series of reforms by the Obama administration with respect to the legal authorities that we rely on to collect intelligence.” Eventually, she was asked to lead that effort, “which gives me a lot of exposure to senior FBI executives, as well as leaders through the IC, DOJ, and White House.”Page continued to rise through the ranks of the FBI and was assigned to more significant and substantive work. She became close with McCabe. Eventually she became McCabe’s special counsel.Hillary’s Emails and Russia—All At onceBy February 2016, she was working on one of the most important investigations at the FBI—the Hillary Clinton email case. “We knew that the case was going to get picked apart,” she says. “And we know there’s not a person on the FBI team or the DOJ team who thinks this is not the right result. There is no case to be brought here. But it’s very busy. It’s very intense. Director [James] Comey was very clear he wanted this completed as soon as humanly possible and outside of the political environment. So there was a real focus to get it done before the conventions that were happening that summer. And so that’s what we did.” “But her emails” would soon give way to an actual threat to national security, one that existed not in the fever dreams of Fox News and the Breitbart comments section, but in the real, dangerous world the FBI exists to protect us from, where things like foreign meddling in our elections takes place: strong evidence of Russian interference in the election on behalf of Trump.“There are two things that happen in the late summer of 2016,” Page says. “The first, of course, is that the FBI gets the predication [courtesy of loose-lipped George Papadopoulos], which starts the Russian investigation. We learn about the possibility that there’s someone on the Trump campaign coordinating with the Russian government in the release of emails, which will damage the Clinton campaign.” “Predication” sounds mild for what it really means; in the summer of 2016, the FBI and the intelligence community were seeing increasing signs from a variety of intelligence sources and programs (that Page cannot and will not discuss due to classification reasons) that members of the Trump campaign were tied to a variety of Russian intelligence services, and that the Russian Federation was in the midst of trying to manipulate the 2016 United States election with a sweeping information-warfare and propaganda effort. As The New York Times reported on Nov. 22, U.S. intel services concluded, and have told Senate Republicans, that Russia mounted a massive disinformation campaign to implicate Ukraine in 2016 meddling and hide its own role.At the end of July 2016, Page finds herself transitioning from one investigation, the Hillary Clinton email inquiry, to another, the Russian government disinformation probe. Trump is not under investigation, but the FBI is trying to determine if someone associated with his campaign is working with Russia.“We were very deliberate and conservative about who we first opened on because we recognized how sensitive a situation it was,” Page says. “So the prospect that we were spying on the campaign or even investigating candidate Trump himself is just false. That’s not what we were doing.” Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty From Anonymity to InfamyFrom summer 2016 to spring 2017, Page worked for McCabe, who had become deputy director. They were very busy, but things were largely normal. And then, on May 9, 2017, FBI Director Comey was fired. What was that like?“It was horrible,” Page said. “It was a devastating moment at the FBI. It was like a funeral, only worse, because at least when someone dies, you get to come together and celebrate and talk about that person. He was still alive. But he was inaccessible to us. It jolted the ranks and the investigation. It was so abrupt. He was there one day and gone the next.”Was that very unusual?“Well, I mean, all of it was!” she replied. “The FBI director had just been fired. Yes, it was totally within the authority of the president, but it was unprecedented and unimaginable given the circumstances. The president fired him with the knowledge that, of course, we were investigating Russian contacts with his campaign. I mean, it just gave the aura of an obstructive effort.”Page would have probably just been another FBI lawyer if it wasn’t for the extraordinarily politicized environment and a president who had a habit of attacking career government employees. Page, like many other targets of Trump’s wrath, felt the pressure both from the external force of his massive social media presence, but also from within the government. “At the end of July in 2017, I am informed by the DOJ Inspector General's Office that I’m under investigation for political text messages and honestly, I have no idea what they’re talking about,” she told me. “I have no recollection. And initially they’re very coy about it. They don’t tell me much about it. I don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about. What I do know is that my text messages will reveal that I had previously had an affair. I’m overwhelmed by dread and embarrassment at the prospect that OIG investigators, Andy, and my colleagues, now know or could learn about this deeply personal secret.”She doesn’t think for a minute that her texts with Peter Strzok are too political. They are largely devoted to work and to talking about family members and various articles they read. The few texts that so convulsed the Republicans involved Page asking for reassurance that Trump wouldn’t become president, and Strzok replying with “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Glenn Kessler wrote in The Washington Post that “some of the texts reflect a deep animus toward Trump and the way he conducted himself during the 2016 campaign.” “Having an opinion and sharing that opinion publicly or privately with another person is squarely within the permissible bounds of the Hatch Act.”She is convinced that she’s followed the rules. She is, after all, a lawyer and knows that she is a restricted employee under the Hatch Act and can’t engage in partisan political activity. “And I know I’m nowhere close to that,” she says. “I don’t engage in any sort of partisan politicking at all. But having an opinion and sharing that opinion publicly or privately with another person is squarely within the permissible bounds of the Hatch Act. It’s in the regs. Yeah, it says it plainly. I’m thinking, I know I’m a federal employee, but I retain my First Amendment rights. So I’m really not all that worried about it.”So she hires a lawyer and meets with the IG, who interviews her a number of times. A very small number of people at the FBI know about the investigation, and it stays a secret for six months, and it remains a secret for six months, until the day after Michael Flynn pleads guilty. Then in early December 2017, the day after Flynn’s plea, a report comes out about Page being under investigation for political bias—and it includes the affair. The affair was not part of IG’s investigation and not part of their review. The Inspector General’s Office had guaranteed Page and Strzok that the affair would not be made public. But then, The Washington Post included the affair in its story. And in a slip of a second, Page goes from being an anonymous government lawyer to playing an unwilling and recurring role in Trump’s twisted tweetstorms. “So now I have to deal with the aftermath of having the most wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life become public,” she says. “And that’s when I become the source of the president’s personal mockery and insults. Because before this moment in time, there’s not a person outside of my small legal community who knows who I am or what I do. I’m a normal public servant, just a G-15, standard-level lawyer, like every other lawyer at the Justice Department.”And despite how awful that felt, Page had no idea it was going to get much, much worse. REUTERS Trump’s ‘Truly Reprehensible... Stunt’“After this comes out, there’s a firestorm, of course, and now the president and the Republicans on the Hill latch on to this, and it becomes about political bias,” she explains. “A week or two later, Rod Rosenstein [then the deputy attorney general] was scheduled to testify on the Hill. And the night before his testimony, the Justice Department spokesperson, Sarah Flores, calls the beat reporters into the Justice Department. This is late at night on a weekday. Calls them in to provide a cherry-picked selection of my text messages to review and report on in advance of Rod Rosenstein going to the Hill the next morning.”Why does she think the administration released her text messages?“You’d have to ask Sarah Flores,” she says. “I can tell you that the reporters there that night were told that they weren’t allowed to source them to the Justice Department, and that they weren’t allowed to copy or remove them, just take notes. That’s what I know.”“Those texts were selected for their political impact. They lack a lot of context. Many of them aren't even about him or me.”Sarah Isgur Flores has left the administration and referred questions to the Justice Department. In 2017, Flores said that the Justice Department inspector general approved the release of the texts to congressional committees, and that DOJ then provided those texts to reporters who cover the agency after they started to leak out. “As we understand now, some members of the media had already received copies of the texts before that—but those disclosures were not authorized by the department,” Flores said then.DOJ declined to comment. As Politico noted at the time, “The DOJ decision to release the text messages to the media and lawmakers before the IG report has drawn criticism from outside the department.” Ben Wittes wrote on the Lawfare blog, “Rosenstein here has, at a minimum, contributed to that circus—at the expense of his own employees. In throwing a career FBI agent and career FBI lawyer to the wolves by authorizing the release to the public of their private text messages—without any finding that they had done anything wrong—he once again sent a message to his workforce that he is not the sort of man with whom you want to share your foxhole.”Justice Department officials have said the texts, sent on FBI-issued devices, were subject to public disclosure. In a statement, Rosenstein noted that career Justice Department employees, not political appointees, made the decision to release them. “They were official government records related to FBI business and there was no legal basis to withhold them, so they should be released as requested by Congress,” he said.Regardless, Page felt abandoned by the FBI and Justice because of the release of the messages and because the bureau issued no statement defending her and Strzok. “So things get worse,” she continues. “And of course, you know, those texts were selected for their political impact. They lack a lot of context. Many of them aren’t even about him or me. We’re not given an opportunity to provide any context. In a lot of those texts we were talking about other people like our family members or articles we had sent each other.”I ask her what she did next.“There’s not really anything to do,” she tells me. “I go back to work. I try to keep my life together.” But she didn’t stay. She left the FBI in May 2018 (which is why she says she is now free to talk to the press—she hasn’t worked for the government for 18 months). Could she have stayed if she had wanted to? “No, not for much longer. It was very inhospitable.” Does it feel like a trauma? “It is. I wouldn’t even call it PTSD because it’s not over. It’s ongoing. It’s not a historical event that is being relived. It just keeps happening.”And it’s still going on? “I mean, he tweeted about me four days ago,” she told me on Nov. 18. “When Roger Stone got convicted, he asked, why isn’t Page in jail too? Not to mention, you know, his truly reprehensible, degrading stunt at his rally, in which he used my name to simulate an orgasm. And I don’t ever know when the president’s going to attack next. And when it happens, it can still sort of upend my day. You don’t really get used to it.”Watching the Justice Dept. CollapseShe doesn’t use Facebook or Instagram (and was not on Twitter until this story published), so she relies on a group of her close friends—the support system, along with her husband, that has helped her get through the last two years—to be her alert system. “I’ll get a text from a friend alerting me to an outrageous tweet by the president and my first question is always—is it about me? Often the answer is yes,” she says. I ask her about how for about a month back when all this started, Trump called her the “lovely” Lisa Page. She postulates that it’s possible after her congressional testimony that he saw a picture of her. Which makes as much sense as anything in Trumpworld. One thing becomes quickly apparent talking to Page: What really upset her, what still devastates her, was not the end of her extremely promising career at the FBI, but instead what Trump has done to the FBI itself.“It’s crushing to see the noble Justice Department, my Justice Department, the place I grew up in, feel like it’s abandoned its principles of truth and independence.”“It’s very painful to see to places like the FBI and the Department of Justice that represent so much of what is excellent about this country, not fulfilling the critical obligation that they have to speak truth to power,” she tells me. “The thing about the FBI that is so extraordinary is that it is made up of a group of men and women whose every instinct is to run toward the fight. It’s in the fiber of everybody there. It’s the lifeblood. So it’s particularly devastating to be betrayed by an organization I still care about so deeply. And it’s crushing to see the noble Justice Department, my Justice Department, the place I grew up in, feel like it’s abandoned its principles of truth and independence.” Page accepts that her life will never be the same, that there’s no “normal life” to return to. She’s still married to her husband and they have two small children. Ultimately, she was just another public servant like Fiona Hill or Marie Yovanovitch. She was dragged into the spotlight, her text messages weaponized, and her life destroyed so that the Trump administration could have a brief distraction.The era of Trump populism always had an ugly edge, particularly toward women. Trump revels in bringing misery to his opponents and will always seek out and exploit any weakness. Page “wasn’t nice to him,” and so in his eyes she can be endlessly targeted and assaulted. It’s tempting to describe this as just part of Trump’s deep, baked-in misogyny and sociopathy, but in Page’s case it’s worse; it’s a sign of how deeply he’s corrupted the government to serve his will and his whims. His apologists have become part of Trump’s own squad of witch-hunters, hunting fantasies like “Ukrainian interference” while attacking the people who tried to protect us from Russian attacks.It’s not just that Lisa Page may never be safe as long as Trump is president. It’s that we won’t be safe, either. CORRECTION: In the original version of this article, the sentence describing the Nov. 22 report in The New York Times about intel services briefing Senate Republicans on Russia trying to implicate Ukraine in 2016 election meddling was in quotation marks. That sentence is in fact a paraphrase. | 0 |
After FBI Director James Comey called Clinton's handling of classified material "extremely careless," Ryan argued in an interview on Fox on Tuesday that the Democratic nominee shouldn't be permitted to get top secret briefings, but the letter formalizes that recommendation.Ryan cites his own experience receiving classified intelligence briefings as his party's vice presidential nominee in 2012 in his letter, saying he understands Clinton is set to begin getting similar briefings after her party formally nominates her at the Democratic convention later this month."There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation's secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI's findings," Ryan writes.Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are exploring legislative options to block Clinton's ability to have classified briefings, but some GOP aides concede the decision is mostly up to the intelligence community.The top House Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, called the move "as predictable as it is absurd.""Providing an intelligence briefing for the party nominees is a sound practice, and is designed both to prepare the candidates for office and to help them avoid representations during the campaign that may adversely affect the national interest before or after election," he said in a statement. "The call by the House GOP leadership to cancel briefings for Secretary Clinton and brief only Donald Trump is as predictable as it is absurd."He added: "With Trump, the question isn't whether the briefings should occur, but whether they would do any good." Separately on Wednesday, Ryan sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to release all the unclassified materials of his probe of Clinton's email use. The speaker's push comes as Comey testified Thursday morning before the House Oversight Committee. | 0 |
For the second time in less than a week, North Korea launched suspected short-range missiles, according to South Korea's military. The projectiles were fired Thursday from near a military base about 50 miles from North Korea's capital Pyongyang. There were few other details immediately available. State media in North Korea said that on Saturday the nation held a short-range ballistic missile test as part of a regularly scheduled defensive military exercise. It was the country's first such test in more than a year and came amid what appear to be stalled denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington. "We're looking at it very seriously now. Nobody's happy about it but we're taking a good look and we'll see," President Donald Trump said Thursday in response to North Korea's latest missile launch. "The relationship continues."38 North, a website devoted to analysis of North Korea, said that Saturday's test provided "convincing evidence" that Pyongyang is continuing to seek greater military and strategic capabilities despite holding nuclear disarmament talks with Trump. "Pyongyang perceives itself to be under threat of aggression by the United States. (North Korea's leader) Kim Jong Un very likely has other strategic weapons projects underway, whether foreign procurement efforts or indigenous development programs," 38 North said in a post on its website. South Korean media noted that Thursday's launch coincided with a visit to the Korean Peninsula by the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea. Stephen Biegun arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for talks with South Korea's leader about inter-Korean issues, including ways to move beyond an apparent Trump-Kim impasse after two summits failed to produce any tangible agreements on North Korea's denuclearization. Otto Warmbier's mother: North Korea is a 'cancer,' criticizes 'charade' diplomacySouth Korea's military indicated the projectiles launched Thursday likely crash-landed in the East China Sea. Japan’s Kyodo News agency said there was no threat or impact on that nation's national security. There was also no threat to Guam or the Mariana Islands, U.S. territories located 2,100 miles southeast of the launch area, according to the offices of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defense.South Korea’s military said the two suspected missiles flew about 260 miles and 167 miles, respectively. It said the base from where they were likely launched is also home to medium-range missiles that can fly up to 800 miles, enough to strike Japan.The second Trump-Kim summit took place in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February. It ended without agreement over what to do about North Korea's nuclear program after Trump refused to grant Pyongyang economic sanctions relief. "Sometimes you have to walk and this was one of those times," Trump said at the time. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that North Korea's weekend missile test would not trigger new sanctions or hinder any diplomatic process because the test did not involve long-range or intercontinental missiles, an apparent red line. Trump said Thursday that "North Korea has tremendous potential economically" and he didn't think Kim would want to jeopardize that. Separately Thursday, Justice Department officials announced that they seized a North Korean ship, "Wise Honest," that violated international sanctions by attempting to sell coal, which is on a United Nations Security Council export ban list for the country. "This sanctions-busting ship is now out of service," Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said in a statement. A complaint seeking the vessel's forfeiture was filed in federal District Court by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. North Korea:U.S. seizes cargo ship linked to sanctions violations by exporting coalShea Cotton, an expert on North Korea at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, said that North Korea’s latest missile test could be aimed at extracting sanctions concessions from Trump."By doing these smaller scale missile tests I think it’s in part done to send a signal that North Korea can go back to doing those missile tests whenever it wants and if Trump wants to stop that he needs to give North Korea something," he said. "There is certainly frustration on the North Korean side for lack of progress," said Jenny Town, a Stimson Center think tank fellow and managing editor of 38 North. "North Korea will continue to develop its defensive capabilities as long as its relationship with both Seoul and Washington remain fundamentally unchanged," she said. | 0 |
With Father's Day looming, I am thinking of greeting cards. No, not the card I need to send my father, but the cards he sent to me every single day when I went away. At camp or visiting relatives, and even into college, I could count on that daily envelope from home: a card carefully selected for the sort of jokes that might appeal to a 9-year-old, and a handwritten note from him. Those notes were often short, sometimes just a single detail from the daily life I was missing. All of them were signed the same way: "Love, me." But in case I should have any question about authorship, he also included a stick figure that sort of resembled him, in that it was very tall, slender and smiling. I hardly needed the picture, of course. Even then, I knew what's special about fathers: There is only one of them, and they love you.I wish I'd had the gratitude, or the foresight, to save what must have been hundreds of cards over my childhood. I'd like to pore over those homey details, now long forgotten. But mostly what I'd like is the tangible reminder that no matter where I might have been, I was in his thoughts.Those weren't the only ways he proved that. I could bring up his heroic willingness to waken me, a teenage morning monster, at 6 o'clock every day. Or the fact that he came to all of my high school basketball games even though that wasn't a common thing for dads to do in that era — and even though neither I nor my team was any good. In the end all of my memories would testify to the same simple fact, the single most important thing that a father can give his child: his presence. There was a time when we hoped that extended families would substitute for the attention fathers provide, and that various forms of state subsidies and programs might substitute for their income. More and more research has dashed those hopes. Family breakdown seems to affect child well-being even in Scandinavian countries with lavish welfare states. In the United States, research consistently shows that children without fathers in the home do worse on a variety of measures, including poverty and behavior problems. The effect is so powerful that it spills over to nearby houses; in economist Raj Chetty's landmark work on how location affects income mobility, one of the strongest predictors of low-mobility areas was the percentage of single-parent households, even for kids who are themselves raised with two parents.The boys seem especially affected, unsurprisingly. But we daughters need our fathers, too. According to Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who studies family structure, "Daughters are more likely to flourish educationally and even later on in life professionally when they've had an involved dad who's engaged with their life." He adds: "Fatherhood and marriage done right are today acting in service of the cause of women's progress."Certainly so in my case. I credit both my parents with giving me a good start toward a career, of course. But as in many households of that era, my mother was usually the one who dressed wounds if you fell off the jungle gym; my father was the one who encouraged you to climb a little higher than felt strictly safe. In a world of helicopter parents, we've forgotten how much it matters to have someone like that. We need our parents to make sure we don't drink the drain cleaner or stick our hands in a closing door. But sometimes we also need them to nurture our daring — and to give us courage simply by standing there, so that we know nothing can go too badly wrong. Naturally I'll be calling my own dad on Father's Day to say thanks for everything. But somehow, given all he did, a phone call doesn't seem quite enough. This year, I'm writing him a note, to tell him how important he was — and to say that no matter how many miles may separate us, I am always thinking of him. Happy Father's Day, Dad. Boy, did you endure a lot for my sake, and, boy, did it matter. Love,MeTwitter: @asymmetricinfo
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March 30, 2021 / 6:53 AM / CBS News CDC warns of "impending doom" as cases spike CDC warns of "impending doom" as cases spike 02:46 President Biden announced Monday that 90% of all American adults will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine by April 19, about two weeks before May 1, the date he had previously set as the goal. But Mr. Biden on Monday also warned Americans "don't let up now" amid rising COVID-19 infection rates, and called on governors who have lifted mask mandates to reinstate them. "If we let our guard down now, we could still see the virus getting worse, not better," Mr. Biden said Monday. "We're giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains. As much as we're doing, America, we have to be doing more."Mr. Biden echoed comments from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who warned earlier Monday that the steady rise in new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths has left her with a sense of "impending doom."
"We're giving up hard fought, hard won gains," he said. "As much as we're doing, America, it's time to do even more. All of us have to do our part, every one of us."Mr. Biden urged Americans not to let up on mitigation measures and implored governors and local officials to reinstate mask mandates to head off another surge."Please, this is not politics," he said. "Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.""Our work is far from over. The war against COVID-19 is far from won. This is deadly serious," he said. Biden: 90% of adults eligible for vaccines so... 13:20 But Mr. Biden on Monday also touted the fact that 100 million vaccine doses had been administered well ahead of his original goal of 100 days. He has since doubled his goal to 200 million doses of the vaccine in his first 100 days. More than 145 million vaccine doses have been administered so far, according to the CDC. To help more Americans access the vaccine, Mr. Biden said he is directing his COVID team to locate vaccination sites within 5 miles of 90% of all Americans. The White House is expanding the number of pharmacies that can administer the vaccine, and by April 19, there will be 12 more federally run vaccination sites.Mr. Biden's announcement came shortly after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the state would be opening up vaccine eligibility for all residents age 30 and over starting Tuesday and for all residents 16 and older on April 16. Most states have announced plans to meet or beat Mr. Biden's goal of making all adults eligible by May 1. Download our Free App For Breaking News & Analysis Download the Free CBS News app Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue
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Air traffic controllers are among hundreds of thousands of federal workers facing furloughs as a result of forced spending cuts going into effect on March 1. When it comes to budgeting for the federal government, things are about to get strange. Starting Friday, federal agencies will be forced to make cuts to their programs without knowing what their actual budgets for this year will be. Why? Because Congress never passed a budget, just a stopgap funding measure that expires soon. Another unknown: Whether Congress will undo or lessen the impact of those forced cuts after they go into effect. There's little expectation that Congress this week will avert the $85 billion in funding cuts known as the sequester. Congress and President Obama agreed in 2011 to unleash those cuts if they failed to come up with a smarter way to reduce deficits. Sequesters aren't new. First conceived in 1985, they've been triggered a few times in the past, but Congress often passed legislation that overrode them or lessened their impact. They're intended to be undesirable because they require across-the-board, uniform cuts to all nonexempt areas -- i.e., cutting the good and the bad by equal measure. What's new this time around, however, is the uncertainty agencies face regarding their spending levels for the rest of this fiscal year, said budget expert Charles Konigsberg, who worked for the Senate budget committee when sequestration was created. Here's what he means: On March 27, funding for the government expires unless lawmakers pass a new funding bill. That funding bill would be a separate law from the one ordering the automatic cuts. If they don't appropriate more funding, the government would shut down all but essential services, creating a whole new set of planning headaches for agencies. Related: Biggest problems with budget cuts Everyone has known the automatic spending cuts were a possibility since 2011. For much of the past year, however, agencies had been told by the White House to spend as if the cuts weren't going to happen because they still seemed avoidable and planning for them would "divert scarce resources from other important agency activities and priorities." Then Congress, as part of the deal to avert the fiscal cliff in January, postponed the sequester for two months. So now agencies only have seven months to make the cuts by Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year. The White House budget office's controller, Daniel Werfel, said on Feb. 8 that his office had calculated at that time that spending would need to be cut by 13% for defense programs and by 9% for nondefense programs. But agencies won't officially learn the exact percentages of the cuts they must make until Friday, when the White House releases a formal sequestration order along with a report to Congress. It's not clear whether anything the White House puts out Friday will be a surprise to the agencies. Nor is it clear how prepared agencies are for the cuts or any adjustments they might need to make going forward. Meanwhile, House Republicans may propose giving the Obama administration leeway to let each agency decide what to cut. Democrats are likely to oppose such a proposal. In any case, the discussion is getting really weird, said Joe Minarik of the Committee for Economic Development and a former chief economist at the White House budget office. "The Congress for centuries has jealously guarded its power of the purse -- especially from the executive and its nameless, faceless 'bureaucrats,' " he wrote in the blog Back in the Black. CNNMoney (New York) First published February 27, 2013: 6:02 AM ET | 0 |
(CNN)Donald Trump loves the spotlight and the camera. But when he takes center stage Thursday night, it won't be as the star of a reality TV show -- it will be as the Republican Party's front-runner presidential candidate. Trump and nine of his GOP rivals will battle it out in the 2016 cycle's inaugural GOP primary debate, hosted by Fox News in Cleveland. The stakes are high, as each participant clamors to stand out from a nearly unprecedented pack of 17 declared GOP candidates.But the pressure is perhaps the greatest for Trump, whose coveted position center stage on Thursday marks his remarkable rise to the top of the national polls. With an unorthodox campaign style and at times inflammatory remarks, the real estate magnate has dominated the early 2016 media coverage and upended the GOP primary. Trump's performance will dominate the headlines, but h ere are six things to watch heading into debate night:Can Bush avoid stumbles?Fourteen GOP candidates got a taste of what's to come on the debate stage during a forum in New Hampshire on Tuesday night. And it did not bode well for Jeb Bush. As he addressed a range of issues from education policy to the threat of ISIS, the former Florida governor appeared visibly nervous and flustered, more than once tripping over his words. The most uncomfortable moment came during Bush's last few minutes in the chair, when he was asked about the two ex-presidents in his family. "My dad is probably the most perfect man alive so it's pretty hard for me to be critical of him," Bush began. Then: "In fact I got a T-shirt that says, uh, at the Jeb swag store, that says, I'm the, uh, I'm, I'm the, 'My dad's the great man alive. If you don't like it, I'll take you outside."Beltway reporters and pundits expressed a mix of surprise and dismay at Bush's fumbled performance, particularly given his earlier struggles to discuss issues related to his family. It also revived fresh questions about whether Bush, who left the governor's office in 2007, has been out of practice for too long. He ran into trouble again on Wednesday when, during a riff against Planned Parenthood, he said, "I'm not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues."Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic presidential front-runner, hit back hard over Twitter and Bush later walked back his statement, saying he "misspoke.""I was referring to the hard-to-fathom $500 million in federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood -- an organization that was callously participating in the unthinkable practice of selling fetal organs," he said.A solid performance on Thursday is particularly critical for Bush as he attempts to maintain his second-place standing in national polls. Will anyone in the middle tier break out?Here's the near universal challenge for the GOP candidates whose last name isn't Trump: How to stand out?All of the Republican candidates with the exception of Bush and Scott Walker, who have broken into double digits in some recent polls, have struggled to catapult out of the very crowded middle-tier pack. A stellar debate performance this week -- along with some favorable headlines -- could be the boost some contenders need to catch up to their top-tier rivals. The candidates on stage Thursday night whose poll numbers have been around the low- to mid-single digits include New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Former GOP presidential candidate and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said the the first debate is a ripe opportunity for the governors on stage to make a splash. "We're looking for problem solvers, we're looking for solutions to the basics like jobs and a balanced budget and entitlements," Huntsman said on CNN Tuesday. "And that's clearly an area where a governor can really differentiate himself from the rest of the pack." Kasich, in particular, is an interesting candidate to watch.He launched his campaign mid-July and his poll numbers ticked up recently, giving a last-minute boost to qualify him for the first debate. Kasich's allies view his record of fiscal conservatism as key to appealing to a broader electorate.Don't forget the 5 p.m. debatersThe earlier debate will include Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore.This smaller group is at the very bottom of the polls for now. While the late-afternoon event will draw a much smaller audience than its prime-time counterpart, it will nevertheless show early signs of who in the group has the potential to shine later in the cycle."The people in the five o'clock debate should go into that debate with the idea that if they have the right performance, the next time around, they're going to be in the 9 o'clock debate," Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate, told CNN. "And you'll have several people in the 9 o'clock debate collapsing as serious candidates in the next few months. Both are true."The moderatorsThree Fox News anchors will guide the candidates through two hours of grilling on Thursday night: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.It will be the role of those moderators to facilitate a fair and engaging discussion. A few things to keep an eye out for:-- Three moderators, different styles? Baier, Kelly and Wallace each host a show on Fox and have varying interviewing styles. Will one emerge as the good cop, and another as the bad cop?-- Who gets the toughest treatment? The moderators will push for details and clarity and call out obvious contradictions. Pushing a candidate extra hard in one policy area -- Trump on immigration or Bush on Common Core, for example -- could be a telling sign of those candidates' perceived vulnerabilities. -- Do the moderators strictly enforce the timer? Every second at the debate is precious, and it's incumbent on the moderators to keep everyone in line. More time means more opportunities for a candidate to promote their platform and go after a rival candidate. The invisible candidate on stage: Hillary ClintonExpect to hear plenty of Clinton-bashing. The ultimate prize for the GOP candidates is not only to clinch the party's nomination, but to one day face off against the former secretary of state in a general election -- and defeat her. The appeal that each of the Republican candidates has to make to voters, in other words, is not only that they're the best within the GOP field, but that they're also the best option for beating Clinton."Here's the thing. In order to beat Hillary Clinton, or whoever their nominee turns out to be, we have to have a nominee on our side who is going to throw every punch because this is a fight," Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who will participate in the 5 p.m. debate, said earlier this week in New Hampshire. There's a long list of grievances from which to choose. Clinton has been dogged by a series of scandals and accusations, ranging from the her use of a personal email server at the State Department to her handling of a deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, to the massive personal wealth that she and her husband, Bill Clinton, have amassed since he left the White House.'Oops'It was one of the most memorable gaffes of the 2012 election and a moment that all of the candidates on stage Thursday will try to avoid. At a GOP primary debate hosted by CNBC in November 2011, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry vowed to shutter three government agencies as president. But after naming the Commerce Department and Education Department, Perry lapsed into a momentary brain freeze. For an agonizing 45 seconds, Perry struggled in search of the third agency. Pressed by the moderator, Perry finally conceded: "I can't. Oops."It's not that one gaffe could single-handedly tank someone's candidacy. But a bad stumble, particularly in the age of ubiquitous YouTube videos, Vines and GIFs, could follow a candidate around for months and make it frustratingly difficult for them to refocus. "There were a couple of debates where after the debate, you just knew that the candidate wasn't going to be there anymore," said Gingrich. "I always tell people: the thing about the debate is not that you may win, but that you may lose." | 0 |
A false money laundering conspiracy theory regarding the Black Lives Matter movement's use of a payment processing company for donations has gained traction online among right-wing figures and can be traced back to far-right message boards.
The conspiracy theory alleges that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is some kind of a front to launder money to Democrats because the BLM website uses ActBlue to process its online fundraising payments. ActBlue is a payment processor used widely by progressive groups and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party has an equivalent processing company called WinRed. As the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has noted, “many candidates use [ActBlue] to process donations but that money isn't pooled to be shared across candidates or groups,” and “a donation to BLM through ActBlue goes just to BLM, not any other group.” But the conspiracy theory still has earned well over a million shares and views on social media and has been amplified by a Fox Nation host.
A review by Media Matters found that before it gained traction, the conspiracy theory had been circulating for days on far-right message boards. The earliest mention our review found was at the beginning of June on Twitter, when an account that has pushed the slogan for the QAnon conspiracy theory repeatedly tweeted the claim on June 1 and June 2. The account claimed it had sent the conspiracy theory to the FBI and President Donald Trump, and it urged the Ohio Police Department to investigate the claim. The conspiracy theory popped up days later on June 5 on TheDonald.win, a new forum for the subreddit “r/TheDonald,” which was known for violent rhetoric and was ultimately quarantined by Reddit. On TheDonald.win, a user wrote that “when you go to donate on the blacklivesmatter.com website,” you are redirected to ActBlue, which means entities “donating to Black Lives Matter are actually donating to ActBlue.” That means, the user wrote, that the donations may be “just going straight to fund the Democratic presidential campaign.” The next day, another user on the forum wrote in a post that “BLM is a bait and switch fundraising scam” for the Democratic National Committee “by laundering money through Act Blue.” The user urged others to “tell everyone you know.” This post gained more traction on the forum than the first one, which it directly referenced in the comments. Similar language made its way to Facebook minutes later. Over the next few days, the conspiracy theory also began circulating on 4chan’s “/pol/” message board, a known hotspot for white nationalists, where users pointed to ActBlue to claim Black Lives Matter was “a fundraising apparatus” and a “slush fund” for Democrats. One 4chan user pushing the claim on June 8 used nearly the exact same language as the June 5 post from TheDonald.win. The conspiracy theory also continued to circulate on TheDonald.win on June 8 and reached the subreddit “r/conservative,” where a user called Black Lives Matter a “money laundering scheme” for Democrats via ActBlue. That post was later shared in a YouTube video.
The following day, on June 9, The Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that has a history of publishing misinformation, posted that the BLM site “appears to be an international money laundering scheme used by the Democrats to raise money from an international audience,” claiming ActBlue appears to be “a funding arm of the DNC.” (The site’s owner Jim Hoft shared the post on Twitter, calling it an “exclusive.”) The post gave a “hat tip” to TheDonald.win for the claim. The post was picked up by multiple far-right figures, including by a QAnon-supporting former congressional candidate on Twitter, another QAnon Twitter account with a major following who keeps evading his Twitter ban, and by troll Milo Yiannopoulos on Telegram. On June 10, right-wing pundit Candace Owens quote-tweeted an Instagram video pushing the conspiracy theory and accused Black Lives Matters of being a “shell company” for Democrats via ActBlue (Owens also posted the video on Instagram, where it received well over a million views). Minutes later, “Q,” the central entity of the QAnon conspiracy theory, posted a link to Owens’ tweet on 8kun’s “/qresearch/” message board. Owens’ post has been retweeted more than 64,000 times so far. Following Owens’ post, the conspiracy theory began spreading to other conservative figures, such as Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch; a Florida Republican congressional candidate who has given credence to QAnon; Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier (who, like Owens, incorrectly called ActBlue a “Democrat super PAC”); Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart’s London bureau Raheem Kassam.
Additionally, two major conservative TikTok accounts, @therepublicanhypehouse and @conservativehypehouse, both posted videos pushing the conspiracy theory, getting more than 370,000 views combined (even though TikTok has an anti-misinformation policy).
The conspiracy theory also apparently reached Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren, who has a history of pushing claims from message boards. She tweeted, “When you donate to BLM you’re donating to the Dems.” These tweets and videos combined have gotten hundreds of thousands of shares and views and have amplified the conspiracy theory far beyond fringe message boards.
Update (6/12/20): This article has been updated with additional details. | 0 |
(CNN)Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin issued hundreds of pardons and commutations of sentences in his final days in office after his November defeat to Democrat Andy Beshear, some of which are for violent offenses.The Kentucky secretary of state's office began filing the majority of these executive orders into their public system on December 11, their website shows.The office says due to the high volume of final actions by Bevin, the documents are still being processed.According to the secretary of state's website, as many as 161 pardons and 419 commutations of sentences were filed on December 11, including commutations for 336 people who were serving sentences solely for drug related charges.When a governor signs an executive order, it goes into effect at that time, the secretary of state's office said.CNN has reached out to Bevin and has not heard back.Prosecutor Rob Sanders of Kenton County told CNN on Friday that prosecutors across Kentucky have filed an open records request to receive the complete list of pardons and commutations. He said prosecutors have been trying to obtain this list since Tuesday.The Louisville Courier Journal first reported the number of pardons and commutations. That list of pardons includes Blake Walker, who was convicted in 2003 of killing his parents; Kurt Smith, who as a teenager was found guilty of murdering his 6-week old son; Delmar Partin, who was convicted of beheading a woman and stuffing her in a barrel; and Kathy Ann Harless, who left her newborn baby to die in an outhouse. The former Republican governor wrote in his executive order that Harless "has paid enough for her death of her new-born son." Bevin pardoned and commuted the sentences of Dayton Jones, who was convicted in 2016 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy; and Patrick Baker, who convicted of reckless homicide in 2017. The Courier Journal reported that Baker's family had held a fundraiser and donated to Bevin's gubernatorial campaigns. Baker served two years of a 19-year sentence, while his co-defendants are still in prison, the newspaper reported.The former governor did the same for Micah Schoettle, convicted last year of raping a child and sentenced to 23 years in prison. "Micah Schoettle was tried and convicted of a heinous crime based only on testimony that was not supported by any physical evidence," Bevin wrote in his executive order signed December 9. "In fact, any and all evidence that is available, refutes the allegations that were made." He added that the case was investigated and prosecuted in a "manner that was sloppy at best." Schoettle's trial had included testimony from the victim, according to the Northern Kentucky Tribune. Schoettle had served fewer than 18 months. The victim's mother called the pardon a "slap in the face," CNN affiliate WCPO reported. "It feels like we're going through it all over again ... we just got to the point where we felt safe leaving the house and not looking over our shoulders," she told WCPO.Bevin defended his pardons in a series of 20 tweets Friday night, saying that he personally reviewed each case he pardoned and calling any questioning of "the motives and involvement of anyone else in the administration is highly inappropriate and irresponsible.""Not one person receiving a pardon would I not welcome as a co-worker, neighbor, or to sit beside me or any member of my family in a church pew or at a public event," he tweeted, asserting that "No community is either more or less safe now, than it was before the pardons and commutations given over the past four years."Bevin's last day in office was Monday. A spokesman for his campaign didn't comment to The Washington Post. In an executive order signed December 9, Bevin commuted the sentences for 336 inmates who are "solely serving" sentences for drug possession — and majority of the pardons Bevin issued are for drug-related convictions.He pardoned a Louisville community activist, Christopher 2X, who Bevin called "a man with a heart for community service.""He has turned his life around after a rocky start many years ago and he has paid his debt to society," Bevin wrote of Christopher 2X, who had prior convictions for drug possession and theft by failure to make disposition. Amanda Hall, an organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, also received a pardon for her previous convictions of drug possession in 2009 and drug trafficking in 2011. "I hope that the governor to come sees the example that you have given us about redemption and second chances and this is one of the best days of my life and thank you," she said in a video retweeted by the organization. "I hope sooo many more people get to feel this beautiful feeling that I have," Hall said on Twitter. But many have been critical of the former governor's move. "What this governor did is an absolute atrocity of justice," Prosecutor Jackie Steele told the Post. "He's put victims, he's put others in our community in danger."Prosecutor Eddy Montgomery told the newspaper that he informed the victims' families about the pardons after finding out through the news. "We're pretty shocked about it," Montgomery said. Bevin conceded to Beshear last month after requesting all of the state's counties recheck the results of the gubernatorial election. In a tweet Thursday, the Democratic Governors Association said Bevin "kept standing with special interests until the very end -- even at the expense of Kentuckian's safety and wellbeing."Bevin's successor, newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear, on Thursday announced he restored voting rights for over 140,000 former felons in the state through an executive order. Beshear's father, former Gov. Steve Beshear, had issued an executive order in 2015 restoring felons' voting rights, but Bevin promptly reversed it with his own executive order upon taking office later that year.UPDATE: This story was updated Friday with new information on the number of pardons and commutations filed as it became available from the Kentucky Secretary of State.CNN's Natasha Chen, Maria Cartaya, Caroline Kelly and Hollie Silverman contributed to this report. | 0 |
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he supports the impeachment of President Trump.“With his words and his actions, President Trump has indicted himself by obstructing justice, refusing to comply with the congressional inquiry,” Biden said during a campaign event in Rochester, N.H. “He’s already convicted himself.“In full view of the world and the American people, Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts,” Biden continued, drawing applause. “To preserve our Constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached.”More from Biden’s speech (as delivered):But we have to remember that impeachment isn't only about what the president has done. It's about the threat the president poses to the nation if allowed to remain in office. One thing about this president is absolutely clear. He has seen no limits to his power regardless of what the Constitution says. He believes the entire United States government can be corrupted into furthering his personal political needs. He's even willing to hold Congress and congressionally appropriated aid to a foreign nation hostage to his personal political demands. He believes if he does something, it's legal. Period. And perhaps, most importantly, he believes there is nothing we can do about it. He believes he can and will get away with anything he does. We all laughed when he said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and get away with it. It's no joke. He's shooting holes in the Constitution and we cannot let him get away with it.Biden had previously signaled his support for the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, but refrained from taking a position on how it should conclude.Biden at a campaign event in Rochester, N.H., on Wednesday. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)The investigation was triggered by a whistleblower’s complaint against Trump over his pressuring the president of Ukraine to investigate the former vice president and his son Hunter, who served until earlier this year on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.The White House released a memo summarizing Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a conversation Trump has defended as “perfect.” The call was part of a whistleblower’s complaint against the president, which led to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement late last month of a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.Since then, a flurry of developments have given added impetus to the impeachment probe.Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn last week, Trump called on China to investigate the Bidens because “nobody has any doubt that they weren’t crooked.” But the president has yet to provide evidence of any wrongdoing.In 2016, then-Vice President Biden pressured Ukraine to remove its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had investigated Burisma. But Shokin’s investigation had been closed by the time Biden made the demand on the Ukrainian government. And the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, along with several congressional Republicans, shared the Obama administration’s view of Shokin as corrupt.Biden’s response to Trump’s attacks over recent weeks has been criticized as slow and ineffective by some Democrats, raising unpleasant memories of the “Swift Boat” attacks by Republicans on Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004.“We’re not going to play Donald Trump’s game,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s campaign manager, said on CNN Tuesday. “We’re not going to let him distract from the corruption in his own administration.”Trump was quick to reply to Biden's impeachment call."So pathetic to see Sleepy Joe Biden, who with his son, Hunter, and to the detriment of the American Taxpayer, has ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars, calling for my impeachment — and I did nothing wrong," the president tweeted. "Joe’s Failing Campaign gave him no other choice!"Biden responded in kind."Thanks for watching," the former vice president tweeted. "Stop stonewalling the Congress. Honor your oath. Respect the Constitution. And speaking of taxpayers, I’ve released 21 years of my tax returns. You?"_____Download the Yahoo News app to customize your experience.Read more from Yahoo News:White House tells Democrats it will not cooperate with impeachment inquiryJordan: Trump was only joking when asking China to investigate the BidensMajority of Americans back impeachment inquiry, new polls showGraham says Trump's 'shameless' abandonment of Kurds will revive ISISGreta Thunberg: Men like Trump ‘want to silence’ young climate activists | 0 |
VideoAttorney General Jeff Sessions took questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. Democrats took issue with his refusing to answer certain questions on the basis of executive privilege.CreditCredit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesJune 13, 2017Attorney General Jeff Sessions engaged in highly contentious testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, with Democrats pressing him on his conversations with President Trump related to the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He called any suggestion that he colluded with Russians during the election an “appalling” lie. “Please, colleagues, hear me on this,” he said.Here are highlights from the nearly three-hour session:• After coming under fire for failing to disclose his interactions with the Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearing, Mr. Sessions was determined to provide his version of events — and he did not waste any time. “I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States,” he said during his opening statement.• Mr. Sessions denied meeting with Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in April 2016, adding that he could not “recall” any such private conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, there. “If any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian ambassador, I do not remember it,” he said.• Mr. Sessions contested the assertion of James B. Comey, who was fired as F.B.I. director, before the committee last week that the attorney general had not responded when Mr. Comey asked him not to leave him alone with Mr. Trump again.“While he did not provide me with any of the substance of his conversation with the president, Mr. Comey expressed concern about the proper communications protocol with the White House and with the president,” he said. “I responded to his comment by agreeing that the F.B.I. and Department of Justice needed to be careful to follow department policies regarding appropriate contacts with the White House.”• Mr. Sessions repeatedly refused to discuss his conversations with Mr. Trump about the Russia investigation or Mr. Comey’s firing beyond what was in his recommendation memo about ousting Mr. Comey, which the White House released. Democratic senators reacted angrily, noting that Mr. Trump had not invoked executive privilege to bar such testimony. Mr. Sessions argued that it was a longstanding practice not to disclose confidential conversations with the president that would potentially be subject to executive privilege, but several senators said that was not a legal basis to refuse to answer their questions.“Consistent with longstanding Department of Justice practice, I cannot and will not violate my duty to protect confidential communications with the president,” he said.• Seizing on a criticism others have made of Mr. Comey, Mr. Sessions emphasized that Mr. Comey had not told him why he was uncomfortable being alone with Mr. Trump — specifically, that Mr. Trump had asked him to drop the investigation into Michael T. Flynn, his former national security adviser.“He could have complained to the deputy or to me at any time that he felt pressure,” Mr. Sessions said, referring to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.• Mr. Sessions made it clear that he did not take kindly to the insinuations and accusations arising from the fact that he previously failed to disclose meetings with Mr. Kislyak. And he came to the committee in large part to defend himself against what he called “an appalling and detestable lie” that he had colluded with Russian officials. “I recused myself from any investigation into the campaign for president, but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false accusations,” he said.VideoRebecca Ruiz took questions on Facebook Live and shared her analysis on the Attorney General's public testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.Sessions rejects any suggestion of Russian collusion.In his opening statement, Mr. Sessions said any suggestion that he participated in or was aware of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to undermine the democratic process “is an appalling and detestable lie.”Mr. Sessions also denied talking to any Russian official in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington at an event in April 2016, rejecting reports that he may have had an undisclosed meeting with Mr. Kislyak at that event. He said he recalled no private conversations with any Russian officials at that reception and “if any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian ambassador, I do not remember it.”The Huffington Post reported on March 8 that Mr. Sessions and Mr. Kislyak had attended that event, at which Mr. Trump was also present, but that it was not clear whether the two had spoken. CNN has more recently reported that there continue to be questions about whether there was such a meeting. The issue matters because Mr. Sessions testified at his confirmation hearing that he did not communicate with the Russians in 2016, but it later emerged that he had at least two contacts with Mr. Kislyak; the question is whether there was a third. (Mr. Sessions has said his answer at the hearing was accurate in context.)Sessions refuses to talk about communications with Trump.ImageCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesMr. Sessions repeatedly refused to discuss his conversations with Mr. Trump about the Russia investigation or Mr. Comey’s firing beyond what was in his memo recommending that Mr. Comey be fired, which the White House released. Democratic senators reacted angrily, noting that Mr. Trump had not invoked executive privilege to bar such testimony.Mr. Sessions argued that it was a longstanding practice not to disclose confidential conversations with the president that would potentially be subject to executive privilege, but several senators said that was not a legal basis to refuse to answer their questions.Mark J. Rozell, a George Mason University professor who has written books about executive privilege, said previous administration officials had often gone before Congress and declared that they would not answer questions about communications that might be subject to executive privilege even though the president had not yet invoked that power. Whether that was legitimate, he said, was a “constitutional gray area” that lacked a clear answer.“The problem I have with it is that it’s similar to a claim of executive privilege without the president actually uttering the words or formally declaring that power,” he said. “It puts Congress in an impossible position if a member of the administration can simply claim a right of private communications for the president that could stand as a basis for refusing to answer anything.”If Congress wanted to force the issue, he said, it could issue a subpoena requiring Mr. Sessions to provide testimony, forcing Mr. Trump to decide whether he wanted to invoke the privilege and, if so, over what. Typically, he said, such confrontations have led to negotiations that resulted in an accommodation to defuse the disputes, which is why there are few definitive court precedents about the scope and limits of executive secrecy powers.Mr. Sessions also said there was a Justice Department policy about not disclosing confidential communications with the president even absent an executive privilege claim, but Mr. Rozell said that while some previous presidents put out formal guidelines laying out how their administration would use executive privilege, he was not aware of the Trump administration having produced any.VideoAt the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Senator Ron Wyden that he doesn’t appreciate “secret innuendo” about his honesty regarding events involving James Comey, the F.B.I. director.CreditCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesSessions contests Comey’s account of discussion.Mr. Sessions offered a different account of what he said when Mr. Comey approached him following a meeting on Feb. 14 in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump.Mr. Comey recounted that after a routine counterterrorism meeting, Mr. Trump cleared the room of everyone else — including Mr. Sessions — and then made comments that Mr. Comey interpreted as an improper request to drop an investigation into Mr. Flynn. Afterward, Mr. Comey said, he “implored” Mr. Sessions never to leave him alone with the president again, but Mr. Sessions did not respond.After Mr. Comey’s testimony last week, the Justice Department released a statement contesting Mr. Comey’s account that Mr. Sessions had merely remained silent, and Mr. Sessions himself on Tuesday said directly and under oath that he did respond.“While he did not provide me with any of the substance of his conversation with the president, Mr. Comey expressed concern about the proper communications protocol with the White House and with the president,” Mr. Sessions said. “I responded to his comment by agreeing that the F.B.I. and Department of Justice needed to be careful to follow department policies regarding appropriate contacts with the White House.”He added: “I was confident that Mr. Comey understood and would abide by the department’s well-established rules governing any communications with the White House about ongoing investigations. My comments encouraged him to do just that, and indeed, as I understand, he did.”VideoAttorney General Jeff Sessions took questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. Democrats took issue with his refusing to answer certain questions on the basis of executive privilege.CreditCredit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesSessions said he would not have any role in Mueller’s tenure.Under questioning from Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, Mr. Sessions said he would not have anything to do with any effort, should one emerge, to fire Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel, since he is recused from the Russia investigation Mr. Mueller is leading.“I wouldn’t think that would be appropriate for me to do,” he said.As things stand, Mr. Rosenstein is the acting attorney general for the purpose of overseeing the Russia investigation, and so oversees Mr. Mueller. Still, Mr. Sessions was involved in recommending the firing of Mr. Comey — a decision Mr. Trump said he made while thinking about the Russia investigation — despite being recused from it.Watch the hearing from start to finishSessions defends his recusal decision.Mr. Sessions defended his involvement in the decision to fire Mr. Comey, explaining that his recusal did not prevent him from having a say in his department’s management decisions.“It is absurd, frankly, to suggest that a recusal from a single specific investigation would render an attorney general unable to manage the leadership of the various Department of Justice law enforcement components that conduct thousands of investigations,” he said.He argued that he recused himself not because of “any sort of wrongdoing,” but in accordance with department regulations regarding his involvement with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.“This is the reason I recused myself,” he said, holding up a copy of the rule. “I felt I was required to under the rules of the Department of Justice.”But Mr. Sessions made it clear that would not stop him from defending himself.“I recused myself from any investigation into the campaign for president, but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false accusations,” he said.VideoThe attorney general said he never met with any Russians or foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.CreditCredit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesSenator defends Sessions and Trump.Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, ridiculed the idea that Mr. Sessions may have colluded with the Russian ambassador at the Mayflower reception to influence the 2016 election, and then pivoted to “the potential crimes that we know have happened.”Mr. Cotton then listed a series of leaks. Among those he mentioned were the contents of alleged transcripts of calls between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak, and accounts of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian officials last month. At that meeting, the president reportedly disclosed sensitive information about an Israeli intelligence source in the Islamic State and bragged that firing Mr. Comey, whom he called a “nut job,” had relieved great pressure on him about the Russia investigation.That invited Mr. Sessions to talk about criminal leak investigations, and he did so with relish. He invoked as a “successful case” the charges filed earlier this month against Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor with the National Security Agency who is accused of sending an intelligence report about Russian election-related hacking to reporters, and suggested there would be more like that, saying “some of these leaks, as you well know, are extraordinarily damaging to the United States’ national security.”Saying intelligence officials’ leaking of sensitive matters “is already resulting in investigations,” Mr. Sessions added, “I fear that some people may find that they wish they hadn’t leaked”Senator Kamala Harris, interrupted.VideotranscripttranscriptKamala Harris Questions Jeff SessionsSenator Kamala Harris and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had a contentious back and forth at a Senate Intelligence hearing, at which Senator Richard Burr, the committee chairman, had to weigh in.Kamala Harris oneSenator Kamala Harris and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had a contentious back and forth at a Senate Intelligence hearing, at which Senator Richard Burr, the committee chairman, had to weigh in.CreditCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesIt was a moment Democrats were certain to seize on — again.For the second time in a week, Republican senators interrupted Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, as she pressed a Trump administration witness.Ms. Harris had interrupted Mr. Sessions a couple of times during a series of questions related to his communications with Russians and Mr. Trump, so flustering him at one point that he said: “I don’t want to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous.”As Mr. Sessions offered his rationale for not discussing conversations with Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris, the former attorney general of California, jumped in again, prompting murmurs from the Republican side of the dais.“Will the witness be allowed to answer the question?” said Senator John McCain of Arizona, an ex officio member of the committee.Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the committee, cut her off not long after that, noting that her allotted time had expired.It was an echo of last week’s testimony, when Ms. Harris pressed Mr. Rosenstein during another public hearing, prompting a similar exchange involving Mr. Burr and Mr. McCain.That episode had provided Twitter fodder for Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, another female Senate Democrat who had been cut off by a Republican.“Silencing @SenKamalaHarris for not being ‘courteous’ enough is just unbelievable,” Ms. Warren tweeted last week. “Keep fighting, Kamala! #NeverthelessShePersisted”Echoes of the ‘Saturday Night Massacre.’ImageCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesEven as Mr. Rosenstein vowed to “defend the integrity” of the special counsel investigation, including by refusing any order to fire Mr. Mueller without good cause, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, spotted a potential issue that has no clear answer: What if Mr. Trump fired Mr. Rosenstein and then worked down through the Justice Department until he found someone willing to do it?That possibility has historical precedent: In “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon fired the attorney general and his deputy because they were unwilling to remove the Watergate special prosecutor, stopping only when the official next in line, Solicitor General Robert Bork, was willing to do what the president wanted.If something like that happened again, Mr. Van Hollen asked, and Mr. Mueller believed he had not been fired for any legitimate good cause, what protection did the Justice Department regulation provide? Would the fired special counsel have recourse, for example, to contest his firing in the courts?Mr. Rosenstein said he hoped there would never be a need to answer what would happen next if someone at the Justice Department did not adhere to the rules. Comparing it to a law school hypothetical, he said, “I would be reluctant to answer it without doing some research first.”But no one at the hearing brought up what would happen if the White House directed the Justice Department to change the rules first — by revoking the special counsel regulations — so that Mr. Mueller could then be fired for any reason, just as ordinary senior Justice Department officials can.Ryan and McConnell support Mueller investigation.Speaker Paul D. Ryan said on Tuesday that Mr. Mueller should be allowed to continue his work.“I think the best thing to do is to let Robert Mueller do his job,” Mr. Ryan said at a news conference. “I think the best vindication for the president is to let this investigation go on independently and thoroughly.”Later Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, also voiced support for Mr. Mueller.“I have a lot of confidence in Bob Mueller,” he told reporters. “I think it was a good choice.” | 0 |
Story highlightsLoretta Lynch said Friday she will accept guidance from DOJ prosecutors and the FBIThe assurances come amid an investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server (CNN)Former President Bill Clinton said he regrets his meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch earlier in the week, an encounter that has caused another controversy for his wife's presidential campaign.The 42nd president's remarks echo those made by Lynch on Friday, who acknowledged that the meeting has cast a "shadow" over the Justice Department's investigation into a private email server used by Hillary Clinton while she was leading the State Department. The criticism of the meeting prompted Lynch to say Friday that she will accept the determinations and findings of the FBI and career prosecutors who are investigating Clinton's email use.
"The President's conversation with the attorney general was unplanned and was entirely social in nature. But recognizing how others could take another view of it, he agrees with the attorney general that he would not do it again," an aide to Bill Clinton told CNN Saturday.Hillary Clinton weighed in on the meeting as well Saturday, telling MSNBC's Chuck Todd, "Obviously, no one wants to see any untoward conclusions drawn, and they said they would not do it again."Bill Clinton and Lynch met privately on Monday. Clinton, who had been in the Phoenix area earlier in the day for a fundraiser for his wife's campaign, according to a campaign source, joined Lynch aboard her plane while both were on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. "I certainly wouldn't do it again because I think it has cast this shadow over what it should not, over what it will not touch," Lynch said Friday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, adding, "It's important to make it clear that that meeting with President Clinton does not have a bearing on how this matter will be reviewed and resolved." Lynch said the pair mostly talked about grandchildren and a little golf. "It really was a social meeting, and it was, it really was in that regard," she said. "He spoke to me, he spoke to my husband for some time on the plane, and then we moved on."But she said she understood why the incident caused concerns, and said it was "painful" to her that the Justice Department's integrity was called into question."No matter how I viewed it, I understand how people view it," she said.The meeting instantly drew criticism from Republicans and even some Democrats, who said that just the decision for the two to interact was a mistake while the Justice Department is conducting an investigation of Clinton's private email server.As news broke Friday morning that Lynch would address the elephant in the room at Aspen Ideas, hoards of people left early morning panels to rush to hear her speak. Lynch was unequivocal in repeating that career prosecutors and investigators -- not political appointees -- would be presenting her with findings from the investigation and recommendations on what to do next."I will be accepting their recommendations," she said.The meeting and its fallout are sure to worry some Democrats who see Clinton as the only candidate standing between Donald Trump and the White House. Not only is the fate of her campaign largely in the hands of the Justice Department, but this was an entirely avoidable incident that hits her on one of her most persistent vulnerabilities -- how voters doubt her trustworthiness.The No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, called for a special counsel Thursday to take over the investigation into the private server, citing the appearance of impropriety."This incident does nothing to instill confidence in the American people that her department can fully and fairly conduct this investigation, and that's why a special counsel is needed now more than ever," Cornyn said in a statement.The conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch that has led the charge in suing for access to Hillary Clinton's email records also jumped on the news, calling for an investigation into what transpired between Lynch and Clinton. "Attorney General Lynch's meeting with President Clinton creates the appearance of a violation of law, ethical standards and good judgment," the group said in a statement. "Attorney General Lynch's decision to breach the well-defined ethical standards of the Department of Justice and the American legal profession is an outrageous abuse of the public's trust."Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump also spotlighted the encounter on the campaign trail and on Twitter."Take a look at what happened w/ Bill Clinton. The system is totally rigged. Does anybody really believe that meeting was just a coincidence?" Trump wrote Friday, in a trio of tweets on the incident Friday morning. And Democratic Sen. Chris Coons also joined the fray, expressing confidence in Lynch's objectivity but decrying the meeting, even if innocuous, as sending the wrong signal. "I think she should have said, 'Look, I recognize you have a long record of leadership on fighting crime, but this is not the time for us to have that conversation. After the election is over, I'd welcome your advice,'" Coons told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day" Thursday. The White House has maintained that the Justice Department is keeping politics out of the investigation, which is happening at the same time as Hillary Clinton's run for office. Without commenting directly on Lynch's meeting, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest reiterated Thursday that President Barack Obama is committed to avoiding "political interference" in Department of Justice investigations, and said Lynch understands investigations should be "conducted free of political influence and consistent with the facts."CNN's Eli Watkins, Elise Labott and Brianna Keilar contributed to this report. | 0 |
(CNN) - Has Mitt Romney twisted the narrative of Tuesday's attacks at U.S. missions in Libya and Egypt? A timeline of the events suggests Romney was wrong in his accusation that the Obama administration's "first response" on Tuesday was one of sympathy for those who started the violence itself–as the violence came after the first statement was published.
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And Romney's comments Wednesday characterized that response as standing "in apology" when the embassy's statement was not actually an apology but a condemnation. The timeline:
Tuesday morning in Egypt, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo released a statement stating it "condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." The statement came after protests erupted in parts of the Arab world in response to an online video found offensive by Muslims.
While the statement doesn't specifically mention the video, it says the embassy "firmly reject(s) the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others." READ THE FULL STATEMENT HERE.
After the statement, protesters began to breach the embassy in Cairo, where ultimately several men scaled the walls of the mission and tore down its American flag.
At 6:30 p.m. ET - The embassy then tweeted about its earlier statement: "This morning's condemnation (issued before protests began) still stands. As does our condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy." The tweet was posted by a foreign service officer, CNN confirmed. Several State Department sources said that the U.S. ambassador to Egypt did not sign off on the original statement, as she was in Washington at the time. Reports then emerged Tuesday evening, Eastern Standard Time, of attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The State Department also told CNN that a consulate employee had been killed in the attacks. At the time, however, the employee's nationality was not clear. At 10:10 p.m. ET, Romney's campaign released an embargoed (until midnight) statement blasting the Obama administration. The statement had a veiled reference to the Egypt embassy's statement that condemned offensive speech against Muslims and referred to it as the administration's "first response":
"I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." READ THE FULL STATEMENT HERE.
At 10:25 p.m. ET, the campaign lifted the embargo, and news outlets began reporting the statement. At 12:11 a.m. ET, Obama's re-election campaign put out a statement, accusing Romney of taking a political swipe during the crisis. "We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack."
At 6:21 a.m. ET, CNN reported on its wire service that U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed in a rocket attack. Over the next few hours, it's revealed that three other personnel, including a Foreign Service information management officer, were also killed. At 10:16 a.m. ET, Romney held a press conference at his campaign office in Jacksonville, Florida. He renewed his criticism of the Obama administration, saying "Obama has demonstrated a lack of clarity as to a foreign policy."
Asked if he regretted the wording in his statement Tuesday night, the Republican then issued his own timeline of the events in answering the question.
"The embassy in Cairo put out a statement after their grounds had been breached. Protestors were inside the grounds," he said. As noted earlier, however, the U.S. Embassy statement was issued before the breach. The embassy then reiterated the statement on Twitter after protestors were over the walls. A Romney campaign official pointed to this tweet, which has since been deleted, as justification for the Republican nominee's comment that the statement came after the grounds were breached.
Romney then said the administration's original statement from the embassy in Cairo was effectively an "apology." His language went further than the Tuesday release from his campaign where he called it "disgraceful" and an expression of "sympathy for those who waged the attacks." READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE HERE.
"I think it's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values. That instead when our grounds are being attacked and being breached, that the first response of the United States must be outrage," he said. "An apology for America's values is never the right course."
His comments also raise the question that if Romney was condemning the embassy statement that condemned offensive speech against Muslims, where does Romney stand on the offensive video? While he wasn't asked about the video in the press conference, Romney stood by the right to free speech. "We'll defend also our constitutional rights of speech and assembly and religion," he said. "We encourage our nations to understand and respect the principles of our Constitution because we recognize that these principles are the ultimate source of freedom for individuals around the world."
CNN, however, obtained talking points from the Romney campaign in which they advise Republicans on how to respond to the press over the issue. The document suggests Republicans be prepared to answer this question: "Don't you think it was appropriate for the embassy to condemn the controversial movie in question? Are you standing up for movies like this?"
The answer prompts the responder to say that Romney "rejects the reported message of the movie," but to add that "we will not apologize for our constitutional right to freedom of speech."
- CNN's Elise Labott, Peter Hamby, Rachel Streitfeld, Jill Dougherty, Ashley Killough, and Kevin Liptak.
Also see: - With attacks in Middle East, campaign turns to foreign policy
- Romney's political pretzel over Libya
- Democrats outraged with Romney foreign policy attacks
- Ryan ramps up foreign policy attack on Obama | 0 |
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration warned doctors and hospitals Thursday to use extra caution in disinfecting a hard-to-clean medical scope that has been linked to the spread of powerful "superbugs" in outbreaks across the country.The agency said that even meticulous cleaning of the duodenoscopes, which are used on about 500,000 patients a year, may not entirely eliminate the risk. And it advised doctors and hospitals that it is studying possible solutions, including new disinfection protocols.The FDA announcement followed a report from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center that seven patients — including two who died — were infected with the superbug CRE in an outbreak tied to contaminated duodenescopes. The hospital said in a statement that as many as 179 patients who had undergone procedures using the scopes were potentially exposed to the bacteria from January 2013 to January 2014.The UCLA cases are the latest of several CRE outbreaks nationwide that have been linked to duodenoscopes, which are used to treat gallstones, certain cancers and other disorders in the digestive system. USA TODAY first reported on the outbreaks in an investigation published last month, and other cases have come to light since.CRE bacteria are formally known as Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, reflecting their resistance to carbapenem antibiotics — the last line of defense in the medical toolbox. While it is possible that other infections also may be transmitted from contaminated duodenoscopes, CRE cases generate particular concern because of their risks -- fatality rates for patients with CRE infections can run as high as 40%-50%."Meticulously cleaning duodenoscopes prior to high-level disinfection should reduce the risk of transmitting infection, but may not entirely eliminate it," the FDA said in its advisory. It noted that the agency is working with duodenoscope manufacturers "to identify the causes and risk factors for transmission of infectious agents and develop solutions to minimize patient exposure."The scopes are used for a procedure called ERCP, or Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography, in which the devices are used with contrast dyes and X-rays to help doctors locate and treat blockages in the bile and pancreatic ducts. The scopes have "elevator" mechanisms at their tip that control tiny tools used to trim tissue or insert stents.While there are surgical options for much of the work done in ERCP procedures, the duodenoscopes typically are considered the less invasive and less dangerous option.Colleen Schmitt, a physician and president of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, says that ERCP remains a relatively safe procedure that generally carries lower risks of complications than surgery."Some of these patients (needing ERCP) are very sick and to take them into a surgical procedure could be risky," she says, noting that ERCP is "less invasive than surgical options."Still, she says, more research is needed "so we can be sure we understand the scope of this (infection) problem," as well as the best strategies for minimizing risks to patients. In the meantime, she adds, the society is looking to raise awareness among doctors and hospitals on the need for special attention in cleaning duodenoscopes.Lawrence Muscarella, a biomedical engineer and independent consultant who advises hospitals on endoscope safety, says more need to be done to advise patients of the risks so they can make informed decisions on their treatment options. He also called for better tracking of infections associated with contaminated duodenoscopes, noting that many outbreaks likely are going unreported.The FDA says in its advisory that it is aware of 135 patients nationwide who may have contracted bacterial infections from contaminated endoscopes. However, the agency acknowledges that "it is possible that not all cases have been reported."USA TODAY's investigation identified three CRE outbreaks linked to duodenoscopes -- in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Seattle. Another outbreak subsequently was reported in Philadelphia. In the UCLA case, like the others, fatalities of infected patients couldn't necessarily be linked directly to the CRE, because most of those patients had other conditions that also could have contributed to their deaths.In the Seattle outbreak, which occurred in 2012 and was particularly large, 32 patients were diagnosed with CRE and seven died within 30 days -- a window health officials used in identifying potentially associated deaths. Another four patients who had the infection died later. | 0 |
Harvard report says 4645 people died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria. For perspective on this: 1833 deaths attributed to Hurricane Katrina2411 total US combat deaths in Afghanistan2977 deaths as a result of 9/11 attacks4424 total US combat deaths in Iraq War— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) May 29, 2018
But there’s a problem: This is not a verified number, unlike body counts in wars. The Harvard study offers only an estimate – a midpoint along a broad range of possibilities. It is not based on death records, only estimates of deaths from people who were interviewed in a survey.In effect, the researchers took one number – 15 deaths identified from a survey of 3,299 households – and extrapolated that to come up with 4,645 deaths across the island. That number came with a very large caveat, clearly identified in the report, but few news media accounts bothered to explain the nuances.Here’s why you need to be very, very careful with this figure.The FactsFew disagree that the official death toll is far too low. The Puerto Rican government has already asked researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health to examine death certificate and mortality data to come up with a better number. That report is due to be completed in the coming months.There have been several attempts already to estimate the actual death toll. Here’s a sampling:The New York Times calculated 1,052 deaths through October.The Center for Investigative Reporting calculated 985 through October.University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez professors calculated 822, with a 95 percent confidence range that the total was somewhere between 605 and 1,039.Pennsylvania State University professors calculated excess deaths of about 500 in September, or a total of 1,085 if the same pattern held in October. That estimate was based on six weeks of mortality records.A Latino USA analysis, using updated data from Puerto Rico’s Department of Health, calculated 1,194 excess deaths in September and October.Notice a consistent pattern? All of the estimates are roughly around 1,000 deaths, which is still about 15 times higher than the official count.These figures are also based on actual data, not estimates, though researchers have been stymied in obtaining complete November and December data because the government halted access until the completion of the formal report ordered by the government.The Harvard study took a different approach. The researchers surveyed a random sample of 3,299 households, representing 9,522 people, and obtained answers from about 93 percent. The survey participants identified 38 people who died after the hurricane through December. Of that number, three died directly from medical complications, illness or trauma because of the hurricane, and 12 died because of the interruption of medical services in the aftermath. The other 23 deaths were reported to be unrelated to the storm.From that base of survey data, the researchers extrapolated to the whole island and came up with a range of excess deaths. That range is 793 to 8,498, with a 95 percent confidence interval. This means, according to the researchers, that “if one had unlimited resources, and continued to take random samples, 95 percent of the resulting confidence intervals would include the actual death count.” The widely reported number of 4,645 is simply the midpoint and is no more or less valid than any other number in the range. (Note: the third sentence has been rewritten to directly quote from the document, as various experts have contacted The Fact Checker with differing definitions of a 95-percent confidence interval.)In response to questions, the researchers posted a document that includes this question: Does your study say that 4,645 died? The answer: “No. We provide a 95% confidence interval of 793 to 8,498, and 4,645 falls in the middle of this range.”The researchers said the confidence interval is so large because “deaths are relatively rare events,” and so many more households would need to be surveyed to narrow the range: “This was a quick study on a limited budget. With more time and resources, we would recommend a larger sample size in order to narrow the range of estimates.” They also noted they did not have access to the demographic registry data, like other researchers, because the government stopped sharing data.“Their sampling appears to be well done, but relatively small for their purpose, leading to a large margin of error,” said Roberto Rivera, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez who co-wrote the study that calculated a range of 605 to 1,039 deaths. “Most reports on the new study have focused on the number 4,645. But the authors of the paper included a margin-of-error-based confidence interval: 800 to 8,500. This interval is the most important part of their results. First, it is evidence that the death toll is much greater than 64. Secondly, it shows that the margin of error is very large.”Steven Kopits of Princeton Policy Advisers, an advisory firm, is a critic of the Harvard study. He notes that the available registry data, which still is incomplete, indicates 654 excess deaths above the previous year through December. (Note: More recent data released by Puerto Rico after this fact check was published suggests the number is closer to 1,400.) On the face of it, he said, the Harvard number makes little sense because that means 3,000 bodies would be missing – when only 45 were reported as missing as of December.“With the power outage following the hurricane, residents in ill health and near death died prematurely for lack of access to life-sustaining services like respirators, dialysis and air conditioning,” he said. “These deaths were principally attributable to an extended loss of power. On the other hand, most of these people were under the care of family or professional staff, and their deaths were recorded in near real time. Virtually all those who died in 2017 have been properly accounted for. There are materially no missing bodies.”He suspects that because the “vast majority of those who died prematurely would have died in a few months even absent the hurricane,” the number of excess deaths should “decrease month by month and probably disappear entirely — from a statistical perspective — within a year.”Another critic is Donald Berry, professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “The results are statistically weak and nearly useless, at least insofar as number of deaths is concerned,” he said. “Another way of conveying the confidence interval 793 to 8498 is 4645+/-3852. The error is almost as big as the estimate.” He also faulted the researchers for using a different methodology — official deaths for all of Puerto Rico— as a comparison for 2016. “They should have used deaths in 2016 only the same 104 barrios they considered in 2017,” he said.In a statement about the Harvard study, GWU’s Milken Institute, which is conducting the official study for the Puerto Rican government, urged caution about the numbers. The institute noted that it will use “actual data about death,” such as death certificates, which it described as “a more accurate way to assess mortality.” The statement noted the Milken study “is expected to provide a narrower range of uncertainty around the estimated excess deaths tied to Hurricane Maria.”[Update, June 1: Under pressure, the Puerto Rican health department suddenly released the long-hidden death figures, showing an increase of 561 deaths in September over the same month in 2016, an increase of 683 deaths in October, an increase of 187 in November and a decline of 34 in December. That adds up to a 1,397 increase in that four-month period. Kopits on June 4 published an updated analysis based on the new numbers.][Update, Aug. 7: In a research note published in the Journal of American Medical Association, Alexis R. Santos-Lozada of Pennsylvania University and a colleague reported that the inclusion of the December deaths indicated an excess death toll of 1,139. The note added that the Harvard result was “based on a survey that underestimated prehurricane mortality, overestimated posthurricane mortality, and had a large CI (confidence interval), indicating a high level of uncertainty. Future studies would benefit from careful analysis of deaths from vital records rather than surveys.”][Update, Aug. 10: In a report to Congress, Puerto Rico estimated there were 1,427 more deaths from September to December 2017 than the average for the same time period over the previous four years. The official death toll of 64 will remain unchanged until the GWU study is completed.][Update, Aug. 28: GWU’s Milken Institute released its report, estimating excess deaths at between 2,658 and 3,290, with a midpoint of 2,975, in the six months after the storm made landfall. This is a longer period of research than previous studies; GWU estimated 2,098 excess deaths through December (the period also covered by the Harvard study) and 1,271 for September and October (the period covered by most of the other studies). GWU said it counted until February because people continued to die at anomalous rates long after the storm, as the island struggled with infrastructure failures and political infighting. After the release of the report, the government of Puerto Rico embraced 2,975 as the official death toll.]The Bottom LineAll too often, the news media grabs onto a number in an academic report and puts it in headlines, ignoring the caveats deep in the report. Given that this report is based on a survey, with potentially huge margins of error, it should be treated cautiously. Five other studies, based on preliminary death certificate data, have all come up with much lower numbers – about 1,000 in the two weeks after the storm.That’s still 15 times higher than the official count, which is bad enough. But it’s an egregious example of false precision to cite the “4,645” number without explaining how fuzzy the number really is.Given the large confidence interval for the Harvard study, it seems more likely that the true number is closer to the lower limit in the range, along the lines of previous studies – and not the number that has been so prominently in the news.Send us facts to check by filling out this form | 0 |
WASHINGTON – Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th Supreme Court justice in a private ceremony Saturday just hours after the Senate voted to confirm him, solidifying conservative control of the highest court in the land for years to come and ending a bitter battle over his nomination. The confirmation delivered a major win to President Donald Trump, who defended his embattled nominee when sexual assault accusations were leveled against him. Kavanaugh has denied the accusations.Trump, speaking at a rally in Topeka, Kansas, called it a "truly historic night" and a "tremendous victory." He added: "What he and his wonderful family endured at the hands of Democrats is unthinkable."Kavanaugh's confirmation was not just a chance for Republicans to shift the court to the right for what could be decades. It was also a test of how public officials responded to the raw emotions unleashed by the #MeToo movement amid accusations from Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were teens. He said the incident never happened. That controversy will likely be scrutinized even further with the Nov. 6 midterm elections a month away, giving Democrats have a chance to take control of one or more chambers of Congress.The anger among Kavanaugh's critics was evident on the steps of the Capitol where hundreds of protesters, many dressed in black garb, had gathered on the steps holding signs and chanting. A cordon of police officers stood in front of the doors.Capitol Police said they arrested 164 people from among the hundreds of protestors who had gathered. Most, some 150, were arrested on the Capitol's east side. The final Senate vote was 50-48. Sen. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat to break ranks and vote in favor of him.Trump congratulated Kavanaugh on Twitter and called him a "great nominee." He signed Kavanaugh's commission to the Supreme Court aboard Air Force One so he could get to work immediately on the court. Shortly after, Kavanaugh, accompanied by his family, was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who Kavanaugh is replacing, during a private ceremony at the Supreme Court. The 6 p.m. ceremony marks the beginning of his lifetime appointment. He will hear his first cases next week. Twists and turnsFor weeks, Kavanaugh's future had hung in the balance during hours of hearings, FBI investigations into the sexual assault allegations. The remarkable and ugly set of twists and turns that ended with Saturday's vote. Kavanaugh's path to confirmation became clear Friday afternoon when Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had been on the fence for months, announced her support in a 45-minute speech on the Senate floor."It is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy," she said. "I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh."More:Kavanaugh fight caused bitterness, but senators say they'll be friends again — one dayMore:Protesters disrupt final vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justiceMore:'Very, very difficult vote': The wavering senators who decided whether Brett Kavanaugh joins the Supreme CourtSen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican against Kavanaugh's appointment. She voted as “present” as a collegial gesture for her Republican colleague Sen. Steve Daines, who supports Kavanaugh but is attending his daughter's wedding Saturday.The gesture did not affect the outcome of the final vote but changed the tally to 50-48 in favor of Kavanaugh's confirmation.Kavanaugh's confirmation was marked by mudslinging from both sides that divided the nation even deeper, but there was one thing both Democrats and Republicans agreed one: It was an ugly process that shouldn't be repeated. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered remarks moments before the final votes were cast. Schumer, speaking first, said the nomination from start to finish "has been one of the saddest moments in the history of the Senate." "Truly, Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation is a low moment for the Senate, for the court and for the country," he said. McConnell seemed to agree. He said Kavanaugh’s record was one that "speaks for itself" and the ugly process showed his patience and humility. McConnell said the bitterness “fanned the flames” of partisan divisions throughout the country. As the votes were cast, many senators sat silently with their hands across their laps. There were no cheers or applause at the conclusion. Some senators did hug or pat one another on the back. The atmosphere outside the Capitol differed. Protesters held signs reading "Kava Nope" and "Shame, Collins," the latter a reference to the announcement by Collins that she planned to vote in support of the controversial Kavanaugh. Many of the protesters said they felt powerless but vowed that next month's midterms would change that.Before Vice President Mike Pence called for the first vote, protesters in the Senate angrily began yelling and were dragged out of the chamber by police.“I do not consent,” a woman could be heard screaming more than a minute after she was taken away.“I’m a mother,” one woman shouted.“I’m a patriot,” another said.Pence, who is also president of the Senate, had to ask the sergeant at arms to restore order in the gallery at least a half dozen times.Themes for the midterms Both Republicans and Democrats expect the Kavanaugh decision to be a central theme in the midterm elections.Trump's promise during his 2016 campaign to put conservatives on the Supreme Court reinforced his support among Republicans.In 2018, Democrats hope to ride to a "blue wave" of anger over Trump and Kavanaugh that could flip control of Congress. But Republicans believe the battle over Kavanaugh will help energize their voters, too.Democrats are seen as having a solid chance to captured the House, fueled in part by women voters who are upset over Kavanaugh and dislike Trump. But taking over the Senate is likely to be a lot tougher. Democrats are defending multiple seats in states Trump easily carried in that chamber. In those states, the Kavanaugh vote could help Republicans. More:A reminder on where Brett Kavanaugh stands on controversial issuesMore:$3 million raised for Sen. Susan Collins' opponent amid outcry on Kavanaugh voteOpinion:Rejuvenated Republicans rediscover unity in litmus-test Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fightTrump stepped into the political battle over the confirmation as allegations piled up against Kavanaugh. White House aides had initially taken a more cautious approach, advising the president to tread carefully around a controversy that may still sour suburban women and independent voters. But in recent days Trump changed tack, viewing an outcry over the last-minute allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh as a way to drive turnout. At a Minnesota rally on Thursday, Trump launched his latest rhetorical attack on the political storm surrounding Kavanaugh's confirmation by saying Democrats were "trying to destroy" the Court of Appeals judge and predicting they would pay a price in the November elections. "Their rage-fueled resistance is starting to backfire," Trump told the audience, which responded with chants of Kavanaugh's name. "These people are loco." Kavanaugh’s nomination always was destined to become a partisan battleground because of the justice he was picked to replace: Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court’s swing vote, who had sided with his liberal colleagues on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and gay rights. Kennedy, 81, retired after three decades in the middle of the court’s ideological battles.Contributing: Richard Wolf, Eliza Collins, Maureen Groppe, John Fritze, David Jackson, Associated Press | 0 |
PHILADELPHIA —Hillary Clinton formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president Thursday night, delivering a speech in which she said that the nation is in a “moment of reckoning” and aggressively cast Republican nominee Donald Trump as a divisive figure stoking fear across the country. “He wants to divide us from the rest of the world, and from each other,” Clinton said. “He’s betting that the perils of today’s world will blind us to its unlimited promise.” Clinton said Trump has “taken the Republican Party a long way -- from ‘Morning in America’ to ‘Midnight in America,’” nodding to a famous Ronald Reagan ad campaign. “He wants us to fear the future and fear each other,” said Clinton. Speaking as the first woman nominated for president by a major party, Clinton, the former secretary of state, is giving the highest-profile address of her decades-long political career. “Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” she said. Clinton added: “When any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone.” [Complete live coverage of the Democratic National Convention] Clinton stood defiantly against one of Trump’s signature proposals: a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. “We will not build a wall,” she declared. “Instead we will build an economy where everyone who wants a good job can get one.” Clinton moved through a list of Democratic priorities, speaking in broad strokes about the need to address climate change, raise the minimum wage and reform immigration and campaign finance laws. She portrayed herself as an inclusive leader throughout the address, an argument she used to amplify her claims that Trump is an almost dictatorial figure with little interest in taking the views and contributions of average Americans into account. Clinton also sought to introduce herself positively to the country on her own terms, acknowledging that many voters aren’t sure about her. In doing so, she threw an implicit jab at Trump. Khizr Khan's son, Humayun Khan, was an American Muslim Army soldier who died serving the U.S. after 9/11. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention and offered a strong rebuke of Donald Trump, saying, "Have you even read the United States Constitution?" (Video: Victoria Walker/The Washington Post;Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post) “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me,” she said. “So let me tell you: The family I’m from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind.” Seeking to raise doubts about Trump’s “temperament” to be commander-in-chief, Clinton mocked the mogul’s penchant for picking fights on social media. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” she said. Clinton warned that voters should take the controversial attacks that Trump lobs at face value, rejecting the arguments by some Republicans that in private, Trump is less abrasive. “There is no other Donald Trump. This is it,” she said. “And in the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesn’t get: America is great because America is good.” The Democratic nominee nodded early in her speech to her longtime rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, saying his campaign “inspired millions.” The first sounds of any protesters during Clinton’s speech came from the upper bowl of the arena. They yelled something out and most of the hall couldn’t hear the shouts. The chant of “Hill-a-ry” burst out and drowned them out, a different twist on the “USA” chants that have been used in modern conventions to block out protests. Clinton was introduced by her daughter Chelsea, who called herself “a very, very proud daughter.” Chelsea Clinton highlighted her mother’s warmer side, describing her as a caring, loving parent who was always there for her. Her own daughter Charlotte, she said, “loves Elmo, she loves blueberries and above all, she loves facetiming with Grandma.” She also spoke of her mother’s public service, saying that she had an up-close view of Clinton’s grit and determination in helping help women, first responders and many others. “She makes me proud every single day,” she said. “And mom: Grandma would be so, so proud of you tonight.” [A daughter steps up to a new role to help her mom, Hillary Clinton] One of the dominant themes in the hours leading up to Hillary Clinton’s speech was support for the military and law enforcement and a keen awareness of the gravest security threats facing the country. The earlier speakers included law enforcement officers, retired military officers and parents who lost their children in the line of duty or at war. They often made pressing, emotional pitches for why voters should choose Clinton over Trump to be commander-in-chief. While the speeches seemed designed to show that persistent GOP claims that Democrats don’t care enough about these matters are mistaken, they also exposed a lingering rift in the Democratic Party. As retired Marine Gen. John Allen took the stage, some California delegates rose up in unison with signs and chats of “no more wars!” Others nearby began a counter chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” When that didn’t work, a couple of delegates shouted for the protesters to “shut up!” and “respect” the general. Khizr Khan, the father of U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, a Muslim killed in the Iraq War, offered an urgent rebuttal to Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. “I ask every patriotic American, all Muslim immigrants and all immigrants to not take this election lightly,” he said, during one of the most emotional speeches of the evening. He asked voters to “honor the sacrifice of my son.” He aimed a sharp attack at Trump: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” “If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America,” Khan said. “Donald Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’” [Khizr Khan’s loss: A grieving father of a soldier struggles to understand] Gen. Allen, the former U.S. special envoy in the fight against the Islamic State, made an impassioned case to see Clinton in the Situation Room. “The stakes are enormous. We must not, we could not stand on the sidelines,” he said. Although he didn’t mention the Republican candidate by name, Allen’s speech was a direct rebuke to Trump’s foreign policy positions. Clinton’s America, Allen said, would continue to lead, to uphold its treaties, and to stop the threat of nuclear weapons. “With her as our commander-in-chief, our international relations will not be reduced to a business transaction. Our armed forces will not become an instrument of torture, and they will not be ordered to engage in murder or carry out other illegal activities,” Allen said. Earlier, transgender rights activist Sarah McBride joined Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) and members of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus to address the convention. McBride, who works as the national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said she learned the urgency of achieving equal rights and protection for all people after the death of her husband Andrew from cancer four days after their wedding in 2014. “His passing taught me that every day matters,” McBride said. “Hillary Clinton understands the urgency of our fight.” Actress Mary Steenburgen, who appeared with her husband, actor Ted Danson, said Clinton has been a close friend since 1978: “That’s a lot of life. How would I describe her? Loves to laugh, especially at herself; world class listener; quick to forgive; sensitive; empathetic. But, like her mother, Dorothy, if she gets knocked down seven times, she will get up eight.” The speakers included several Republicans who said they were choosing Clinton over Trump. Doug Elmets, a former Reagan administration official, in an ode to Lloyd Bentsen’s famous rebuke to Dan Quayle about John F. Kennedy in the 1988 vice presidential debate, said in his speech: “I knew Ronald Reagan, I worked for Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump, you are no Ronald Reagan.” Hours before Clinton’s speech, the arena was already buzzing and full to the rafters. In the Wisconsin delegation, the split between supporters of Clinton and defeated primary opponent Sen Bernie Sanders seemed to be resolved — they were unified in wearing cheeseheads. After a few days of tension, they had agreed to sit in a mixed formation based on who they supported: Clinton-Sanders-Clinton-Sanders. But elsewhere in the hall, some Sanders diehards opted for a simple but stark display of their dissent from their party: They were wearing neon shirts that stand out brightly in the Wells Fargo Center when the lights dim. “Enough is enough,” the shirts read, quoting the Vermont senator. In an attempt to prevent Clinton from facing embarrassing jeers from Sanders supporters during her speech, his team texted supporters Thursday evening to encourage them to “extend the same respect during Secretary Clinton’s speech” that her supporters did during his remarks. Trump released a statement hours ahead of Clinton’s speech in an effort to undercut his rival by arguing that she and her top surrogates have glossed over the country’s most pressing problems. “At Hillary Clinton’s convention this week, Democrats have been speaking about a world that doesn’t exist,” said Trump. “A world where America has full employment, where there’s no such thing as radical Islamic terrorism, where the border is totally secured, and where thousands of innocent Americans have not suffered from rising crime in cities like Baltimore and Chicago.” Paul Kane, Louisa Loveluck, Kelsey Snell, Rachel Van Dongen, David Maranniss, Abby Phillip, Karen Tumulty, John Wagner and Alexandra Laughlin contributed to this report. | 0 |
Guyger was off-duty but in uniform when she shot Jean last year in a case that has become a flashpoint in Dallas over issues of police use of force and racial bias.Oct. 1, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC / Updated Oct. 1, 2019, 9:29 PM UTCFormer Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder Tuesday for fatally shooting her neighbor, Botham Jean, after thinking he was an intruder when she mistakenly entered his apartment.Guyger, who has been out on a $300,000 bond, faces a maximum of life in prison. She was not immediately taken into custody and the sentencing phase in her trial began Tuesday afternoon with opening statements from Jean's mother.A gasp could be heard in the packed courtroom when state District Judge Tammy Kemp read the jury's decision. Jean's family later walked out crying and embracing, many wearing red — the victim's favorite color.Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politicsThe jury was tasked with deciding whether Guyger, 31, acted reasonably when she used deadly force and if the prosecution had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she had intentionally killed Jean. A lesser charge of manslaughter, which involves reckless conduct, was also on the table.The jury will also decide on how to sentence Guyger. Kemp has allowed Guyger's social media posts to be admitted into evidence, including from her Pinterest page. NBC News has not verified earlier reports about her page.Deliberations began Monday afternoon after a weeklong trial, which included the playing of the 911 call that Guyger made after shooting Jean and bodycam video from officers who responded to the scene.Guyger was off-duty but in uniform when she twice shot at Jean on Sept. 6, 2018, just before 10 p.m., striking him in the chest. She had worked a 13-1/2-hour shift on the Dallas Police Department's crime response team that day and parked on the fourth floor of the complex's garage.Botham JeanHarding UniversityShe lived on the third floor, and Jean, 26, an accountant and native of the island nation of St. Lucia, lived directly above her. The two did not know one another.The fatal shooting led to one of the most anticipated murder trials in Dallas in decades, and became a flashpoint on the issues of police use of force and racial bias. Guyger is white and Jean was black, and the Jean family has questioned whether Guyger would have shot him if he were a different race.Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Jean family representing them in a civil case, applauded the verdict as a "huge victory" for them as well as "all black people in America.""It's a signal that the tide is going to change here," Merritt told reporters outside the court. "Police officers are going to be held accountable for their actions, and we believe this is going to change the policing culture all over the world."Botham Jean's mother, Allison Jean, rejoices in the courtroom after fired Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder on Oct. 1, 2019, in Dallas.Tom Fox / The Dallas Morning News via AP, PoolAnother family attorney, Benjamin Crump, added that Jean was the "perfect" victim — a young black man who was college-educated and doing nothing but relaxing inside his home after work."It shouldn't take all of that for unarmed black and brown people to get justice," Crump said.Prosecutors said Jean was watching television and eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream in his living room when Guyger burst inside, likely scaring him. Although Guyger said that she used her electronic key fob in the lock, the door pushed open, and she immediately drew her service weapon once inside.Testifying in her own defense last week, Guyger tearfully told jurors that she was scared for her life when she entered an apartment that she thought was hers. She said she commanded, "Let me see your hands," but the man inside began coming toward her and yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey!"The trajectory of the bullet showed that Jean was either getting up from his couch or cowering when Guyger fired at him, the prosecution said."I never wanted to take an innocent person's life. I'm so sorry," Guyger said on the stand. "This is not about hate — it's about being scared."Guyger admitted to giving Jean minimal lifesaving aid because she had only one hand free while she called 911 and her state of mind was frantic.Guyger, who was on the Dallas police force for more than four years, was fired from her job after the shooting. Toxicology results presented at trial showed she was not intoxicated during the shooting.The defense brought on other tenants from the same apartment complex who testified that they had parked on a different floor and gone to the wrong unit by mistake.Guyger's attorneys also downplayed that she had been sharing sexually explicit text messages with her work partner and was on the phone with him just before the shooting, which was revealed in the opening of the trial.Prosecutors used those messages to make the case that Guyger was not as fatigued that day as the defense had claimed, and that Guyger intended to see her partner later that night.They also said Guyger was at fault for missing several clues that she was on the wrong floor and went to the wrong apartment, including a red doormat that Jean's apartment had and hers did not.The jury in Guyger's trial was made up mostly of women and people of color.The sentencing was set to resume on Wednesday morning.Erik Ortiz is a staff writer for NBC News focusing on racial injustice and social inequality. | 0 |
The Slatest The Tribute In Light shines up from Lower Manhattan on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on September 11, 2021 in New York City. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The FBI ended the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by releasing a newly declassified document regarding its investigation into support given to two of the Saudi hijackers. The heavily redacted 16-page document details how the hijackers had contact with lots of Saudi associates in the run-up to the attacks but fails to provide conclusive proof that senior officials of the Saudi government were complicit. The document, which was released late on Saturday, is the first record disclosed by the FBI since President Joe Biden issued an executive order calling for the declassification of documents related to the attacks. Families of the victims of the attack had called on Biden to skip memorial events on Saturday if he didn’t declassify documents that they claim will show how Saudi officials played a role in the attacks. Biden has called on the Justice Department and other federal agencies to release declassified documents of the attacks over the next six months. The document relates to an interview conducted in November 2015 with an unidentified Saudi man who was applying for U.S. citizenship. The man had lots of contact with Saudi nationals in the United States who supported the hijackers when they arrived in the country before the attacks. “But the document released on Saturday provided no new conclusive evidence about the Saudi government’s role,” details the New York Times. Families of victims don’t quite see it that way though. In a statement, 9/11 Families United said the document “puts to bed any doubts about Saudi complicity in the attacks.” Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was killed on Sept. 11 and is part of the group, said the document has “exposed” the secrets of Saudi Arabia “and it is well past time for the Kingdom to own up to its officials’ roles in murdering thousands on American soil.” Jim Kreindler, a lawyer for the relatives of victims, said “the findings and conclusions in this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have made in the litigation regarding the Saudi government’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.” There have long been questions about whether Saudi government officials played a role in the attack. The speculation was in large part fueled by the repeated refusal to declassify 28 pages of a 2002 congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks that addressed connections to Saudi Arabia. The document was released in 2016 and detailed suspicious meetings and hints of financing while also exposing how Saudi Arabia tried to push back against U.S. operations targeting al-Qaida. Saudi Arabia has long denied any role in the attacks and publicly welcomed Biden’s declassification drive as a way to “end the baseless allegations against the Kingdom once and for all.” Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. In its final report released in 2004, the Sept. 11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” the attacks. But the carefully worded statement left open the possibility that lower-level Saudi officials were involved. Plus the commission encouraged the FBI to continue looking into the issue. | 0 |
Because of his miscues, Biden’s staff lives on pins and needles.
BLACKSBURG, Va. — The most emotionally powerful minute of Joe Biden’s two-day swing through rural Virginia almost didn’t happen. After the vice president paid a solemn visit Wednesday to the memorial honoring the victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting here, reporters asked him about his feelings upon seeing the site. As Biden began to answer, his aides intervened, yelling “Let’s go,” and trying to shoo reporters back to the motorcade. ( PHOTOS: Joe Biden over the years) Only when it became clear that the vice president wanted to express himself did his entourage stop interrupting to let the candidate speak. When he did, Biden recalled his own family tragedy — losing his young wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident — and paused repeatedly to keep his composure. It was the side of Biden — comfortable with his emotions, and with a gift for human connection — that makes him appealing to many voters. And the moment never would’ve taken place if he had not effectively overruled his would-be handlers. It was a vivid illustration of a phenomenon that pervades the 2012 campaign: The consuming effort by operatives to stamp the spontaneity and life out of modern politics. ( Also on POLITICO: Ryan: Biden is ‘desperate’) Of course, Biden’s two-day swing through small-town Virginia also offered a perfect example of why this brand of control-freak politics has emerged. His unrehearsed comment to a mixed-race audience in Danville that the Republicans and their Wall Street allies want to put people “ back in chains” made national news as an example of rhetorical excess. In an era of Twitter and saturation news coverage — when one stray remark can upend a day’s news cycle and campaigns struggle to shape their preferred message — politicians and their aides are increasingly intent on restricting the media’s interaction with candidates. Barack Obama or Mitt Romney both shun the sort of freewheeling news conferences that used to be a staple of campaigns. And when reporters do seek to engage the candidates, the staff minders attempt to shut it down with ham-handed aggressiveness. All candidates live with the contradiction — a media culture that implores politicians to seem authentic but is ready to punish them when they really are — but the challenge is especially exquisite in Biden’s case. ( Also on POLITICO: Axelrod: 'Chains' not racial comment) He is an irrepressible, garrulous and emotive politician, who’s flourished and fumbled through 40 years in national office by practicing politics the old-fashioned way — from the gut and without much script. He’s as fine a one-on-one politician of any officeholder of his generation, a talent especially prized because it is not a particular gift of Obama’s. But his penchant for off-message moments regularly sends aides in the West Wing and at Chicago reelection headquarters into orbit. His staff’s response is effectively to try to save Biden from himself. During the Virginia trip reporters were hustled out of retail campaign stops in diners and other intimate settings, aides tried to edit media pool reports for any potential landmines that could be seized on by Republicans and even hovered at close range to eavesdrop on journalists’ conversations with attendees at Biden rallies. If obsessive control is the order of the day in both presidential campaigns, it is also clear overzealousness can boomerang. Take the case of Romney’s overseas trip last month. When the travelling press corps attempted to ask questions of Romney as he walked to his car in Warsaw last month, a press aide cursed at the journalists. But the overreaction created the exact sort of off-message distraction it was meant to preempt when, later in the morning, the dressing-down found its way into the live reports on network morning news shows back in the states. The attempt to control Biden, or limit visibility to a natural politician practicing his craft can often seem especially self-defeating. It’s nearly impossible to imagine Obama convincingly tell a NASACR owner that he’d rather have won Daytona than be vice president, as Biden did in Stuart, Va. Nor is it likely that Romney would, after hearing of the death of a woman’s father, instinctively put his hand on her cheek in sympathy, as Biden did during a stop in Radford. Yet because of his miscues, Biden’s staff lives on pins and needles. This leads to odd decisions. For example, on Tuesday the vice president made an off-the-schedule stop at a cafe in the little courthouse town of Stuart . After meeting the owner of a Daytona 500-winning NASCAR team, Biden was asked about Social Security and Medicare by a crowd of a couple dozen seniors. In the aftermath of Paul Ryan joining the GOP ticket, it’s a topic Democrats are delighted to discuss. Yet just as Biden was saying “voucher-ize,” his aides started to not so subtly nudge reporters that it was time to leave. It might seem like an opportune time to have reporters present to record and amplify his party’s message. But Biden aides sent the traveling press marching out. What’s perhaps most striking about the Biden staff’s attempts at press management is its effort to influence what goes in the pool reports from his off-schedule stops. Because the entire press corps cannot easily jam in, say, a diner or private home, it is standard practice to have a single designated reporter take notes and share the material with colleagues from other news organizations. These reports are designed entirely for the media, but are distributed by White House staffers. In the case of Obama, as with his predecessors, the reports are simply forwarded without comment by email to a news media distribution list. But on two occasions during Biden’s Virginia trip, his staff sought to have certain elements in the reports highlighted while reporters drafted them and discussed the contents with the reporters after the summaries had been sent but before they had before sent to the broader media. Staffers spinning reporters to frame events the best they can is, of course, commonplace in politics. But attempting to intervene in the drafting of accounts that reporters share with one another is all but unheard of and reflects the deep concern Biden’s team has about offering any fodder to the opposition. Biden officials emphasize how many off-schedule stops he makes on his campaign travels and, noting that that they let reporters hang around his visit to a high school football practice on Monday, point out that they were less restrictive before the “chains” comment. Yet it’s the response to that remark that is so telling about their leash-tightening instincts when Biden has one of his moments. And the staff restrictiveness seems contagious. By mid-day Wednesday, following a rally on the Virginia Tech campus, a press aide for the Virginia campaign was eavesdropping as a reporter attempted to interview attendees who had spoken with the vice president on the rope line. The snooping happened with one attendee on one side of the gym and with another on the opposite end. Yet what the campaign doesn’t seem to realize is that Biden is at his best when he’s not being minded. “The thing that people really like about Joe Biden is he says what he thinks,” explained former Sen. Ted Kaufman, the Delaware Democrat who once served as Biden’s chief of staff and replaced him in the Senate After much of the elementary school gym had cleared out following a Tuesday night rally in the southwest Virginia town of Wytheville, the vice president was still working the remaining people left. Most of his staff and much of the press corps had already gone. A father was trying to take a picture of his two children and wife with Biden, but the vice president had a better idea. He grabbed the camera, whirled around and handed it to his security man. Then Biden reached out and made sure the dad was in the photo, too. They were all beaming. But Biden didn’t stop with a photo op, he also bent down and had a word with the two kids. Afterword, the dad, a Wytheville resident named Mark McHayle, said he found Biden “down to earth” and had his 13-year-old son recite what instructions the vice president had given him. “Keep the boys away from your sister and make sure your mother is happy,” the adolescent repeated. It was a genuine moment, pure Biden. But, in his campaign and others, it’s becoming more difficult to witness such authentic exchanges. The artifice of teleprompters and talking points is becoming the rule. It’s not a system that the Joe Biden of 1972, the year he won a Senate seat at age 29, would recognize. | 0 |
In the mythology that holds sway over President Trump’s political imagination, the massive crises rocking the country — pandemic, depression, the worst civil unrest in 50 years — are all being alchemized by Trump’s magical reality-bending powers into political gold.Trump has hoped to use these events to solidify his grip on his base, by vowing to protect Trump country from a disease ravaging urban America, by harnessing the supposed populist rage of Real American workers against Democratic elites locking down economies, and by repurposing “law and order” race-baiting to transform Joe Biden into an ally of crime and urban mayhem.Nsé Ufot of the New Georgia Project urges protesters to connect what they are demanding in the streets with what they are choosing at the polls June 9. (Joel Adrian/The Washington Post)Trump is slipping among whitesCohn’s analysis finds that Trump’s slippage is driven largely by his eroding support among white voters, particularly those said to be his base. Cohn averaged together recent high-quality polls and found that Biden’s overall lead over Trump has expanded to 10 points, up from six points earlier this spring.Specifically, Cohn found that in this average of polls, Trump’s edge over Biden among non-college-educated white voters has slipped by 10 points. He now leads among them by 21 points, versus 31 points earlier this spring, the latter being about the same lead Trump commanded among them in 2016.As Cohn notes, the shift among this demographic “would be enough to assure Mr. Biden the presidency, given his considerable strength among white college graduates.”Indeed, as Cohn also points out, white college grads now back Biden by 20 points, up four points from two months ago and up eight points from 2016, when Trump won in part by not losing educated whites by the margins many of us wrongly expected.Biden also continues to hold an average lead of seven points among seniors, Cohn finds, which is striking amid all this unrest and amid Trump’s bluster about responding with “STRENGTH!”None of this was supposed to be happening.A cultural shift in white America?One possible reason for all this can be found in the new Post/Schar School poll: There is a very large shift underway in how white voters view the issues underlying the protests.Only 35 percent of Americans overall approve of Trump’s handling of the protests, the Post poll finds. Meanwhile, 74 percent support the protests and 69 percent say the killing of George Floyd shows broader problems in how police treat black Americans.But note these findings among whites: Only 39 percent of them approve of Trump’s approach, while 57 percent disapprove; 69 percent of them support the protests; and 68 percent of them say Floyd’s death reveals systemic police mistreatment of blacks.In these cases, there’s not a big difference along educational lines: Strikingly, a bare majority of non-college whites disapproves of Trump’s handling of the protests. And large majorities of both non-college and college-educated whites support the protests and say Floyd’s killing shows broader problems in the police treatment of black Americans.Also striking: The 69 percent of Americans who believe the killing represents broader systemic problems represent a 26-point shift since 2014, when only 43 percent said the same on a comparable question.Again, the story here is white voters. As The Post’s write-up notes, on this question …The biggest changes are among whites overall (a 33-point shift) and white women (38 points).That’s a huge shift among whites toward agreement with the core grievances of the protesters. And this is mirrored by other polling, which has found similarly large percentages of whites agreeing with those grievances.It’s also mirrored on the ground. As Ryan Cooper points out, across the country we’ve seen black protesters joined by whites, including poor and rural ones.Still, it looks plausible that a broad cultural shift may be underway throughout white America on these issues. Biden could directly benefit from this if he is perceived as striking a much saner balance. He has condemned violence while calling for broad reforms to address grievances that large swaths of white America now see as legitimate and demanding of action.Obviously we cannot know what sort of direct relationship all this has with Trump’s slippage among white voters. But we can at least reasonably speculate that Trump’s demagoguery has failed to shore up his support with them and that their rejection of his basic arguments helps explain why.This, of course, is not a possibility that Trump is capable of entertaining. He has absolute, unshakable confidence in the potency of his magical reality-bending powers:Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2020
As Trump’s floating of this despicable conspiracy theory shows, it is highly unlikely he can be persuaded to even ask himself whether his magical demagoguery might be failing him. So this derangement will continue.But, with some signs showing the protests are settling into a calmer, more quietly resolute longer-term posture as grievances appear to be getting heard throughout society, this nonsense will likely make Trump continue to look more unhinged and out of touch. Including among white voters.U.S. officials erected an eight-foot-tall fence around a public square in front of the White House. The people turned it into a wall of artistic prot (The Washington Post)Read more: | 0 |
Google will no longer allow advertisers, publishers, and YouTube creators to monetize content that denies the existence of climate change. The company detailed the changes in a support document on Thursday.
“Today, we’re announcing a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” the Google Ads team said in the document. “This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.”
Google says it will use a mix of automated tools and human reviews to enforce the policy. “When evaluating content against this new policy, we’ll look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim,” Google said. Ads will still be allowed on climate topics like public debates on climate policy, research, and more, according to Google.
The increased action against climate change deniers marks Google’s second big misinformation policy change in recent days, arriving about a week after YouTube banned vaccine misinformation. It follows new features announced by the search giant intended to help people shrink their carbon footprints. | 0 |
February 25, 2016 / 1:47 PM / CBS News Mitt Romney claims that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a "bombshell" tax issue that could be his downfall Mitt Romney claims that Republican presidenti... 05:42 Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee responded Thursday to a barrage of Twitter insults from Donald Trump with a tweet of his own:Their war of words began Wednesday, when Romney in a Fox News interview, suggested that there might be something amiss in Trump's tax returns. "We're now, you know, in late February and we still haven't seen either Donald Trump's or Marco Rubio's or Ted Cruz's taxes," Romney told Fox's Neil Cavuto. "Frankly, the voters have a right to see those tax returns before they decide who our nominee ought to be."Of Trump's filings specifically, Romney said they're "likely to be a bombshell."
On the topic of his tax returns, Trump has said only that his campaign will "make that determination over the next couple of months." He has been more voluble in his personal responses to Romney, though. Trump tweeted: And he's been on a roll since that first tweet, lashing out at Romney with the sort of vitriol usually reserved for his rival 2016 contenders.On Facebook, Trump called Romney a "lightweight losing candidate."Another tweet explained that the photo, of Trump glaring as he looks up from signing a stack of papers, depicted him "signing a recent tax return." He labeled Romney "one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics" in a tweet. He punctuated that message with another insult: "Dope!"Later, in another post on the social media platform, Trump promised that he was "going to do what @MittRomney was totally unable to do- WIN!" His anti-Romney tirade also grew to encompass another figure in the Republican establishment, opponent Marco Rubio.Trump has also effectively crowd-sourced the art of the insult to his considerable Twitter following, and he's made it a point to repost his followers' attacks. The attacks will likely continue on the Republican debate stage Thursday night, where the remaining five GOP candidates will gather for their last bout before the Super Tuesday nominating contests. Download our Free App For Breaking News & Analysis Download the Free CBS News app Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue
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WASHINGTON — Apprehensions of undocumented migrants crossing the southern U.S. border passed 1.7 million in fiscal year 2021 to hit an all-time high, according to Customs and Border Protection data obtained by NBC News, as U.S. officials turn their attention to a huge new caravan of migrants in southern Mexico that may head north as soon as this weekend.The caravan gathered in Tapachula, near the Mexico-Guatemala border, includes thousands of migrants fleeing Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and other Latin American countries, two Department of Homeland Security officials said. Violent clashes with Mexican police have broken out as desperate migrants try to leave the camp and continue their journey. New images from Telemundo, NBCUniversal's Spanish-language network, show police meeting migrants with shields and beating them when they try to cross barriers.The Mexican government is trying to keep the caravan from leaving Tapachula, but organizers of the group have pinned Saturday as the date to start traveling to the U.S.A DHS official said the agency is keeping an eye on Tapachula, as well as other areas where large groups have massed, such as Necocli, a northern Colombia town where more than 20,000 migrants, many of them Haitian, are camping as they prepare to make their way to the U.S. border.But, the official said, migrants might recalculate and decide not to journey further because of the forceful pushback by Mexican officials in Tapachula.The official said the migrants may also be deterred by the U.S. response to the more than 30,000 Haitians who tried to cross into Del Rio, Texas, last month. More than 8,000 of them were turned back to Mexico, and more than 7,000 have been deported to Haiti.The DHS official said migrants should now realize that traveling in large numbers decreases their odds of being able to enter the U.S.By the end of the month, the Biden administration will have built an intelligence cell to share information within DHS about mass migrant movements like the Del Rio surge.Overall, CBP encountered more than 192,000 undocumented migrants at the southwest border last month, a slight decrease from July and August, when crossings topped 200,000. But overall, the 2021 fiscal year, which ran from October through September, hit border crossing totals never seen before.The Washington Post first reported that more than 190,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the border in September, for a fiscal year total of 1.7 million.Over 100,000 of the migrants stopped by CBP last month were expelled from the U.S. without being able to claim asylum under a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authority known as Title 42 designed to restrict migration flows during the Covid pandemic. Immigration advocates have sued the Biden administration to stop the policy, arguing that it is being used to deny asylum-seekers their internationally guaranteed right to asylum hearings rather than to prevent the spread of Covid.CORRECTION (Oct. 21, 2021, 6 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the name of the government's primary health agency. It is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not the Centers for Disease Control.Julia Ainsley is a correspondent covering the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice for the NBC News Investigative Unit. | 0 |
It is barely worth pointing out that Donald Trump's surprise visit to Mexico on Wednesday won't do President Enrique Peña Nieto much good. Peña Nieto is deeply unpopular in his home country, with a quarterly survey from the newspaper Reforma putting his favorability at 23 percent — a figure so low that it makes Trump himself, at 35 percent, seem positively embraced.That 35 percent is in the United States, of course. In Mexico, Trump's a lot less popular. A June survey showed Trump at 75 percent unfavorability in the country — compared with Hillary Clinton's 6 percent. When Ipsos asked people around the world in June who they'd pick in the American presidential contest, no country saw a wider gap than Mexico. Mexico preferred Clinton to Trump by an 88-to-1 margin — an 87-point spread. (The only countries that preferred Trump were China and Russia.) The next-closest countries were Belgium and Sweden, where Clinton was preferred by 66 points. There's a correlation between Trump's poll numbers and the Mexican economy: When he does better, the value of the peso has dropped.Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is slated to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto as he tries to clarify his past incendiary comments abo (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)Less than 12 hours after the news of Trump's visit broke, other Mexican politicians had already weighed in to oppose welcoming Trump to the country. Politico collected some examples. "We are threatened with war and walls, but we open the National Palace," the president of the Mexican Senate wrote, adding that the invitation approved of Trump's "proposal of demagogy and hate." A former diplomat tweeted, "I feel embarrassed as a Mexican thanks to my president." On CNN on Wednesday morning, former president Vicente Fox (who has been outspoken about Trump) disparaged Peña Nieto's decision."I just can't envision him sitting on that chair that was the chair of Pres Washington..He doesn't even know how to run a biz" Fox on Trump.— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) August 31, 2016
This response is not surprising. From the first moments of his candidacy, Trump railed against Mexico. Even before that, he complained about Mexico on Twitter, in part because he won a lawsuit in the country but hasn't been able to collect.From our standpoint, though, the bigger question is how this benefits Trump.In the past, Peña Nieto has criticized Trump and his proposals. In March, Peña Nieto compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, saying that Trump's "strident" rhetoric was of a piece with the arguments those leaders used to gain power. Peña Nieto has also flatly rejected Trump's signature policy proposal, to build a wall on the border and have Mexico pay for it. Not going to happen, Peña Nieto said to Fareed Zakaria of The Washington Post and CNN: "There is no way that Mexico can pay [for] a wall like that."After Trump and Peña Nieto meet, that will be the first question that's asked of Trump. Did Peña Nieto agree to pay for the wall? (Unless, of course, Trump's arrival is met with the sort of demonstrations that his appearances have earned in the past in San Jose and San Diego.) Peña Nieto — unpopular! — has a clear political incentive to embarrass Trump on the issue, a sort of I-invited-him-here-to-boss-him-around sort of thing. It's perhaps Peña Nieto's only possible positive political outcome. But even if things progress quietly, it forces the issue: Trump says he'll make Mexico pay, and Mexico says it won't. Now what? Trump has never been able to answer that question.(One deeply optimistic Trump supporter, former congressman Joe Walsh, figures that Trump obtaining a promise to pay for the wall would be "game, set, match," which is true. It is also true that if Peña Nieto gives Trump proof that Clinton was a space alien intent on destroying the globe that it would benefit Trump. Neither is likely to happen.)What does Trump get out of it? We assume that Peña Nieto will pose for photos with the visiting dignitary (though that seems like a political miscalculation for him). Trump-as-statesman is a new one, and it will be interesting to see how it's handled. That photo itself encapsulates a lot of the risk-reward calculus for Trump: At best he gets a dull picture of himself standing next to a person with whom most Americans aren't familiar; at worst, he gets an awkward picture posing in front of the Mexican flag — something that some part of his base probably won't be thrilled about.The trip will, at best, show that Trump can go to a foreign country and meet with leaders without incident, a fairly low item on the presidential checklist. (A subject for another time: Do voters actually care about a grip-and-greet?) At worst? Who knows.The move feels a bit like John McCain's decision in September 2008 to suspend his campaign to deal with the economy. It felt gimmicky and didn't do much — and reinforced that McCain was in the sort of political position that necessitated gimmicks that might not do much. Barring a Joe-Walsh-esque miracle, Trump's trip to Mexico instills a lot of risk with the potential upside for Trump being that he proved he can do something fairly simple without incident. For Peña Nieto, the potential upside is that he can score points off an unpopular visitor; the downside is that he is seen as embracing someone his constituents vehemently dislike.Given how low the reward is for Trump and how high the possibility that something might go wrong, there’s a decent chance that the politician for whom Trump’s trip is beneficial is his opponent.What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trailMANCHESTER, NH - NOVEMBER 7: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at SNHU Arena in Manchester, NH on Monday November 07, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | 0 |
Credit...Dave Kaup/ReutersSept. 18, 2018BEIJING — President Trump imposed tariffs in July on $34 billion in Chinese goods. China matched them dollar for dollar with its own.Then he hit an additional $16 billion in goods in August. China matched that, too.Now, Mr. Trump has made his biggest move yet, announcing 10 percent tariffs starting in a week on $200 billion a year of Chinese goods. But this time, China can’t match them all — and that crystallizes a growing problem for Beijing.On Tuesday, Chinese officials responded to the president’s latest move by following through on an earlier threat to impose tariffs on $60 billion in American goods — nearly everything China buys from the United States.China’s responses have so far failed to thwart Mr. Trump’s trade offensive, and with the White House amping up the fight again, Chinese leaders aren’t sure how to respond, people briefed on economic policymaking discussions say.Chinese officials “are generally confused,” said Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, a trade specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been traveling around China speaking with officials, businesspeople and workers.“They don’t know what to do,” he added. “They worry that the tit-for-tat model is playing into Trump’s hands.”China does not import nearly enough from the United States to target $200 billion in American goods — let alone the additional $267 billion in Chinese goods that Mr. Trump has threatened to tax.ImageCredit...Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut China’s leaders feel they cannot back down. They have presented the trade war as part of a broader effort by the United States to contain China’s rise.Mr. Trump has said as much, and did so again at a news conference on Tuesday. “China has been taking advantage of the United States for a long time, and that’s not happening anymore,” he said.The Chinese public could see any effort to soothe tensions as capitulation. Some hard-liners want a more aggressive stance.Lou Jiwei, who retired as finance minister in 2016 but is still the head of the country’s social security fund, suggested on Sunday that China could deliberately disrupt American companies’ supply chains by halting the export of crucial components mostly made in China. But Chinese trade experts dismiss that idea as impractical and not the government’s position.Chinese officials know what they don’t want to do. They have rejected one idea that would replace the matching tariffs with a more sophisticated system, said the people briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the fragility of the deliberations. That response — discussed in detail within the Commerce Ministry and other agencies — would have led to lower tariffs on American goods in dollar terms, which could be seen as a fig leaf to the White House.That approach would have recognized a potentially expensive new reality for Beijing: The tariffs may be here to stay. Mr. Trump is suffering from weak approval ratings and could lose influence in congressional elections in November. Democrats have opposed most of his agenda, but many have supported his attacks on trade with China. Even if Mr. Trump leaves office in two years, there is little guarantee that his China trade policies will be changed.In Beijing, proponents of the new approach, which would scale down China’s tariffs in dollar terms to reflect the lopsided trade imbalance between the two countries, say Chinese leaders could still revisit the idea because it offers them a way to contain the damage and soothe tensions.China’s leaders “don’t really want to engage in a dollar-for-dollar retaliation,” said Yu Yongding, a prominent economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “Their purpose is to stop this trade war.”China’s other options are limited.It could punish American businesses that depend on China. Already, its antitrust officials have effectively killed the $44 billion effort by Qualcomm, the semiconductor company, to buy a Dutch chip maker. China has also pledged to buy soybeans from other countries, but replacing voluminous American supplies will be difficult.Other moves have already served as warnings, like delays at Chinese ports. Ford Motor’s Lincoln cars and other goods have sometimes been the subject of unusually lengthy customs inspections this summer, although the delays do not appear to have caused much financial harm.“It is certain that China will have other, invisible retaliation against the United States,” said Mei Xinyu, a researcher at the Commerce Ministry’s policy research and training academy.But more drastic moves, like closing factories or encouraging consumer boycotts of American goods, could eliminate Chinese jobs. They could also permanently damage China’s reputation as a place to do business and only accelerate corporate plans to look to other countries.“It’s difficult to build a reputation, and easy to harm a reputation,” Mr. Mei said.China could also guide its currency to a weaker level against the dollar. It has already nudged the currency a bit lower, making Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and partly offsetting the tariffs. But a weaker currency would make China’s imports more expensive, raise the risk of inflation and lead to a potentially damaging flight of money out of the country. It could also provoke further American retaliation.The trade war has hit only a small part of the Chinese economy for now, but the damage could add up. Higher tariffs on American goods raise the cost of essential imports like soybeans and microchips. China still derives a big chunk of growth from making smartphones, clothing, chemicals and a raft of other goods and selling them to Americans.Already its currency and stock market have weakened as the trade war has intensified. China has taken steps to shore up its economy, but they could take months or years to kick in.China has offered small concessions to the United States, like lowering its tariffs on imported cars from everywhere to 15 percent, from 25 percent; the United States, however, charges 2.5 percent. China has also allowed foreign companies to own greater shares of Chinese insurers, banks, asset management companies and car factories.The new plan that Chinese officials rejected in recent weeks could have been more warmly greeted by the White House.Under that plan, the United States and China would each levy tariffs based on proportions of trade rather than dollar amounts, people familiar with the discussions said. Because the United States imports nearly four times as much from China as it exports, that would lead to tariffs at different values.For example, the United States has already levied tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods, one-tenth of what it imports from China. Instead of matching that with tariffs on $50 billion in American-made goods, China would levy tariffs on one-tenth of such goods, totaling $13 billion to $15 billion, depending on the details.Proponents of the plan say letting Washington impose more tariffs than Beijing would actually hurt the United States more because tariffs are ultimately paid by consumers and businesses in the countries that levy them.“The United States wants to hurt China by imposing tariffs on Chinese exports,” Mr. Yu, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences economist, wrote in a journal in July. “In the end, it may be the United States itself” that is hurt, he wrote.But other Chinese trade experts say tariffs on equal fractions of trade would be too big a compromise.“It’s unrealistic, it’s difficult in practice, it’s not doable, and it’s against basic trade rules,” said Mr. Mei, the Commerce Ministry researcher. | 0 |
There will be a new House election in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, after the state elections board ruled Thursday that a bizarre ballot tampering scheme had tainted the basic fairness of the November vote.
The new election would start with a new primary election, under a recently passed state law, to determine the Democratic and Republican candidates. On Election Day, Republican Mark Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by fewer than 1,000 votes, but his win was never certified by the state after allegations of electoral misconduct became public. The timing for the new elections will be announced soon.
Over the past four days, state investigators laid out in detail an “unlawful,” “coordinated,” and well-funded plot to tamper with absentee ballots in a US House election that remained uncalled more than three months after Election Day — finally bringing some clarity to one of the strangest election scandals in recent memory.
State investigators established their theory of the case — that a Republican operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, directed a coordinated scheme to unlawfully collect, falsely witness, and otherwise tamper with absentee ballots — and workers who say they had assisted him in the scheme delivered damning testimony describing their activities. Dowless himself refused to testify, on the advice of his lawyer.
On Thursday afternoon, after four days of evidence indicating fraud and an attempt to conceal the scheme from state investigators, Harris himself told the state election board that he believed a new election should be called. The board voted to do so soon afterward.
A top political consultant for Harris’s campaign and the candidate’s own son had given their own remarkable testimony about the decision to hire Dowless. The consultant, Andy Yates, and John Harris both insisted Harris did not know what Dowless was doing and proved too trusting about the operative’s claims. Yet John Harris did say that he had warned his father that Dowless’s prior work on absentee ballots seemed like it could be illegal, a warning that went unheeded by the candidate. His testimony left Mark Harris in tears.
The board — made up of three Democrats and two Republicans — had reconvened after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper named new members amid an unrelated legal dispute. They reviewed the evidence in the case over two days and then voted to call for a new election at the hearing’s conclusion.
Under state law, the board is able to call a new election if the basic fairness of the election was tainted. It doesn’t matter whether the number of votes in dispute would have been enough to swing the outcome. For the House, the question is whether the Democratic majority will grow by one more seat or not. But the voters in the Ninth District will get the chance at a clean election after the state’s investigation brought to light a convoluted scheme to collect, witness, and tamper with absentee ballots in this district along the state’s southern border.
What we’ve learned about the alleged ballot tampering
It’s important to remember two things about absentee ballots in North Carolina: Anybody can request one, and at the end of every day before the election, state officials publish a file of which voters requested an absentee ballot by mail and whether they have returned it to be counted.
A campaign could check that file every morning to know how many registered Republican, Democratic, and unaffiliated voters had requested and returned a mail-in ballot.
“From a mechanics point of view, this is a gold mine of information for candidates and their campaign,” Bitzer told me previously.
That treasure trove of data would have given Dowless and the people he worked with a detailed picture of how many absentee ballots were coming in every day from Republican, Democratic, and unaffiliated voters — and, by extension, how many absentee ballots they needed from their voters to keep pace with the Democrats. Indeed, some of the workers who testified before the board Monday described Dowless discussing with other operatives how many votes were needed to match the Democratic turnout and informing Harris that the early vote totals looked promising for the Republican.
Investigators working on behalf of the North Carolina election board started Monday’s hearing by laying out the contours of the ballot tampering scheme, which they say was led by Dowless, and then questioned Lisa Britt and several other women who worked for him. Britt, who was Dowless’s stepdaughter for a time and said she remained close to him, said she believed that she and Dowless had done something wrong. But she insisted more than once that the GOP candidate, Harris, had not been privy to the plot.
Between the opening statement from investigators, Britt’s testimony and corroborating testimony from other witnesses, here is what we learned about the alleged ballot tampering scheme: State investigators said Dowless had used absentee ballot request forms for prior elections to “pre-fill” forms for the 2018 election and sent out workers to find the voters so they could sign the forms and request a ballot — they described this as “Phase One.”
The workers allegedly presented the forms to Dowless and received a payment from him, based on how many they brought in, and then sent the forms to the board of elections.
At least 780 absentee request forms were allegedly submitted by Dowless or one of his workers.
For “Phase Two” of the operation, investigators said, Dowless sent out workers to collect the absentee ballots from voters.
Some of the ballots the workers collected had not been signed by witnesses or had not been sealed and the workers again took those ballots to Dowless and received payment in return.
Dowless held on to the returned ballots and instructed workers to falsely sign as witnesses for some of the ballots he collected, according to investigators.
To avoid raising the suspicions of state officials, the ballots were mailed in small batches, from post offices near the voters’ homes, and the workers made sure that the dates of their signatures and even the ink they used matched that of the voters.
Britt affirmed much of the investigators’ case in her testimony, testifying that she had collected ballots, that Dowless had instructed people to sign ballots they had actually not been there to witness, and that she had signed her mother’s name on some ballots so they would not raise suspicion from the state board.
Britt testified that if the ballots were left unsealed and there were elections left blank, she would fill in some of the empty offices — again, this was done to avoid arousing suspicion from state election officials. (She did emphasize she had never filled in Harris’s name on a ballot, because voters typically only filled in the congressional races and a few others.)
Britt also testified that Dowless had reached out to her shortly before Monday’s hearing and provided her with a statement so she could plead the Fifth during her testimony.
Collecting an absentee ballot for another person and falsely witnessing a ballot — two of the allegations made in the witnesses’ testimony — are violations of state law, according to the state investigators.
Britt, Andy Yates, and John Harris have been emphatic that Harris was not aware of the plan. Investigators and Democratic lawyers still grilled Yates about his failure to identify Dowless’s prior criminal history while he was working for Yates’s firm on Harris’s campaign. John Harris also told the board that he had warned his father that Dowless might have conducted illegal electioneering in previous elections — but his father hired Dowless anyway.
It remains to be seen whether criminal charges will be pressed in the case. But the political question is now settled: There will be a new congressional election in the Ninth District. | 0 |
Michael Cohen hired an IT firm to rig online polls in favor of Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election and instructed the company to create the @WomenForCohen Twitter account to laud how sexually attractive he is, The Wall Street Journal reports.Trump’s then-attorney—who has since spectacularly fallen out with the president—promised to pay $50,000 to the small tech firm run by a Liberty University staffer to help distort online polls on CNBC and the Drudge Report.Cohen has confirmed the bombshell report to CNN, and claimed it was carried out “at the direction and for the sole benefit of Donald J. Trump.”The IT firm doesn’t appear to have been particularly good at the task. Cohen reportedly asked for its help in a January 2014’s CNBC poll to name the country’s top business leaders. RedFinch Solutions founder John Gauger reportedly wrote a computer script to repeatedly vote for Trump—but was still unable to get him into the top 100 candidates.Gauger is chief information officer at Virginia’s Liberty University, the evangelical Christian college run by Jerry Fallwell Jr., a close Trump supporter. Cohen reportedly helped arrange Falwell Jr.’s endorsement of Trump in January 2016.Cohen, who has been sentenced to three years in prison for lying to Congress and campaign-finance violations, returned to Gauger a year later, in February 2015, according to the Journal report. Cohen asked for help in a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates—he only managed fifth place, with about 24,000 votes.Some of the work appeared to be more for Cohen’s benefit than Trump’s. It’s claimed that Cohen tasked Gauger with creating the @WomenForCohen Twitter account in May 2016, which heralded Cohen as a “sex symbol” and promoted his media appearances during the campaign. Twitter Gauger disclosed the work to the Journal after he received much less money for his efforts than he expected. Gauger said he believed he was due $50,000 for it—alongside a promise of lucrative work with the president-elect—but Cohen reportedly handed him “a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial-arts fighter.”Cohen denied that claim to the Journal—his only comment on the allegations was to say that all payments given to Gauger “were by check.” But he later confirmed the other allegations to CNN, saying: “What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of Donald J. Trump. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.”Gauger’s disclosure casts a great deal of suspicion on a $50,000 reimbursement Cohen received from Trump and his company for the work by RedFinch, which is detailed in a government document. Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump, said Cohen being reimbursed more money than he paid RedFinch would prove he was a thief. “If one thing has been established, it’s that Michael Cohen is completely untrustworthy,” Giuliani told the Journal.The $50,000 payment was mentioned by federal prosecutors when they charged Cohen in August with eight felonies, including campaign-finance violations. Cohen said the payment was a reimbursement for “tech services” aimed to help the campaign.According to the Journal, Gauger last spoke with Cohen in April 2018, shortly after the lawyer was raided by federal agents. Cohen reportedly told him the investigation was about taxes. “It’s not a big deal,” Cohen said, according to Gauger. | 0 |
Story highlights Items found in suspects' car could have been used to make explosives, officials saySources say police believe they spotted the suspects on footNine arrested in Charlie Hebdo shooting but not the main suspectsLongpont, France (CNN)An intense manhunt for two brothers wanted in the Charlie Hebdo magazine massacre focused Thursday on northern France's Picardy region, where sources close to the investigation said a police helicopter might have spotted the suspects.Authorities believe that Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, entered a wooded area on foot, the sources told CNN's Chris Cuomo. Now investigators are using helicopters equipped with night vision tools to try to find them, the sources said.Earlier Thursday, a police helicopter glimpsed what investigators believed to be the fugitives in the same area, near Crepy-en-Valois, France.Police flooded the region, with heavily armed officers canvassing the countryside and forests in search of the killers. They came after a gas station attendant reportedly said the armed brothers threatened him near Villers-Cotterets in Picardy, stole gas and food, then drove off late Thursday morning.About 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the gas station, police blocked a rural country road leading to the French village of Longpont. Authorities have not commented in any detail, but pictures showed heavily armed police officers with shields and helmets in the blocked-off area.Hours later, a CNN team witnessed a convoy of 30 to 40 police vehicles leaving a site near Longpont.Prime Minister Manuel Valls put the Picardy region on the highest alert level, that same level that the entire Ile-de-France region, including Paris, is already under.As the search for the suspects intensified, details emerged about their past travels -- and possible training abroad.Said Kouachi went to Yemen for training, a French official told CNN. The training he received included instruction from al Qaeda's affiliate there on how to fire weapons, a U.S. official said, citing information French intelligence provided to the United States.In addition to northern France, other parts of the country have also been under scrutiny.More than 80,000 police were deployed nationwide Thursday, France's interior minister said. Earlier Thursday, a gunman -- dressed in black and wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest, just like those who attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices -- shot and killed a female police officer in the Paris suburb of Montrouge. A municipal official was seriously wounded in that attack, France's interior minister said. One person was arrested, Paris Deputy Mayor Patrick Klugman said, though it's not known whether the shooter is still at large.Authorities have called that a terror attack, but they haven't connected it to Wednesday's slaying of 12 at the satirical magazine's Paris headquarters.Latest updates at 10:15 p.m. ET• Investigators found empty containers and gasoline inside a car driven by the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack, according to U.S. and Western officials who say they received information from French intelligence about the vehicle. The suspects may have intended to use the items to make rudimentary explosives such as Molotov cocktails, the officials told CNN's Pamela Brown, Barbara Starr and Deborah Feyerick.• The head of Britain's MI5 security service told an audience in London that his agency was offering French intelligence officials its "full support" as France responds to Wednesday's terror attack in Paris.• In the United States, the Paris Las Vegas resort said it also planned to dim the lights on its half-sized replica of the tower Thursday night. "We stand with Paris in mourning the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack," a spokeswoman for the hotel said.Charlie Hebdo to publish next WednesdayWhile its business is satire, Charlie Hebdo has been the subject of serious venom.That includes its publication of cartoons lampooning the Muslim prophet, Mohammed, which some found very offensive.The magazine's offices were fire-bombed after that in 2011, on the same day the magazine was due to release an issue with a cover that appeared to poke fun at Islamic law. It was attacked again Wednesday, when two masked men entered its offices not far from the famed Notre Dame Cathedral and the Place de la Bastille.On their way into the building, they asked exactly where the offices were. The men reportedly spoke fluent French with no accent.They barged in on the magazine's staff, while they were gathered for a lunchtime editorial meeting. The gunmen separated the men from the women and called out the names of cartoonists they intended to kill, said Dr. Gerald Kierzek, a physician who treated wounded patients and spoke with survivors. The shooting was not a random spray of bullets, but more of a precision execution, he said.The two said they were avenging the Prophet Mohammed and shouted "Allahu akbar," which translates to "God is great," Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said.Cell phone cameras caught the two gunmen as they ran back out of the building, still firing. One of them ran up to a wounded police officer lying on a sidewalk and shot him point-blank.It was the deadliest attack in Europe since July 2011, when Anders Behring Brevik killed 77 people in attacks on government buildings in Oslo, Norway, and at a youth camp on the island of Utoya.But it won't stop Charlie Hebdo. Pelloux told CNN affiliate BFMTV that thousands of copies of the magazine will be published next Wednesday. Proceeds from the issue will go to victims' families, France's Le Monde newspaper reported.'It was their only mistake'Authorities have released few details on why they've zeroed in on the Kouachi brothers. But they have pointed to one key clue found inside a getaway car the gunmen apparently used: Said Kouachi's identification card. It was discovered by investigators as they combed the vehicle for clues after impounding it."It was their only mistake," said Dominique Rizet, BFMTV's police and justice consultant, reporting that discovering the ID had helped French investigatorsOther evidence also points to the brothers' involvement, according to U.S. officials briefed by French intelligence.Police hunting for the Kouachi brothers have searched residences in a number of towns, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.An ISIS radio broadcast Thursday praised the attackers, calling them "brave jihadists." There was no mention of a claim of responsibility for the attack.Officials were running the brothers' names through databases to look for connections with ISIS and al Qaeda. A third suspect, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, turned himself in to police, a source close to the case told the AFP news agency. In French media and on social media, classmates of Mourad, who is in his final year of high school, said he was with them at school at the time of the attack.Cazeneuve said that nine people overall have been detained in connection with the Charlie Hebdo attack. But the Kouachi brothers remain on the run.'Parisians will not be afraid'The victims' names were splashed Thursday across newspapers as heroes for freedom of expression. "Liberty assassinated." "We are all Charlie Hebdo," the headlines blared.They included two police officers, Stephane Charbonnier -- a cartoonist and the magazine's editor, known as "Charb" -- and three other well-known cartoonists known by the pen names Cabu, Wolinski and Tignous. Autopsies on the victims were underway Thursday, Cazeneuve said.Flags flew at half-staff on public buildings and events were canceled Thursday, a national day of mourning. Crowds gathered in the rain in Paris in the victims' honor, many holding up media credentials and broke into applause as the silence ended. The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral tolled across the city. "I can't remember such a day since 9/11," said Klugman, Paris' deputy mayor. "The country really is in a kind of shutdown in respect and memory of the 12 people killed."The day earlier, thousands poured into streets in hordes in a show of solidarity, holding up pens and chanting, "We are Charlie!" Similar demonstrations took place in cities in addition to Paris, including Rome, On Thursday, demonstrators once again vowed that nothing would silence them.Standing in Paris' Place de la Republique, Lesley Martin sounded defiant as she waved an "I am Charlie" sign. "I am not afraid," she said. "Tonight I'm here and, if tomorrow I have to be here, I don't care if anybody comes and just wants to do something really bad here. I'm not afraid to die." CNN's Atika Shubert reported from France, CNN's Greg Botelho and Catherine E. Shoichet wrote this story from Atlanta. CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Laura Smith-Spark, Pamela Brown, Barbara Starr, Deborah Feyerick, Jim Sciutto, Jim Bittermann, Ben Brumfield, Jethro Mullen, Khushbu Shah, Anas Hamdan, Max Foster, Greg Morrison, Bryony Jones, Michael Martinez and Ray Sanchez also contributed to this report. | 0 |
WASHINGTON – Joe Biden can look at the polls and smile.Cautiously.A double-digit advantage in numerous national surveys, solid leads in a number of battlegrounds and competitive showings in states Donald Trump carried handily in 2016 suggest the presumptive Democratic nominee is the favorite to win in November.The overwhelming majority of polls four years ago indicated Trump would lose as well. So why put much faith in the 2020 polls that show the former vice president consistently on top?David Burgess of Kittery, Maine, said he stopped believing polls after the 2016 presidential election."They predicted Hillary Clinton would win, and she didn’t,” Burgess said while taking a stroll through downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with his miniature schnauzer, Taavi. "Voters are like an iceberg. (With polls), you just see the tip of the iceberg. You don’t see the rest of the iceberg. You don’t know who they’re going to vote for."Pollsters said lessons they learned from 2016's failings will make this campaign season's polls more accurate. Although they sympathize with voters' frustrations, they defend their work as needing minor tweaks, not a fundamental overhaul. Exclusive USA TODAY poll: Biden widens his lead, but Trump keeps the edge on enthusiasm"The public understandably walked away from 2016 feeling like polls were broken. And there's some truth to that," said Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. "But it's not the case that 2016 meant that polling writ large doesn't work anymore."Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll, one of many that showed Clinton with a lead over Trump, said 2016 is "a reason to be very cautious.""It taught us the lesson that there really isn't safety in numbers because it is possible for a systematic error or change in the last minute of the election to make everybody wrong, and that's what we saw in 2016," he said.What went wrong in 2016?Actually, pollsters got it mostly right four years ago.They had Clinton winning the popular vote by about 3 percentage points. She won by 2.1 points. And they were right about the outcome in most states. But their research did not capture the full picture of voter sentiment in the upper Midwest that provided Trump with the margin of victory in the Electoral College.More:Some young Black voters not enthusiastic about a Biden presidencyPolls in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed Clinton winning consistently in the months leading up to Election Day.Of 104 published polls that surveyed voters in those three states from August to the election, 101 had Clinton winning, two were tied, and one (in Pennsylvania) showed Trump with a slight lead. Many fell within the margin of error, but 15 had Clinton up by double digits at some point. Trump won all three states by whisker-thin margins: a combined 77,744 votes out of 13,940,912 cast, or about half a percentage point. The 46 electoral votes in those three states provided Trump the winning margin, stunning those who predicted a Clinton victory. He won 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232.Ronna McDaniel, who chairs the Republican National Committee, dismissed the 2020 polls, given what happened four years ago.More:Bernie Sanders supporters reluctantly turn to Joe Biden, fueled by their dislike of President Trump"These polls right now are not even significant," she told Fox Business channel. "One hundred and fifty polls were done between now and the election in 2016 that showed Donald Trump losing, and the ultimate poll is Election Day."How polls are changingKennedy and Franklin said two large factors complicated the accuracy of the 2016 polls: Many state surveys tended to over-sample college-educated voters (who favored Clinton), and many failed to capture the late-deciding voters (who generally swung to Trump).Neither pollster said those problems couldn't recur this year, but they hope 2020 polls will provide a better yardstick of voter opinions for several reasons:•Educational attainment: Pollsters have been encouraged to increase the sample of non-college graduates, who not only tend to favor Republicans over Democrats but who are also less likely to want to participate in polls.Patrick Murray who runs the New Jersey-based Monmouth University Polling Institute, which had Clinton winning in its three Pennsylvania polls, said it's begun weighing educational attainment more in polls, "and we’re already seeing that impact has helped a bit."•Late deciders: This may be harder to capture since most polls don't interview voters in the week before the election. The number of voters unable to make up their minds until the last minute is likely to be considerably less in 2020 than four years ago, when the historic unpopularity of Trump and Clinton had many hemming and hawing up to the very end.A Monmouth poll in June indicated that nearly 9 in 10 voters had made up their minds about which candidate they'll back in November.More:Biden is up big and the Senate is in sight, but Democrats still haunted by fear of letdown"That’s a suggestion that there’s not a lot of room for movement," Murray said. "But of course, the one reason why we want to be a little careful about taking what were seeing in the polls today and projecting it to November is that there are still certain states where it would take a very small amount of movement to change the outcome."•Third-party candidates: The lack of a prominent independent in the presidential race this year means fewer choices and clearer options.Pollsters said the candidacy of Libertarian Gary Johnson, who polled at 10% as late as August 2016, probably contributed to the relatively large number of late-breaking deciders since a significant bloc of voters sought alternatives to Trump and Clinton. Johnson faded toward the end of the campaign, finishing with less than 3.3% of the vote.•Early voting: The coronavirus pandemic has injected uncertainty into the 2020 election as to who will vote and how. It is likely to ratchet up the amount of early voting in many states.If more respondents have cast their ballot when pollsters contact them in late October, it should be easier to gauge voter sentiment since they will have already made their decision, pollsters said.•Likely voters: Pollsters are slowly but steadily moving to a model using public voter records to identify likely voters rather than a "random-digit dial" system that relies on respondents to report their voting participation patterns."People forget that large swaths of our fellow citizens don't vote. But a lot of them still participate in polls," said Kennedy, who led a review of the 2016 polling for the American Association for Public Opinion Research. "So there's a big (gap) that even the best pollsters struggle to model away."Though changes are in progress, Murray said it's wise not to revamp polls that are largely on target."There are some errors that we’ll never be able to account for because they happen idiosyncratically in each election. They’re different each time," he said. "So you just want to be careful that you don’t over-correct for your last mistake because that’s not the one that’s going to happen this time around."The 'protest vote' in 2016Despite the 2016 stumble, most polls in 2018 showing Democrats retaking the House and Republicans keeping the Senate proved accurate. Even so, pollsters caution that surveys are simply snapshots – not predictors – and that some are better than others at revealing voters' deeper attitudes on issues and candidates.Polls can influence voting behavior.More:Joe Biden tops Donald Trump in fundraising for second straight monthBrian Schaffner, a Tufts University political science professor, studied how some Bernie Sanders voters in 2016 cast a ballot for Trump. Those liberals might have thought Clinton would make a better president than Trump, but they also believed she would win anyway and couldn't stomach the thought of voting for her, he said."It felt OK to cast a protest vote or just not turn out," Schaffner said. "Some people felt more at liberty to cast a vote that they think wasn't going to matter.”FiveThirtyEight, which analyzes opinion polling, warns not all polls are the same. It recommends consumers look at who's being polled (adults, registered voters, likely voters), check the track record of the pollsters and pay close attention to the margin of error. A poll that shows Biden up by 2 percentage points over Trump and has a 4-point margin of error means Biden could be up as much as 6 points or trailing Trump by 2.Keeping 'their opinions to themselves'Ellen Chaput, a nurse in Portsmouth, said she hopes polls showing Biden with a lead over Trump are accurate. But she doesn’t believe them.“They’ve got it wrong before," she said. “I don’t pay any attention to them.”Even if Biden is ahead, “things can change,” she said.Helaine Dandrea, a pharmaceutical consultant from Staten Island, New York, said polls often reflect the biases of the people who conduct them.Dandrea, who backs Trump for reelection, said polls that show Biden with a solid lead could underestimate the president’s strength. Some Trump supporters may be unwilling to tell pollsters they back the president because they don’t want to face the inevitable backlash from the other side, she said.“People tend to be afraid because there’s a lot of aggression,” she said. “People tend to keep their opinions to themselves.”Jim Menard, a retiree from Salisbury, Massachusetts, who backs Biden, said he can see why Trump voters might want to keep their preference to themselves.'Driven by reelection': John Bolton book accuses Donald Trump of seeking foreign help for political gain“I imagine they are kind of embarrassed to say they support him,” Menard said.Menard suspects polls showing Biden with a comfortable lead are correct because pollsters changed their methodology to get more accurate results, he said.“They’ve gotten better at these polls since the last time,” he said.Important to focus on 'where things stand today'Franklin said it's important to look beyond the top-line numbers of who's in front and examine the deeper data that explores why voters feel the way they do.Marquette's poll in June poll, for example, shows Biden with an 8-point lead in Wisconsin: 49%-41% with a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points. That's up from the 3-point lead Biden had in May due mainly to declining support for Trump and growing opposition from independents. The poll in June shows 50% of Badger State voters approve of Trump's handling of the economy (down from 54% in May), and 44% approve of his handling of the coronavirus crisis (the same as the previous month). Thirty percent said they approved of his handling of protests over the death of George Floyd."If there's a valuable lesson to learn from ’16, it's to put less weight on what may happen in the unknown future and put more weight on where things stand today," Franklin said.About that running mate: 72% of Democrats in USA TODAY poll say it's 'important' Biden pick woman of colorMurray, whose Monmouth poll is one of nearly a dozen in June showing Biden with a double-digit lead nationally, said the polling centers on how voters view Trump because many have yet to learn much about the former vice president. That could change by October as the public gets to know more about Biden, he said.“I think the polls are telling us a story about what's going on and how people are dug in," he said. "It doesn't tell us how the Electoral College is going to turn out right now, so that’s why you should continue to take the polling with a grain of salt if you’re looking ahead to November."Just as they did in 2016, polls in 2020 once again show Trump losing in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The grain of salt? The same Marquette University Law School Poll that had Biden up by 8 points in June showed Clinton up by 9 four years ago. | 0 |
Credit...Evan Vucci/Associated PressJune 29, 2017WASHINGTON — President Trump lashed out Thursday at the appearance and intellect of Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” drawing condemnation from his fellow Republicans and reigniting the controversy over his attitudes toward women that nearly derailed his candidacy last year.Mr. Trump’s invective threatened to further erode his support from Republican women and independents, both among voters and on Capitol Hill, where he needs negotiating leverage for the stalled Senate health care bill.The president described Ms. Brzezinski as “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and claimed in a series of Twitter posts that she had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a social gathering at Mr. Trump’s resort in Florida around New Year’s Eve. The White House did not explain what had prompted the outburst, but a spokeswoman said Ms. Brzezinski deserved a rebuke because of her show’s harsh stance on Mr. Trump.The tweets ended five months of relative silence from the president on the volatile subject of gender, reintroducing a political vulnerability: his history of demeaning women for their age, appearance and mental capacity.“My first reaction was that this just has to stop, and I was disheartened because I had hoped the personal, ad hominem attacks had been left behind, that we were past that,” Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who is a crucial holdout on the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, said in an interview.“I don’t think it directly affects the negotiation on the health care bill, but it is undignified — it’s beneath a president of the United States and just so contrary to the way we expect a president to act,” she said. “People may say things during a campaign, but it’s different when you become a public servant. I don’t see it as undermining his ability to negotiate legislation, necessarily, but I see it as embarrassing to our country.”A slew of Republicans echoed her sentiments. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who, like Ms. Collins, holds a pivotal and undecided vote on the health care bill, tweeted: “Stop it! The presidential platform should be used for more than bringing people down.”Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican who opposed Mr. Trump’s nomination during the presidential primaries, also implored him to stop, writing on Twitter that making such comments “isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.”Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, added, “The president’s tweets today don’t help our political or national discourse and do not provide a positive role model for our national dialogue.”Ms. Brzezinski responded by posting on Twitter a photograph of a box of Cheerios with the words “Made for Little Hands,” a reference to a longstanding insult about the size of the president’s hands. MSNBC said in a statement, “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”ImageCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesMr. Trump’s attack injected even more negativity into a capital marinating in partisanship and reminded weary Republicans of a political fact they would rather forget: Mr. Trump has a problem with the half of the population more likely to vote.Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster who specializes in the views of female voters, said the president’s use of Twitter to target a prominent woman was particularly striking, noting that he had used only one derogatory word — “psycho” — to describe the show’s other co-host, Joe Scarborough, and the remainder of his limited characters to hit upon damaging stereotypes of women.“He included dumb, crazy, old, unattractive and desperate,” Ms. Matthews said.“The continued tweeting, the fact that he is so outrageous, so unpresidential, is becoming a huge problem for him,” she added. “And it is particularly unhelpful in terms of building relationships with female Republican members of Congress, whose votes he needs for health care, tax reform and infrastructure.”But it was unclear whether the vehemence of the president’s latest attack would embolden members of his party to turn disdain into defiance.Senior Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, cycled through what has become a familiar series of emotions and calculations after the Twitter posts, according to staff members: a flash of anger, reckoning of possible damage and, finally, a determination to push past the controversy to pursue their agenda.“Obviously, I don’t see that as an appropriate comment,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, said during a Capitol Hill news conference. Then he told reporters he wanted to talk about something else.Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, demanded an apology, calling the president’s Twitter posts “sexist, an assault on the freedom of the press and an insult to all women.”A spokeswoman for the president, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, urged the news media to move on, arguing during the daily White House briefing that Mr. Trump was “fighting fire with fire” by attacking a longtime critic.Ms. Brzezinski had called the president “a liar” and suggested he was “mentally ill,” added Ms. Sanders, who defended Mr. Trump’s tweets as appropriate for a president.Melania Trump, the president’s wife — who has said that, as first lady, she will embark on a campaign against cyberbullying — also rejected claims that her husband had done what she is charged with undoing.“As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman wrote in a statement, referring to the first lady’s remarks during the campaign.Current and former aides say that Mr. Trump was chastened by the furor over the “Access Hollywood” tape that emerged in October, which showed him bragging about forcing himself on women, and that he had exhibited self-restraint during the first few months of his administration. But in the past week, the sense that he had become the victim of a liberal media conspiracy against him loosened those tethers.Moreover, Mr. Trump’s oldest friends say it is difficult for him to distinguish between large and small slights — or to recognize that his office comes with the expectation that he moderate his behavior.And his fiercest, most savage responses have almost always been to what he has seen on television.”Morning Joe,” once a friendly bastion on left-leaning MSNBC, has become a forum for fiery criticism of Mr. Trump. One adviser to the president accused the hosts of trying to “destroy” the administration over several months.After lashing out at Mr. Scarborough and Ms. Brzezinski at one point last summer, Mr. Trump told an adviser, “It felt good.”Even before he began his campaign two years ago, Mr. Trump showed a disregard for civility when he made critical remarks on television and on social media, particularly about women.He took aim at the actress Kim Novak, a star of 1950s cinema, as she presented during the 2014 Academy Awards, taking note of her plastic surgeries. Chagrined, Ms. Novak later said she had gone home to Oregon and not left her house for days. She accused Mr. Trump of bullying her, and he later apologized.As a candidate, Mr. Trump was insensitive to perceptions that he was making sexist statements, arguing that he had a right to defend himself, an assertion Ms. Sanders echoed on Thursday.After the first primary debate, hosted by Fox News in August 2015, Mr. Trump trained his focus on the only female moderator, Megyn Kelly, who pressed him on his history of making derogatory comments about women.He told a CNN host that Ms. Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever,” leaving Republicans squeamish and many thinking he was suggesting that Ms. Kelly had been menstruating. He refused to apologize and kept up the attacks.Later, he urged his millions of Twitter followers to watch a nonexistent graphic video of a former Miss Universe contestant, Alicia Machado, whose weight gain he had parlayed into a media spectacle while he was promoting the pageant.Mr. Trump went on to describe female journalists as “crazy” and “neurotic” on his Twitter feed at various points during the race. He derided reporters covering his campaign, Katy Tur of NBC and Sara Murray of CNN, in terms he rarely used about men.His tweets on Thursday added strain to the already combative daily briefing, as reporters interrupted Ms. Sanders’s defense of the president to ask how she felt about them as a woman and a mother.She responded that she had only “one perfect role model”: God.“None of us are perfect,” she said. | 0 |
For the first time ever, Twitter has fact-checked President Trump’s tweets.
Until now, Twitter hasn’t taken any action against Trump’s account or tweets even when he has flouted the social media platform’s rules by posting false, harmful, or misleading content. Twitter’s rationale for letting Trump post these kinds of tweets has been that because he is a world leader, his posts are considered newsworthy and are therefore an exception to its policies. But after years of criticism about that stance, on Tuesday, the company added fact-check labels on two of Trump’s recent tweets that shared misleading information about voting by mail.
On Tuesday afternoon, Twitter placed labels underneath Trump’s tweets claiming that mail-in voting ballots in the 2020 presidential race will be “anything less than substantially fraudulent” and lead to a “Rigged Election.” If you click the labels, they take you to a fact-checking page that calls out the president’s false statement. While Twitter’s move will be welcomed by those who have long called for Twitter to start applying its policy rules to the president’s account, it’s also sure to set off conservative critics, who argue that by labeling the president, Twitter is limiting freedom of speech on the platform and reflecting a purported — but unsubstantiated — anti-conservative bias.
Here’s what the labels look like:
The label links to a fact-check “Twitter Moments” page, which calls Trump’s claims about potential voter fraud “unsubstantiated” and cites news articles from CNN, the Washington Post, and other media outlets. The company shared the following statement about the decision:
“These Tweets (here and here) contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots. This decision is in line with the approach we shared earlier this month.”
President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale shared a statement expressing the administration’s discontent with Twitter’s decision shortly after it was announced on Tuesday.
“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters. Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility,” Parscale wrote. “There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all our advertising from Twitter months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them.”
Trump also responded, accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and stifling free speech by adding the label.
.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020 Earlier in May, Twitter announced it would start to label misleading information, which the company says it’s been applying to key topics, starting with 5G conspiracies, and now, civic integrity and voting.
The company’s decision comes at a time when the president is under scrutiny for his latest tweets — in particular for a series of posts making baseless murder accusations, as well as promoting the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 patients, which could be potentially harmful. A spokesperson for Twitter told Recode that the company decided to label the mail-in ballot tweets in particular because they deal with what the company considers a key issue area of civic integrity and voting. The company’s fact-check of Trump raises some big questions about the precedent this sets for other world leaders. Will Twitter start fact-checking people like Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro, China’s Xi Jinping, and Iran’s Ruhollah Khamenei when they make misleading statements on the platform?
Twitter says it won’t be able to fact-check every misleading claim by a world leader, but will start doing so for some others as well. It has already deleted tweets from Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and Venezuela’s President Maduro in which they endorsed unproven treatments for Covid-19. Last year, it also removed a tweet from an account reportedly linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei calling for the execution of novelist Salman Rushdie.
While Twitter’s move Tuesday is incremental, it signals the company is willing to take more of a stand on misleading content on its platform — even if the person tweeting that misleading information is the president of the United States. The challenge will be when it decides to weigh in on the endless bucket of half-truths, conspiracy theories, and outright lies politicians post every day, and which are likely to increase in cadence as we get closer to the 2020 presidential election. | 0 |
White House MemoCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJune 17, 2019WASHINGTON — As he rode down that escalator in June 2015, it felt like a lark, a curiosity, just another staged television spectacle. At most, many assumed that Donald J. Trump’s candidacy would be a sideshow, sure to be entertaining but hardly decisive.Four years later, as President Trump kicks off his campaign for a second term on Tuesday with an eardrum-pounding, packed-to-the-rafters rally in Florida, no one doubts that he is the dominant force in the arena today, the one defining the national conversation as no president has done in generations.But the coming election is shaping up as a test — not just of the man but of his country. Was Mr. Trump’s victory the last time around a historical fluke or a genuine reflection of America in the modern age? Will the populist surge that lifted him to the White House run its course or will it further transform a nation and its capital in ways that will outlast his presidency? What kind of country do Americans really want at this point?Whatever voters thought about Mr. Trump in 2016, they have now had more than enough time to take their measure of him, and their judgment arguably will say more about the mood of the world’s last superpower than whatever roll-the-dice decision may have been made last time. Mr. Trump promised to blow up the system; voters will decide if more disruption is still needed.[Make sense of the people, issues and ideas shaping American politics with our newsletter.]“You go from what was probably a pretty low-stakes election to a high-stakes one,” said Brendan Buck, a former counselor to Paul D. Ryan, the last Republican speaker of the House. “When there were so many people who didn’t think he was going to win, who didn’t think it was even possible, your vote didn’t seem as important. That today has totally shifted.”For Mr. Trump himself, the next year and a half will be a chance to prove that he was not just an aberration who managed to slide into office with an Electoral College victory even though nearly three million more voters cast ballots for the other candidate. Ever since taking the oath, Mr. Trump has been sensitive to perceived attacks on his legitimacy, especially the investigations into Russia’s role in helping to elect him. Nothing would do more to validate that legitimacy than winning a second term.He starts from a stronger position in many ways than that day in 2015, fully in command of the advantages of incumbency — the gushing fund-raising spigot, the unparalleled media bullhorn, the tools of government to reward or punish, the big plane with “United States of America” stenciled on its side conveying power and respect.And he has firmly seized control of his party in a way that was almost unimaginable in 2016 when Republican elders plotted ways to take the nomination away from him at the convention, then later urged him to drop out just weeks before the November election on the assumption that he would crash and burn.The Never Trumpers have since faded, the dissenters purged. While elected Republicans push back from time to time, they have largely fallen in line when it really counted. The only challenger to Mr. Trump for his party’s nomination, former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, poses no evident threat.“Trump is president because ‘the deplorables’ rejected the decline of America sanctioned by the elites,” said Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist. “The established order from Day 1 has fought a rear-guard action to nullify his election. This campaign is a continuation of the first — in all its vitriol and promise.”Yet Mr. Trump remains more vulnerable than many presidents heading into a re-election year. Even with a strong economy, he is the only president in the history of polling who has never once, not for a single day, earned the support of a majority of Americans surveyed by Gallup. His own internal polls this spring showed him losing badly in key states, prompting him to first deny their existence and later to fire some of his pollsters.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump has never expanded his support beyond the people who elected him — and never really tried. He has remained focused intently on retaining the support of his base to the exclusion of reaching out to those who have opposed him. Whether by inclination or calculation, it is a strategy for a divided era when Americans are less interested in getting along.There is, of course, something of a chicken-or-the-egg quality to the debate over Mr. Trump — is he the cause of America’s polarization or the result? The election may provide more clues.“We’re very divided,” said Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent magazine, a left-of-center intellectual journal, “and we’ll learn whether the division is more about Trump or about something deeper in our ideological politics.”Democrats have sought to treat Mr. Trump as if he were an outlier in the American story, one that can be corrected in the next election. “History will treat this administration’s time as an aberration,” former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has predicted on the campaign trail. The nation “can overcome four years of this presidency,” Mr. Biden has said, while a two-term Trump administration would pose an “existential threat” to “the character of this nation.”[We want to hear from you. Are you going to watch the Democratic debates?]At least some Republicans argue that Mr. Trump represents the delayed recalibration of a party that defined itself for decades by its opposition to the Soviet Union. Without that unifying belief system, the party has begun to drift back to some of its historic roots before World War II, the last time the phrase “America First” was popular.“He’s really broken the mold in a lot of ways, and he’s really moved the Republican Party away from the traditional Reagan stool,” said Antonia Ferrier, a Republican consultant who worked for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other party leaders on Capitol Hill. “But whether it’s him or it’s history, the reality is the post-Cold War paradigm for the Republican Party was going to be changed one way or the other.”Richard Norton Smith, the historian and former director of presidential libraries of five Republican chief executives, suggested there could be a parallel with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, which, he noted, was “widely viewed as a one-time reaction against the Carter years” while “1984 was to demonstrate that the 40th president was far more transformational a figure than he appeared to his critics.”At the same time, Mr. Smith hastened to distinguish “Reagan’s politics of multiplication from Trumpian division.” The parallel, he said, is not between the men but between re-election campaigns that may serve as a referendum on profound, even radical changes in national priorities.Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign may also reveal more about how much the nation’s politics are driven by policy or personality. The support for and opposition to Mr. Trump often seems tied less to his specific policy prescriptions than to evaluations of who he is — a fighter taking on elites on behalf of those left behind or a vulgarian narcissist with no respect for the rule of law.“I can’t imagine this is anything but a conversation about his persona,” Mr. Buck said. “To this day, everyone plays on his home turf. He defines what we talk about, he defines everything.”Indeed, America is so divided into camps that few have moved since Mr. Trump’s election, and it remains unclear whether there is a sizable share of voters in the middle who are actually open to persuasion.“His numbers have been remarkably stable for how unstable this presidency is, because it is so much more than do you support him,” Mr. Buck said. “There is a palpable belief among a lot of people — and it crosses both ways — that the other side hates you and is out to get you, and that keeps you firmly in whatever camp you’re in.” | 0 |
ERROR: type should be string, got "https://nyti.ms/1kx64yW Mr. Sanders said the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain 5,000 nuclear weapons. Kind of. Read more As he tried to make the case for military reform, Mr. Sanders cited the jaw-dropping cost of maintaining nuclear weapons. Depending on the context, his numbers can be seen as accurate -- or off. Here are the facts: The United States is projected to spend $348 billion, or $35 billion a year, to maintain its nuclear arsenal over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of the Obama administration's nuclear plans. — Steve Eder Close Mrs. Clinton said that wages, when adjusted for inflation, have been stagnant since the end of the Clinton administration. True, but the credit is misplaced. Read more Mrs. Clinton's claim that wages have been stagnant since the turn of the century and the end of her husband's administration is accurate, according to purchasing power data from the Pew Research Center. But in reality, inflation-adjusted wages have stalled for much longer, going back roughly four decades, the research shows. — Steve Eder Close Mrs. Clinton said she introduced legislation to rein in executive compensation on Wall Street. True, but it didn't go far. Read more In defending her record on Wall Street, Mrs. Clinton cited a (rather obscure) piece of legislation that she introduced while in the United States Senate to clamp down on executive compensation. While it is true that she introduced a bill called the Corporate Executive Compensation Accountability and Transparency Act in April 2008, the proposal did not go very far. The record shows that the bill was introduced, with no co-sponsors, and referred to the Committee on Finance. No further action was taken, Senate records show. — Steve Eder Close Mr. O'Malley said parents and students were being charged 7% to 8% interest on government-backed college loans. Overstated. Read more In bemoaning the high cost of higher education, Mr. O'Malley cited 7 to 8 percent interest rates charged by the government for loans. Those numbers, according to data from the Department of Education, are higher than what most students would pay in interest these days. The truth is that the most common federal loans for undergraduate students carry an interest rate of just over 4 percent. — Steve Eder Close" | 0 |
Proposed rules from the Environmental Protection Agency would establish standards for old wells, impose more frequent and stringent leak monitoring, and require the capture of natural gas that is found alongside oil and is often released into the atmosphere. They mark the first time the federal government has moved to comprehensively tackle the seepage of methane from U.S. oil and gas infrastructure.President Biden told delegates in Glasgow that cutting methane emissions is essential to keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above levels in the late 1800s before widespread industrialization.“One of the most important things we can do in this decisive decade — to keep 1.5 degrees in reach — is reduce our methane emissions as quickly as possible,” Biden said.He said he hoped the world would surpass the pledges made. “Together we’re committed to collectively reduce our methane by 30 percent by 2030,” Biden said. “And I think we could probably go beyond that.”Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the world’s second-largest contributor to climate change among greenhouse gases. Although it dissipates more quickly than carbon dioxide, it is 80 times as powerful during the first 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere.Tackling methane is high on the agenda at the U.N. negotiations. The United States and the European Union have been pressing countries to sign the Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions. E.U. officials estimate that rapid reductions in methane could trim 0.3 degrees Celsius from overall global temperature rise by 2050.Climate scientists say the world desperately needs drastic cuts in methane emissions to prevent catastrophic warming. Brazil on Monday said it had signed the methane pledge, and the White House said other top emitters to join included Indonesia, Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Nigeria, Iraq, Vietnam and Canada.But some of the largest methane emitters still haven’t signed the pledge, including Russia and China.“You’re not going to have everybody join,” said Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The fact that there’s now a large proportion of the global community signing on, that’s the real key.”“The pledge to cut methane is the single biggest and fastest bite out of today’s warming,” Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said in a statement.In the Biden administration’s push to take on methane on the domestic front, the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was expected to finalize a rule Tuesday extending federal pipeline safety standards to more than 400,000 miles of unregulated onshore gathering lines.Previous efforts by the Obama administration to curb methane mostly focused on newer drilling sites and operations on federal lands. The oil industry has opposed federal methane regulations in the past, but many major companies have come to embrace them rather than face a patchwork of state rules.Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president for policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, said the industry supports “a cost-effective rule” and has been working with Biden officials since the presidential transition to help craft the EPA requirements. The lobbying group said Tuesday that it was reviewing the EPA’s proposal.President Biden announced new rules to limit methane emissions from oil and gas production on Nov. 2 at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. (The Washington Post)The EPA announcement Tuesday reflects the Biden administration’s strategy to achieve near-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions while convincing other nations that America can deliver on its ambitious climate goals.“We need to lean in and set a very aggressive standard so that the industry understands what the rules of engagement are and what the expectations are,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in an interview last month.“Methane is such a potent pollutant. It’s important that we understand what the contribution is from this industry, that it is monitored more effectively and that we get the deep methane emission reductions that we know we need in order to meet the president’s agenda,” he added.The EPA is set to require most oil and gas operators to use special cameras or other instruments four times a year to spot and plug leaks of the invisible gas from compressor stations, as well as at sites the agency suspects are leaking more than three tons of methane annually. Drillers in Alaska’s North Slope region will be subject to a more permissive monitoring schedule and other requirements to account for extreme weather.The agency will also require new and existing pneumatic controllers to have zero emissions. Those devices, used to control valves at oil and gas sites, are a leading source of methane emissions in the sector. Yet sales of zero-emission controllers have been slow, one industry executive said on the condition of anonymity, because oil field operators want to keep costs down and prefer to wait until the device is broken to replace it.The EPA is also set to restrict the venting of natural gas found in oil wells, known as associated gas, requiring operators to route the gas to a pipeline when possible.For the first time, older oil and gas wells, which are most prone to leaks, will have to curb methane. The new proposal will require states to develop their own methane rules for existing wells that are in line with federal guidelines, while the EPA will regulate all new wells.“There is a general sense that at least when it comes to the oil and gas sector, a lot of the technologies and tools are available, so it is possible to cost-effectively reduce methane,” said Jeffrey Berman, director of energy transition analysis at the Rapidan Energy Group. “You can cost-effectively do a lot of the things that are required.”This equipment includes better monitoring technology, zero-emission controllers, flares and valves.Separately, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s new rule will require oil and gas companies to report problems with pipelines carrying gas from wells to a centralized site.When one of these pipes ruptures, it releases more than 1,000 metric tons of methane on average and can be deadly. The explosion in 2018 of a corroded 10-inch gas gathering line in Midland, Tex., killed a 3-year-old girl and badly burned members of her family.“After years in development, these new regulations represent a major step to enhance and modernize pipeline safety and environmental standards,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “This rule will improve safety, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and result in more jobs for pipeline workers that are needed to help upgrade the safety and operations of these lines.”The EPA proposal alone is estimated to reduce methane emissions by about 41 million tons through 2035 — an amount equal to taking more than 200 million passenger cars off the roads for a year. The agency plans to issue the final rule by the end of next year.Republicans said the new EPA rule is ill-timed, as much of the world faces an energy crunch heading into winter. “This move by the Biden administration is yet another attack on U.S. energy,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.Plugging methane leaks is not just good for the health of Earth’s climate system. It also decreases the accumulation of toxic and smog-forming chemicals around oil drilling sites that make the air difficult and dangerous to breathe. The EPA proposal would prevent the emission of 480,000 tons of toxic air pollutants through 2035.For Sue Franklin, the rotten-egg stench of sulfur dioxide from wells less than a mile from her Permian Basin home in West Texas made falling asleep difficult. “Smelling them all night long would cause horrific headaches,” she said.Two years ago, she and her husband, Jim, had had enough and moved about 28 miles away from the property on which they had intended to retire. But the effects linger for her, she said.“I am getting older, so things were going to start going downhill for me anyway,” the 70-year-old said in a phone interview. “But I think that they rushed it along for me a little bit.”Nearly 1,500 miles away in western Pennsylvania, Lois Bower-Bjornson stopped opening the windows in her home in Washington County after her teenage son, Gunnar, began getting severe nosebleeds. Urine tests revealed elevated levels of industrial chemicals in the family’s bodies.Bower-Bjornson said she wants federal rules on leaks because she thinks the state government has failed to step up: No county in Pennsylvania has more drilling sites than hers.“We’re an energy-producing state,” she said. “So if I could wave a magic wand and this would all go away, that would be fabulous. But realistically, we know that’s not happening.”Only a few states, including Colorado and New Mexico, have tried to regulate emissions from the oil and gas sector on their own. The EPA put forward a regulation aimed at stopping leaks from new oil and gas equipment less than a year before President Barack Obama left office, but the Trump administration rolled it back.Robert Kleinberg, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said past federal rules allowed industry to comply too easily, without restricting major sources of methane, such as unlit flares at oil and gas wells. Gas flaring, while wasteful, is designed to burn off methane before it escapes into the atmosphere.“Things have changed a lot even in the 10 years since these rules were first written,” he said. “Yet EPA has just not kept up.”The EPA’s proposal does not address some significant sources of methane emissions in the oil and gas sector, including abandoned wells and malfunctions in gas flaring. Officials said the agency plans to issue a supplemental proposal next year to address those issues.Lauren Pagel, policy director at Earthworks, an environmental group that travels the country detecting leaks with infrared cameras, said Biden’s proposals are “an important step forward” but not sufficient.“Our certified thermographers consistently uncover unlit flares that are venting massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere,” she said. “Any common-sense pollution standards would cover venting from all sources, including flares.”Democratic lawmakers are trying to drive down methane even further by imposing a fee on excessive emissions. In recent days, the lawmakers inserted a plan to phase in payments for methane leaks above a certain threshold into Biden’s signature climate and social spending bill.The fee would start at $900 per ton in 2023 and increase to $1,500 in 2025. Oil and gas firms could also tap $775 million in grants, loans and other spending from the EPA to help them plug leaks.But much of the oil industry and some moderate Democrats oppose that plan. Aides to Sen. Joe Manchin III (D), who represents gas-producing West Virginia, declined to comment Monday on the methane fee proposal.“Really, it’s just a tax on natural gas, which is counterproductive,” said Macchiarola, the oil and gas lobbyist. | 0 |
Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
Lerner speaks
Employers won’t hire her. She’s been berated with epithets like “dirty Jew.” Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And she’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS. Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.” ( GRAPHIC: IRS scandal timeline) Lerner, who sat down with POLITICO in an exclusive two-hour session, has been painted in one dimension: as a powerful bureaucrat scheming with the Obama administration to cripple right-leaning nonprofits. Interviews with about 20 of her colleagues, friends and critics and a survey of emails and other IRS documents, however, reveal a much more complicated figure than the caricature she’s become in the public eye. The portrait that emerges shows Lerner is, indeed, fierce, unapologetic and perhaps even tone-deaf when she says things that show her Democratic leanings. She had a quick temper and may have intimidated co-workers who could have helped her out of this mess. It’s easy to see how Republicans have seized on the image of a devilish figure cracking down on conservative nonprofits. ( Also on POLITICO: Lerner on Lerner: More from the former IRS official) “We followed the trail where it leads, and we saw it lead to Lois Lerner,” House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said at a hearing Thursday. “She refers with disdain to conservatives; she’s an active liberal; and it’s clear her actions were set out to be detrimental to conservatives.” Yet Lerner is also described as “apolitical” and fair. Some say she was a generous boss who inspired loyalty, baking brownies and handing out lottery tickets to managers to raise morale. She’s putting her babysitter’s son through college and in 2005 flew to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to rescue animals. And she’s a savvy lawyer: She studiously avoided answering fundamental questions about her role in the IRS scandal that could land her in deeper trouble with Congress. During her POLITICO interview, flanked by her husband, a partner at a national law firm, and two of her personal attorneys, she opened up about her life as a pariah, joked about horrible news photos and advice that she disguise herself with a blond wig, and cried when expressing gratitude for her legal team’s friendship. ( Also on POLITICO: Timeline of IRS scandal) Very few details of Lerner’s personal history, professional background or life since her fall have been detailed in the news media. One thing is clear: She doesn’t seem poised to back down or give her Republican critics in Congress any satisfaction. “Regardless of whatever else happens, I know I did the best I could under the circumstances and am not sorry for anything I did,” the 63-year-old said. An apology and a firestorm On May 22, 2013, Lerner returned to the seeming safety of her IRS office after invoking the Fifth Amendment and being chased down a Capitol Hill hallway by the Washington press corps. Instead, she was summoned by the human resources department and ordered to resign or clean out her desk by 2 p.m. and be escorted from the building on indefinite administrative leave. She refused to resign. ( Also on POLITICO: Carl Levin slams IRS watchdog over tea party report) It was a startling turnabout for the woman whose alumni magazine said she had “rock star status” in the tax world and who was a recipient of a government service award for ethics. She thought she was months away from a quiet retirement after 33 years working for Uncle Sam. “Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, she got these amazing ratings and bonuses. … And once she retired, she would have gone out with bells and whistles, and the IRS commissioner would have made a speech. … It went from that to: You’re under criminal investigation, and your career is ruined, in a week,” said Lerner’s husband, Michael Miles, who sat to her right during the interview. The beginning of the end started a few days earlier, when acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller asked her to get ahead of a damning inspector general report due the following week. It detailed IRS agents giving heightened scrutiny to nonprofits using words like “tea party,” “patriot” and “limited government spending,” and asking the groups inappropriate questions about their donors and political affiliations. ( POLITICO's full coverage of tax policy) Lerner, then head of the division handling organizations claiming tax-exempt status, obliged and dropped what turned out to be a political bombshell at an American Bar Association conference, using a planted question to apologize for the treatment of right-leaning nonprofits from IRS “front-line people” in Cincinnati. Within days, lawmakers in both parties were calling for her resignation, furious that IRS leaders, including Lerner, had withheld information when asked by lawmakers for months about the matter. Top officials also blamed Cincinnati, when, in fact, Washington was also handling the cases. Called to testify before the House Oversight Committee, Lerner decided to take the Fifth and read a defiant speech declaring her innocence — one that Republicans argued waived her rights. She says she’d do it again. ( Also on POLITICO: More IRS employees lost emails) “By taking the Fifth, Lois put a sign on her back: Kick me,” said Paul Streckfus, editor of the EO Tax Journal. “To the average person, that sounds like, ‘Oh my God, she must be hiding something!’” Lerner, for her part, assumes she is at the center of the storm because “I was the person who announced it. I assume the other part of it is because I declined to talk, and once I declined to talk, they could say anything they wanted, and they knew I couldn’t say anything back.” Follow @politico Accusations pile up Republicans, who earlier this year held her in contempt of Congress, accuse Lerner of using her position to push for audits and denial of tax-exempt status to Karl Rove’s Crossroads and other GOP groups. They’ve released partial emails, including one after President Barack Obama’s reelection in which she and Miles bemoan far-right conservative talk radio, calling them “crazies” and “a—holes.” The couple said the exchange was taken entirely out of context. Miles wrote the email after listening to callers on the “Mark Levin Show” rant about stockpiling food and guns to fight because Obama was going to run the country into the ground. Lerner, then in London, responded from her work email about hearing chatter about the U.S. being a broken system for its fiscal brinkmanship over the debt ceiling. Lerner said she is “not a political person,” has voted for candidates of both parties and that the only campaign contribution she ever made was $25 to a fellow law school student running for judge. She’s a registered Democrat, but her lawyer, Bill Taylor of Zuckerman Spaeder, said people should “consider whether being a registered member of one political party should disqualify people for government service, and if so, who would we get to run the government?” Friends and colleagues say Lerner didn’t talk much about politics and note that while Democrats have defended the IRS and the White House, they’ve steered clear of backing Lerner — suggesting she and her husband don’t have many heavyweight Democratic connections. But Republicans contend her skepticism of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision lifting limits on corporate political contributions is damning. They point to emails, including one from June 11, 2012, about how states responded to the case by creating their own disclosure rules. Lerner wrote to the author: “You done good! Now, if you can only fix the darn law!” In another email, Lerner commented on an IRS group email circulating Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s legislation requiring more disclosure of political groups getting tax breaks. She wrote: “Wouldn’t that be great?” Although she wouldn’t discuss these issues at the behest of her lawyers, Lerner said it is unrealistic to expect public servants not to have opinions: “What matters is that my personal opinions have never affected my work.” Not everyone is convinced. Reagan-appointed former Federal Election Commission Commissioner Lee Ann Elliott and Craig Engle, a former executive assistant to a GOP commissioner, who worked alongside Lerner in her role prosecuting campaign finance violations at the FEC, think she was biased against big political spenders. They say she was tough on certain groups because she didn’t like them influencing elections. “Lois’ ideology is against money in politics, is ‘anti-contribution’; that’s her bias,” said Engle, an Arent Fox partner. “Her ideology inhibited fair administration of the law.” But any action Lerner brought had to be approved by the bipartisan commission. Larry Noble, Lerner’s friend and former FEC boss, says she was never partisan. He nominated her for a government service award she won in 2008 by arguing she stayed above the fray. Several Lerner allies said she was so focused on enforcement that she failed to see the sensitivity of bringing cases against incumbents running for reelection. But Republicans continue to point to emails in which Lerner inquired about Crossroads specifically, asking her colleagues why the group hadn’t been audited and suggesting the group’s application should be denied. And just weeks before the tea party news broke, after she had seen a draft of the damning inspector general report, she asked colleagues if internal IRS instant messages are tracked and could be requested by Congress. They’re also suspicious that two years’ worth of her emails disappeared in a 2011 computer crash, a huge kerfuffle the IRS only revealed to Congress in June — a year after the saga began. Lerner scoffed at the notion that she would crash her own computer to hide emails: “How would I know two years ahead of time that it would be important for me to destroy emails, and if I did know that, why wouldn’t I have destroyed the other ones they keep releasing?” ‘Her fuse was short’ A decade ago, Lerner’s name incited roaring applause at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace, where a stage of celebrities including Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg honored her for rescuing animals abandoned during Hurricane Katrina. It was part of the 2006 Comic Relief fundraiser that aired on TBS and HBO. Lerner had taken unpaid leave to fly to New Orleans after the storm, going door to door to save some of the 50,000 stranded animals. She fostered one collie that had been without food and water for a month, watching him for a year before finding his owners. Before she took the stage with her foster pet, HBO showed a video depicting an emotional Lerner crying because “we were too late” to save thousands of animals who had drowned or starved while waiting for their owners to return. It’s not the only charitable act defenders eagerly recounted: Lerner and Miles are funding college tuition for their former babysitter’s son, and they let an unemployed friend live at their house for two years while he got back on his feet. But her former co-workers and some friends say she could be a stern boss, short-tempered and prone to brash comments. IRS employees either really loved her big personality and loud bark — or really didn’t. “Lois had the personality where she said what she thought immediately,” Nikole Flax, Miller’s chief of staff, told House Oversight investigators, later adding: “We didn’t always get along. … We would have occasions when I would, you know, call her, and she could scream for a minute.” Lerner chuckled in the interview, acknowledging that she can get a little passionate — but she said she never holds grudges. Rocky IRS start Lerner started her career far away from tax policy, as a dental hygienist. She quickly switched gears and went to law school, graduating cum laude. After a stint at the Justice Department, she spent 20 years at the FEC before heading to the IRS in 2001. Her start was rocky at the tax agency, where employees scoffed at her lack of knowledge of tax law and IRS operations. Some gossiped behind her back; one boss dismissed her ideas in meetings, according to former co-workers. Because of that, some say, Lerner became defensive. “Her fuse was short, and if you come to the IRS, you better be able to sit and listen and ask questions and absorb and rethink, and she had a hard time doing that,” said Debra Kawecki, a senior attorney who worked with Lerner before retiring in 2006. Lerner eventually built an inner circle, including former IRS exempt organizations manager Marvin Friedlander, who said she got up to speed quickly. But in recent years, she lost some of her most trusted staff to retirement. Marc Owens, who had Lerner’s position at the IRS during the 1990s, thinks her limited tax knowledge may have contributed to the tea party incident: “When managers are not familiar with the laws they are enforcing, they make bad decisions.” Eventually, Lerner won over employees with her chatty personality and smart jokes — and by showing them her gratitude with little things, like doling out lottery tickets and treating them to lunch or dinner. She loved to talk fashion, and she’d ask how people were doing, not just at work, but in their personal lives. But some people still feared her. Some said she played favorites, “snapped to judgment quickly” and froze people out, including those she felt were too cocky or very opinionated. “This business of getting very angry and closing that person off, I didn’t think that was smart because you never know when you’re going to need that person again,” Friedlander said, suggesting Lerner may have done herself a “disservice” by alienating people. But he generally praised her as a boss and colleague. Up the ladder By 2006, Lerner had become the head of the exempt organizations division. While her detractors said she rode on Miller’s coattails, many practitioners said she accomplished much, including streamlining a complicated tax form for exempt organizations, creating a user-friendly website and jump-starting big projects that yielded reports on complicated areas, like nonprofit hospitals and universities. Practitioners said she would sometimes give out her personal phone number at conferences so lawyers could call her as needed. She’d spend a few minutes each day phoning one of her 900 subordinates to ask how things were going. She created a new approach to classifying potential problem areas, pulling together a team of 40 specialized agents to research emerging issues or suspect groups by scanning websites and court cases and reviewing tax forms to see whether the subjects merited a full audit. While some saw it as a smart use of limited resources, others, including Owens, thought her projects were a “major contributing factor” to the massive backlog in applications that accumulated under Lerner’s rule. Nonprofits went from getting approval in a matter of weeks or months to multiple years. The surveillance group also found itself in hot water with House Republicans who said conservatives composed 80 percent of those flagged for watch. Lerner has also been criticized for an IRS move to delegate more responsibility, including to Cincinnati-based IRS agents examining nonprofit applications, while not issuing enough guidance on how to do the job. Her division’s training budget was slashed 96 percent between 2009 and 2013, according to the IRS Taxpayer Advocate, an internal watchdog. Lerner also stopped publishing a popular annual IRS manual, which most likely would have included a segment on political social welfare groups that could have helped clarify nonprofit policies, Owens said. In that vein, numerous emails show Cincinnati-based IRS employees begging for guidance on the tea party matter from Washington — probably why many were furious that she and the IRS blamed the situation on Ohio when the news first broke. Some tax lawyers said it became impossible to get answers from the division in recent years. Many also got the impression that Lerner and her unit were fearful of screwing up, calling them “too cautious” and slow-moving. “The irony is she and Steve Miller were so extremely cautious, and yet their caution blew up in their face,” Streckfus said. Unanswered questions As head of the division where it all began, Lerner certainly bears some of the blame for the selective scrutiny of tea party applications, and numerous emails understandably raise eyebrows. Emails released by Congress suggest Lerner knew about the tea party groups being flagged in 2010 and put a stop to the inappropriate “be on the lookout” criteria right when she learned about it in summer 2011. But she didn’t follow up to ensure agents stopped using politically charged words. They actually went right back to the practice. She also seemed well aware that these groups had been waiting for years to get an answer from the IRS. As early as mid-2011, she asked IRS lawyers how to get the applications wrapped up. Yet it’s also clear that she wasn’t the only one who made missteps — she’s just the only name leading headlines. For example, it was advisers in the IRS chief counsel’s office who requested that agents seek more information on conservative groups’ 2010 campaign activity, even after the organizations were waiting for exempt status for more than a year, according to Democratic congressional reports. There were also multiple managers on these cases, and former IRS staffers told POLITICO that the IRS commissioners probably knew what was going on because they were always appraised of “hot-button issues.” Still, none of her former IRS colleagues thought Lerner was working for the White House or biased. Rather, in general, they say she lost control of her division — and that the GOP is taking advantage of it. “You could take her out of there and just stand in a different person, and no matter who it is, we would have the same result,” said Karen Gries, a tax lawyer who worked with Lerner. “I don’t believe this is reflective of Lois the individual or Lois the professional.” Her sympathizers note that she was in a tough spot because many sunlight groups and lawmakers were alleging that big-name nonprofits, like Crossroads, were making hundreds of millions in secret campaign contributions, exceeding IRS limits for campaign activity for tax-exempt groups. Lerner’s division had to enforce the law, they say. But was the law applied equally to all political persuasions? Emails show Lerner was looking at political activities of affiliates of liberal group Emerge, which won tax exemptions that were later revoked by her division after Lerner asked “how in the world” they got approved. But the number of conservative groups that were put on hold for years and asked inappropriate questions still far outnumber liberal ones. Democrats, meanwhile, are still furious that Lerner didn’t tell Congress about the situation sooner. Eventually, the IRS, Lerner’s employer for more than a decade, would turn 180 degrees against her. After she went on leave, acting IRS chief Danny Werfel tasked his investigators to build the case to fire Lerner, according to a former IRS official who was working on that probe. But Lerner retired in September before the IRS could fire her. ‘Worst person ever’ Lerner and Miles, a partner with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, said they’ve spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on legal bills as she has been investigated by Congress and the FBI and sued by multiple conservative groups. The couple, who live in a $2.5 million house in Bethesda, Maryland, where BMWs sit in neighboring driveways surrounded by lush yards and security cameras, are clearly well off. But now they’re more conscious of money, postponing Miles’ retirement, for example. Lerner wants to work to help pay for her defense bills, though a source working on the congressional investigation said she’s receiving a $100,000 annual pension. But while even Miller, fired by Obama in the wake of the scandal, has landed on his feet at a Washington-based consulting group, Lerner is still untouchable. Her closest friends can’t help her land a job, and she’s been snubbed by at least one international organization that works on elections in Third World countries and a voluntary position in a county outside Washington. So she passes the time gardening, walking her dogs and volunteering occasionally with a local arts nonprofit where she edits grant applications. She won’t specify where, exactly, because “I feel like having my name attached does nothing but cause issues for people.” Some of her friends feel that way, too. While many have been supportive, even raising small donations to help her pay her legal bills, others have been too fearful to visit or even save her information in their contacts lists: They’re petrified of Issa’s subpoenas. Lerner said she tunes out the news reports centered on her. “I probably would have lost my mind if I had read it all, because your reaction when this happens is, ‘Wait a minute, let me explain to you what happened,’” she said. Instead, her husband — who looks more tired than Lerner herself — sifts through the scandal headlines, sometimes tearing out stories about her in the paper so she won’t see them. Miles also receives the bulk of hate mail and death threats at work. A July threat was so bad that federal agents had to protect Lerner at her home. Some have threatened their two daughters; even her 86-year-old mother-in-law in Ohio has gotten hate calls. Among the hate mail, Lerner’s “favorite” is one that says she’ll “go down in history as the worst person ever in the United States.” “I just thought, ‘Boy, worse than Jeffrey Dahmer?’” she asks, her face crinkling up, eyebrows pinching together in disbelief. When POLITICO asks about coping, Miles jests: “Oh, the tattoo?” But Lerner tears up describing how her legal team has become friends, willing to listen to her vent. Then, in a flash, she’s defiant again, saying she’s “not going to let them ruin my life.” They refuse to move from their home. And when Lerner leaves the house, she doesn’t try to hide by wearing sunglasses or a headscarf, though “someone told me maybe I should get a blond wig.” Of course, that also means she can’t escape public humiliation when she is recognized. She’s been berated by strangers and told she is “going to be put away in the deepest, darkest dungeon, and they were going to lock me up and throw away the key.” Maybe someday she’ll write a book. Maybe not. She doesn’t know when, or if, she’ll tell the full story of what happened, though she assures POLITICO that “you don’t hear half of what happened because they are picking and choosing.” Asked what she’d say if she could tell the world anything, she reiterated her innocence. Then, as she starts to get up to walk away from the interview, she added: “And, oh, one more thing: I’m doing just fine.” | 0 |
Washington (CNN)All eyes are on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday.After the House overwhelmingly voted to both override President Donald Trump's veto on the National Defense Authorization Act and to pass $2,000 stimulus checks, it's Senate Republicans' turn to navigate whether they're willing to cross Trump in his final days in office.McConnell blocks Democrats' initial attempt to increase paymentsMcConnell's plans for the week were not immediately clear earlier Tuesday. The Kentucky Republican blocked an effort to quickly pass a measure to increase direct stimulus payments from $600 to $2,000, though the legislation could be voted on at a later time or date if McConnell so chooses.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, attempted to pass the change to the omnibus spending bill through a unanimous consent request on the Senate floor, but any senator can halt passage of legislation that way. McConnell objected to the request.Still, McConnell also said on Tuesday that the Senate would consider three of Trump's priorities -- further direct financial support for Americans, reexamining Section 230's protections for technology firms and ballot integrity efforts -- this week. The reexamining of Section 230 came as Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act over not including revisions to the law that shields internet companies from liability for what is posted on their websites by them or third parties.McConnell's remark about bringing Trump's priorities "into focus" was not a commitment to bringing votes on the issues. The standoff leaves action on the Senate NDAA override vote in question, and the majority leader might have to file cloture to overcome objections and set up the vote for later this week.Bottom line: If McConnell announces plans to bring the bill increasing stimulus checks up for a formal vote, it could still take several days for that vote to occur given the procedural hurdles.The dynamicsRemember that for months, one of the biggest sticking points in the negotiations over the stimulus was how much the package would cost. Republicans didn't want to spend more than $1 trillion. Some Republicans didn't want to spend more than $500 billion. The Covid relief bill that was just signed into law cost around $900 billion. McConnell knows adding $2,000 checks to this bill would cost hundreds of billions more. In order for it to pass, McConnell would need 12 Republicans to sign on and right now, it's not clear that many exist. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, has said he'd back the payments. And Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, has been a strong proponent of stimulus checks. But, a vote on the issue would undoubtedly divide the Republican conference and force Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue to vote on the issue just days ahead of their runoff election. It would also expose members who vote no to the ire of the President, who has never taken kindly to being crossed.Both Loeffler and Perdue said Tuesday they would support increasing direct stimulus payments to $2,000. "President @realDonaldTrump is right — I support this push for $2,000 in direct relief for the American people," Perdue tweeted. "I've stood by the President 100% of the time, I'm proud to do that," Loeffler told Fox News on Tuesday in response to a question about providing $2,000 payments, a position President Trump supports. "I've said absolutely, we need to get relief to Americans now, and I will support that." When asked directly by CNN at an event later Tuesday if she would support increasing the direct payments to $2,000, Loeffler responded, "I said I would support it."A vote for $2,000 checks could also boost Perdue and Loeffler in their races. The provision is popular. And, even if the measure didn't pass, putting it on the floor would demonstrate to the President that McConnell tried, but the votes just weren't there. McConnell, as usual, has been seeking the input of his members.It's also possible, and some Democratic aides CNN has spoken with are fearful that McConnell could tie a vote on $2,000 checks to a less popular provision making it tougher for Democrats to vote for. Remember, that Trump argued he'd gotten assurances that the Senate would also take up a repeal of Section 230, which protects web companies from liability for what third party users post on their sites. That would scramble party lines and make a vote on $2,000 checks much harder for Democrats to swallow.NDAAMcConnell had hoped to bring up the NDAA override vote Wednesday. But, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has said he will block the measure unless McConnell brings up $2,000 checks, comments he repeated on Tuesday."The leaders of our country, President Trump, President-elect Biden, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are all in agreement," Sanders said in a floor speech. "We have got to raise the direct payment to $2,000. So, that is where we are right now in this historic moment. Do we turn our backs on struggling working families or do we respond to their pain?"Again, we don't know what McConnell's plans are on checks yet, but if he doesn't make a promise to bring them to the floor, Sanders could force McConnell to run out the clock until New Year's Day on the NDAA veto override vote. Sources expect the votes will be there to override the NDAA in the Senate. It's just a matter of when. A delay could keep Loeffler and Perdue off the campaign trail just days ahead of their runoffs. This story has been updated with additional developments Tuesday.CNN's Kyung Lah, Kim Berryman, Ali Zaslav, Ted Barrett and Alex Rogers contributed to this report. | 0 |
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has accused environmental groups of setting fires in the Amazon as he tries to deflect growing international criticism of his failure to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.A surge of fires in several Amazonian states this month followed reports that farmers were feeling emboldened to clear land for crop fields and cattle ranches because the new Brazilian government was keen to open up the region to economic activity.Amazon fires mapBrazil has had more than 72,000 fire outbreaks so far this year, an 84% increase on the same period in 2018, according to the country’s National Institute for Space Research. More than half of them were in the Amazon.There was a sharp spike in deforestation during July, which has been followed by extensive burning in August. Local newspapers say farmers in some regions are organising “fire days” to take advantage of weaker enforcement by the authorities.Since Bolsonaro took power the environment agency has issued fewer penalties, and ministers have made clear that their sympathies are with loggers rather than the indigenous groups who live in the forest. The head of Brazil’s space agency was fired last month after the president disputed the official deforestation data from satellites.An international outcry has prompted Norway and Germany to halt donations to Brazil’s Amazon fund, which supports many environmental NGOs as well as government agencies. There have also been calls for Europe to block a trade deal with Brazil and other South American nations.Bolsonaro suggested the fires were started by environmental NGOs to embarrass his government.“On the question of burning in the Amazon, which in my opinion may have been initiated by NGOs because they lost money, what is the intention? To bring problems to Brazil,” the president told a steel industry congress in Brasilia.He made a similar allegation earlier in the day when he suggested groups had gone out with cameras and started fires so they could film them. Asked whether he had evidence, or whether he could name the NGOs involved, Bolsonaro said there were no written records and it was just his feeling.A Nasa images shows several fires burning in Brazilian states. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty ImagesEnvironmental activists said his comments were an absurd attempt to deflect attention from the problem of poor oversight and tacit encouragement of illegal forest clearance. “Those who destroy the Amazon and let deforestation continue unabated are encouraged by the Bolsonaro government’s actions and policies. Since taking office, the current government has been systematically dismantling Brazil’s environmental policy,” said Danicley Aguiar, of Greenpeace Brazil.In Brazil’s Amazonas state, heat from forest fires has been above average every day this month, according to data provided to the Guardian by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. On the peak day, 15 August, the energy released into the atmosphere from this state was about 700% higher than the average for this date over the previous 15 years. The story was similar in Rondônia state, where there have been 10 days this month where fire heat has been more than double the average for the time of year.01:49Large swathes of the Amazon rainforest are burning – video reportIt is unclear which fires have been deliberately set by farmers to clear land and which were accidental or natural. The problem is not restricted to Brazil. Neighbouring Bolivia is also experiencing unusually large wildfires that have reportedly destroyed 5,180 sq km (2,000 sq miles) of forest. Video from the country’s Santa Cruz department shows monkeys and other animals scurrying in search of shelter amid a landscape reduced to blackened stumps, bare branches and ashes. Copernicus satellite images show it was primarily a fire in Bolivia that led to the darkening of the skies during the day on Monday in São Paulo, thousands of miles away. | 0 |
Refugees from Syria continue to walk through Europe. — -- Nearly 20,000 refugees arrived in Munich over the weekend, according to Bavarian authorities. And while there has been sporadic anti-migrant protests across Germany recently, many locals are finding original and heartwarming ways to welcome refugees.The generosity of the German people has extended beyond train stations from classrooms to kitchens."Germany will be able to take in 500,000 refugees a year for a few years," Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy Sigmar Gabriel said on local TV Monday, meaning Germany will be accepting more asylum seekers than any other European country.Dozens of volunteers have been driving to Hungary and to the Serbian border, picking up refugees walking along the highway in the aim of helping them travel to Western Europe. At least 150 cars crossed back into Austria Monday.In Dresden, a city in eastern Germany, entrepreneurs have launched a smartphone app to help asylum seekers find information on how to register with the authorities, get health insurance and find their way around. Peggy Reuter-Heinrich, the CEO of Heinrich & Reuter Solutions, which worked on the app with Saxonia Systems, said in a statement that the app would help refugees deal with bureaucracy better than paper documents.Across Germany, dozens of universities are offering free classes for refugees -- while courses are free for Germans, asylum seekers are usually required to pay a fee. Humboldt Universität in Berlin is one of several who recently invited refugees to register as guest students.Other programs are offering online courses with professors from around the country to provide opportunities for refugees.In Berlin, a couple has started an "Airbnb" for refugees, where locals are invited to host refugees in their homes for a temporary period of time. To date, more than 780 people have participated, according to a statement from the company "Refugees Welcome."Also in Berlin, one group has founded a culinary company which aims to bring Germans and refugees together through food. "Über den Tellerrand kochen" or Cooking Out of the Box, started in 2013, have released a cookbook and hold cooking classes for locals taught by refugees, as a cultural exchange. The initiative has reportedly reached 45 cities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.“We aim to bring together two societies that are living parallel at the moment. Each person has something to offer and if you bring people together they can create something special," Lisa Thaens, an organizer of a cooking class program told ABC News.In Munich, the beloved German soccer club Bayern Munich recently announced it was donating $1.11 million to help refugees and set up a training camp for children arriving in Munich. They will offer meals and German language classes to the kids taking part in the program.Get real-time updates as this story unfolds. To start, just "star" this story in ABC News' phone app. Download ABC News for iPhone here or ABC News for Android here.Top Stories | 0 |
Ridgecrest, California (CNN)Ridgecrest is a town in a California desert where the 28,000 residents are used to earthquakes.As California Institute of Technology seismologist Egill Hauksson pointed out Saturday, the city was once known as the earthquake capital of the world. That's because so many small earthquakes happen there.Friday's magnitude 7.1 earthquake was very different. Jason Corona co-owns a Mexican restaurant that was packed that night.At first, the temblor felt like other strong quakes that had hit the area."It started off low, and as soon as that bouncing started then I think it set a whole new different level of panic for everybody," he told CNN. "It was different from the other ones that we've had before."Bottles fell behind the bar, patrons dropped to the floor under tables and spilled food made a slippery getaway for frightened guests who sprinted outside. People in Ridgecrest are on edge, he said."We've never had anything like this," he said. "Nobody in this town has slept for days."'I felt safer outside'The major earthquake was centered 11 miles northeast of Ridgecrest, according to the US Geological Survey. It released 11 times the amount of energy of Thursday's quake, also centered near Ridgecrest, CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller said.The quake swayed buildings and cracked streets and foundations in Southern California on Friday night, sending terrified residents into the streets.Ridgecrest resident Jaye Krona said the earthquake felt like her "rocking chair gone crazy.""We had to sit down or crawl on hands and knees to get around because you couldn't stand up and be in an upright position without falling over," Krona said.Krona and her friend Kelly-Jo Lewis spent the night outside on Lewis' driveway."With everything shaking, things are falling. It's just not safe," Lewis said. "I felt safer outside, and I felt me and her were safer together being in pairs."So many aftershocksThe region has seen an average of one aftershock per minute since Friday's quake in the southern part of the state, according to the US Geological Survey website.More than 4,700 quakes have occurred since Thursday, said USGS geophysicist John Bellini. "They are coming in every 30 seconds, every minute," he said.At least 3,000 quakes above a magnitude 1, according to CalTech seismologist Lucy Jones.After Friday's 7.1 quake, three of magnitude 5 or greater struck within the first hour, he said.Gas leaks caused structure fires throughout Ridgecrest, residents reported water main breaks, and power and communications were out in some areas, according to Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governors' Office of Emergency Management. Several injuries were reported, said Kern County spokeswoman Megan Person.Kern County Fire Chief David Witt told reporters he knew of no fatalities. About 130 residents from Bakersfield and Trona were staying in a temporary shelter, Person said. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Kern County on Thursday and in San Bernardino late Friday. Newsom also requested a presidential emergency declaration for assistance, which President Donald Trump approved Saturday. "On behalf of all Californians, I offer my heartfelt support to those affected by tonight's earthquake near Ridgecrest," Newsom said Saturday.U.S. weapons testing facility was damagedNaval Air Weapons Station China Lake, a US weapons testing facility near Ridgecrest, said on its Facebook page that it sustained "infrastructure damage" as a result of the earthquakes Thursday and Friday. "NAWS China Lake is not mission capable until further notice; however, security protocols remain in effect," the Facebook post said.The air station also authorized the evacuation of non-essential personnel as well as dependents, according to the post.According to the NAWS China Lake website, the facility is the Navy's largest single landholding, covering more than 1.1 million acres -- an area larger than the state of Rhode Island -- in Kern, San Bernardino and Inyo counties.There were no major reports of gas leaks or serious injuries in Kern County, Witt said. But calls came in for ambulance and medical assistance.No power or water in San Bernardino townThe San Bernardino County Fire Department said it received multiple reports of damage as well from northwest communities. "Homes shifted, foundation cracks, retaining walls down," the department said. "One injury (minor) with firefighters treating patient."Trona, a town of 2,000 people, does not have power or water, San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Jeremy Kern told CNN. Workers had been restoring power from the initial earthquake when Friday's disrupted power again. Both earthquakes disrupted the main water system. Officials are bringing in water to residents and fire teams.No injuries have been reported in the town.There were two reports of burglary in Ridgecrest, police chief Jed McLaughlin said. In Los Angeles, about 150 miles south of Ridgecrest, residents felt the quakes, but no reports of serious damage were made, Mayor Eric Garcetti said. The LA County Fire Department reported no major damage, deaths or serious injuries, but said some wires were down and power was out in some locations.Shaking felt in Mexico and Las VegasThe shaking Friday was felt as far away as Mexico and Las Vegas, according to the USGS.The NBA Summer League game between the New Orleans Pelicans and the New York Knicks in Las Vegas was postponed Friday following reports of the quake. Scoreboards and speakers near the ceiling of the arena shook when the earthquake hit. Quakes are part of an ongoing systemJones, the CalTech seismologist, said Friday both large earthquakes are part of an ongoing sequence of a "very energetic system."On Saturday morning, the USGS said the chance of another magnitude 7 or higher earthquake is 3%.On the other hand, the chance of a magnitude 3 or higher earthquake hitting the area is more than 99%."It is most likely that as few as 240 or as many as 410 such earthquakes may occur in the case that the sequence is reinvigorated by a larger aftershock," the USGS said on its website.Vercammen reported from Ridgecrest, and Boyette, Maxouris and Almasy reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Alexandra Field, Carma Hassan, Phil Gast, Joe Sutton, Sheena Jones, Sarah Moon, Braden Goyette, Deanna Hackney, Dave Alsup, Haley Brink and Nicole Chavez contributed to this report. | 0 |
In an eve-of-Thanksgiving address on Wednesday, Joe Biden drew on historic hardships and his deep personal loss to make a passionate appeal for resilience, asking Americans to endure a national holiday amid restrictions on travel and gatherings imposed to fight the pandemic.More than 12.6m cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in the US and more than 260,000 people have died. Vaccines are imminent but hospitalisations and deaths are surging, straining infrastructure to breaking point as leaders warn of impending disaster.His speech struck a note of unity. “We need to remember, we’re at war with the virus, not with each other,” Biden said from Wilmington, Delaware, where he is continuing transition work before his inauguration as the 46th president in Washington on 20 January.The tone was in marked contrast to speeches by Donald Trump, who shortly after Biden spoke announced in a tweet that he was giving a full pardon to Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official.While Trump has allowed the Biden transition to proceed he has not conceded defeat or stopped making baseless claims of electoral fraud. On Wednesday the president cancelled a trip to Gettysburg meant to support efforts to overturn his defeat in Pennsylvania, after at least two aides to lawyer Rudy Giuliani tested positive for Covid-19. Trump instead addressed state Republicans remotely, claiming: “This election was lost by the Democrats. They cheated. It was a fraudulent election.”02:46'Our democracy was tested this year': Joe Biden's Thanksgiving address – videoOn the national scene, such words increasingly seem like ambient noise. In Wilmington, from a podium emblazoned with “Office of the President-Elect” and in front of an austere golden backdrop, Biden opened by quoting from a plaque at Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, which commemorates 18 December 1777, the first official Thanksgiving, celebrated in the midst of war with Britain.Echoing previous speeches informed by the historian Jon Meacham, Biden said George Washington’s army marked the day “under extremely harsh conditions and deprivation.“Lacking food, clothing, shelter, they were preparing to ride out a long, hard winter … In spite of the suffering, they showed reverence and character that was forging the soul of the nation. Faith, courage, sacrifice, service to country, service to each other and gratitude, even in the face of suffering, have long been part of what Thanksgiving means in America.”Almost 250 years later, families across America are preparing for a holiday with loved ones distant or lost altogether. Switching from the epic to the personal, Biden remembered his own family’s first Thanksgiving without his wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and young daughter Naomi, both killed in a car crash in 1972.“I know this time of year can be especially difficult,” he said. “Believe me, I know. I remember that first Thanksgiving. The empty chair, silence that takes your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks … It’s so hard to hope, to understand.“I’ll be thinking and praying for each and every one of you this Thanksgiving.”In a year marked by bitter partisan divide, the president-elect also saluted “simply extraordinary” turnout and said: “Let’s be thankful for democracy itself. Our democracy was tested this year, and what we learned is this. The people of America are up to the task.”Biden is the first presidential candidate to receive more than 80m votes. But Trump was only 6m behind. “Out of pain comes possibility. Out of frustration comes progress. Out of division, unity,” Biden said.His words also struck a contrast with Trump’s actions. The president has won one election lawsuit in a battleground state – but lost 36. Regardless, he continues to solicit donations to benefit future political moves, including a possible White House run in 2024.Nonetheless, in 56 days’ time Biden will replace Trump in office. He has unveiled his nominations for key foreign policy and national security posts and will reportedly name his economic team on 2 December. From Monday, he will receive the president’s daily intelligence briefing.Democrats and Republicans in Congress are preparing for Biden to abandon Trump’s state-by-state approach to fighting the pandemic and build a national strategy instead. Democrats believe a Biden plan should include elements of the House’s $2tn coronavirus aid bill which aims to revive the US economy. Republicans have resisted big spending but agree new funding is needed.Biden must also plan for the vaccination of hundreds of millions.This video has been removed. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.'This is not a third Obama term’, says Joe Biden in first sit-down interview – videoIn an interview with NBC broadcast on Tuesday, he said: “The [Trump] administration has set up a rollout [of] how they think it should occur, what will be available when and how. And we’ll look at that. And we may alter that, we may keep the exact same outline. But that’s in train now. We haven’t gotten that briefing yet.”Last week, some lawmakers expressed anger over a lack of federal coordination with Biden. On Tuesday, health secretary Alex Azar said his department “immediately” started working with the president-elect after the General Services Administration acknowledged the election result. It did so on Monday, more than two weeks after the race was called.Biden told NBC he thought vaccine distribution should focus “on obviously the doctors, the nurses, those people who are the first responders. I think we should also be focusing on being able to open schools as rapidly as we can. I think it can be done safely … Now, maybe, the hope is we can actually begin to distribute it, this administration can begin to distribute it before we are sworn in to take office.”In his speech in Wilmington on Wednesday, Biden hailed “significant record-breaking progress in developing a vaccine” and said the US was “on track for the first immunisations to begin by late December, early January.“We’ll need to put in place a distribution plan to get the entire country immunised as soon as possible, which we will do. It’s going to take time. And hopefully the news of the vaccine will serve as incentive to every American to take simple steps to get control of the virus.”Biden listed such steps, including wearing a mask, social distancing and more.“There’s real hope,” he said. “Tangible hope.” | 0 |
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Two men – including a former Hawthorne mayoral candidate – have been charged for allegedly submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications on behalf of homeless people, prosecutors announced Tuesday.Carlos Antonio De Bourbon Montenegro, aka Mark Anthony Gonsalves, 53, allegedly submitted more than 8,000 fraudulent voter registration applications between July and October 2020, according to a 41-count criminal complaint from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.READ MORE: At Least 1 Stabbed While Shopping At Food 4 Less In South LAMontenegro also is accused of falsifying names, addresses and signatures on nomination papers under penalty of perjury to run for mayor in the city of Hawthorne.He and 34-year-old Marcos Raul Arevalo were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit voter fraud, eight counts of voter fraud, four counts of procuring and offering a false or forged instrument and four misdemeanor counts of interference with a prompt transfer of a completed affidavit.READ MORE: Violence, Damage In LA After Rams Win Super BowlScreenshot of a Facebook page apparently belonging to a Carlos Antonio De Bourbon Montenegro.
Montenegro faces an additional 10 counts of voter fraud, seven counts of procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, two counts of perjury and five misdemeanor counts of interference with a prompt transfer of a completed affidavit.If convicted as charged, Montenegro faces a possible maximum sentence of 15 years and eight months in state prison, while Arevalo faces a possible maximum sentence of seven years in prison.MORE NEWS: Rams Stars Head To Disneyland After Super Bowl WinClick here to read the criminal complaint.
CBSLA Staff | 0 |
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.Trump said in a statement that he chose Haley because of her proven reputation as a “deal-maker,” who can work with people from both sides of the aisle. "She will be a great leader representing us on the world stage,” Trump said.So, who is the new ambassador? Here are five things to know about Haley.Haley became the 1st woman to become governor in South Carolina.Haley made history in 2010 when she was elected the first female governor of South Carolina. She was the Tea Party backed candidate.She vehemently spoke against Trump on the campaign trailShe may have been chosen by Trump, but Haley is not a long-time supporter of the president-elect. She criticized Trump throughout the Republican nomination campaign and endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio during the South Carolina primary. After Rubio dropped out, Haley backed Trump opponent Ted Cruz. In October, she said she would vote for Trump, but was “not a fan.”Trump adds Haley, DeVos to his Cabinet for UN, education postsShe is the daughter of immigrants from India Haley was not only the first female governor in South Carolina, but also the first minority governor. As the daughter of immigrants from India, Haley was outspoken against Trump’s anti-immigration stance when she gave the Republican Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address in January."During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices," Haley said. "We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country."Trump reacted by calling her stance on immigration “weak.” "She's very weak on illegal immigration," he said during Fox & Friends. "I feel very strongly about immigration. She doesn't."She doesn’t have much foreign policy experienceHaley has little foreign policy experience, but supporters noted she has traveled abroad at least eight times during her two terms as South Carolina governor. Her husband Michael was deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand Province in 2013 as a member of the Army National Guard. The couple have two children: Rena, 18, and Nalin, 15.She called on the state to remove the Confederate flag: ‘It’s time to move’ itFollowing the horrific killing of nine black church members by a white gunman in June of 2015, Haley called on the state to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse. The massacre prompted many in South Carolina to question whether the flag's presence on public property delivered a not-so-subtle message of bigotry."For many people in our state, the flag stands for traditions that are noble. Traditions of history, of heritage, and of ancestry," Haley, a Republican, said. "At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past."South Carolina later removed a Confederate flag from its Capitol grounds.Follow Mary Bowerman on Twitter: @MaryBowerman Contributing: David Jackson and William Cummings. | 0 |
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the keeper of the expert consensus on global warming, issuing a painstaking, authoritative report on the state of the science roughly every five years. The body released its sixth assessment on Monday. As with those before it, the latest appraisal was both alarming and unsurprising. Humans are warming the planet. This warming threatens civilization. The worst effects are avoidable, but the problem gets harder to address the longer world leaders wait.This essential picture has not changed in decades. Yet scientists’ confidence has. Experts are more certain than ever that dire consequences are coming. For decades, climate change doubters clung to scientists’ acknowledgment that there is some give in their numbers — in particular, a key measure known as “climate sensitivity,” which refers to how much the planet will warm given a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The U.N. panel had previously offered a wide range of likely scenarios, 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. Doubters argued that warming might end up reflecting the low end of this range. Why force economic disruption to stave off warming that experts admit might not be as bad as some fear?This view never took into account the fact that uncertainty works in two directions: Things could also turn out far worse than scientists’ median estimates. Now the United Nations has voided this argument. In its latest report, the panel narrowed its climate sensitivity range to 2.5 to 4 degrees Celsius, ruling out the benign warming scenarios doubters insisted were still possible.On the current emissions trajectory, global temperatures are likely to rise by 2.1 to 3.5 degrees Celsius, blowing past the 1.5 degree threshold scientists warn humanity should not breach. The experts determined that humans have already added enough heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere to push the planet to the 1.5 degree mark. The presence of other types of air pollution, which reflect sunlight, has tempered the warming that would have otherwise occurred. Humanity’s health depends on cutting this air pollution, but doing so will also reveal the true thickness of the greenhouse gas blanket humans have already draped over the planet.Scientists are also more confident about the likely consequences. If the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius, extreme temperatures that may have occurred twice a century would likely strike every three or four years instead. What had been once-a-decade droughts would arise about every four years. Various effects would compound, with disasters such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires feeding into one another. Coral reefs would disappear. Truly catastrophic consequences, such as disruption of ocean circulation patterns that govern the temperature of entire continents, are possible.These findings demand a two-pronged climate strategy designed to plateau warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Humans must stop releasing into the air potent short-lived greenhouse gases — among them methane, which wafts from careless oil and gas drilling. The world must also drastically cut the long-term warming drivers, primarily carbon dioxide.The U.N. panel concludes that this rescue scenario is still possible if governments eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. Time, however, is running out. | 0 |
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said “yes,” she believes the 2016 Democratic nomination for president was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton, and that the party faces “a real problem” in dealing with the fallout from the revelation that Clinton’s campaign secretly took over control of the Democratic National Committee in 2015.Responding to the disclosure by Donna Brazile, who became interim chairwoman of the DNC as last year’s election approached, Warren told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that Democratic leaders must restore faith in the party’s operations.“What we’ve got to do as Democrats now is hold this party accountable,” Warren said, adding that the current DNC chairman, former Labor Department Secretary Tom Perez is “being tested.”She said that when Perez won the party post early this year, “the very first conversation I had with him [was] to say, you have got to put together a Democratic Party in which everybody can have confidence that the party is working for Democrats, rather than Democrats are working for the party.”Brazile wrote in her new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, that shortly after she took the DNC job in late July 2016, she discovered the Clinton campaign had signed an agreement to help keep the DNC financially alfoat, a deal in “which [Clinton] expected to wield control of its operations.”The agreement between the DNC and the Clinton camp was signed in August 2015, several months before the primary season began and almost a full year before she officially secured the nomination over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I).The Clinton campaign “had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house,” Brazile said in her book, to be released on Tuesday.“The funding arrangement ... was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,” Brazile wrote.The excerpt, first published in Politico, includes details about Brazile’s call to Sanders after she discovered the arrangement, set up under her predecessor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).“When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger,” Brazile wrote. “We would go forward. We had to.” | 0 |
Story highlightsRep. Akin is a no-show on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight"The chairman of the RNC says he hopes Akin won't be at the national conventionAkin apologizes: "I never told anybody I was perfect"Calls mount for the Republican candidate to drop out of Missouri Senate raceRepublican Senate candidate Todd Akin canceled a primetime TV appearance at the last minute Monday night, shying away from the spotlight on a day he was under fire for controversial comments he made about rape.Akin was scheduled to be on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." A studio was booked and a chair was set.But shortly before he was to appear, Akin canceled. He was editing a new ad, an activity that forced him to bow out, two people with ties to his campaign said."Congressman, you have an open invitation to join me in that chair whenever you feel up to it," said Morgan.Pressure from the mainstream Republican Party mounted on the Missouri representative throughout the day to drop his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November because of his comments about "legitimate rape" and opposing abortion in rape cases.McCaskill also was booked to be a guest on "Piers Morgan Tonight." She canceled earlier in the day.Akin's remarks shifted the political focus Monday to abortion and women's rights, causing certain GOP nominee Mitt Romney's team to clarify the campaign's abortion stance.Top congressional Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas advised Akin to spend time considering what is best for his family, party and country -- political code for urging him to withdraw."What he said is just flat wrong in addition to being wildly offensive to any victim of sexual abuse," McConnell said in a statement. "Although Representative Akin has apologized, I believe he should take time with his family to consider whether this statement will prevent him from effectively representing our party in this critical election."The National Republican Senatorial Committee headed by Cornyn has advised Akin that it will not support his campaign if he stays in the race, a source from the group told CNN.In an interview on Monday with WMUR television in Manchester, New Hampshire, Romney echoed the sentiment of other GOP leaders, according to a tweet from the station's political director, Josh McElveen:"@MittRomney on if Akin should end senate bid- 'he should spend 24 hours considering what will best help the country at this critical time."Missouri election rules allow a candidate to withdraw with little difficulty through Tuesday, which is 11 weeks prior to the Nov. 6 election.After Tuesday, the candidate must get a court order and pay for any necessary reprinting of ballots. The state Republican Party would choose another candidate to run against McCaskill, considered one of the most vulnerable senators in the country.Akin apologized, repeatedly, Monday for what he called a serious error in using the wrong words when he stated in an earlier interview that "legitimate rape" rarely resulted in pregnancy."Rape is never legitimate. I used the wrong words," Akin said on Sean Hannity's syndicated radio show."When I was running for this race I never told anybody I was perfect. I make mistakes. But when I do make mistakes, Sean, I admit it and I tell people I'm sorry and I've done that from the bottom of my heart," he told Hannity.Akin made it clear he would remain in the race and said he believed the people of Missouri are capable of looking beyond the mistake. "This campaign is more than just one TV interview."Romney's camp distanced itself from the Missouri Republican, who is in a race viewed as crucial for determining which party will control the Senate next January. In addition, the controversy drew attention away from the economic themes of Romney's campaign in the run-up to the Republican National Convention next week in Tampa, Florida. Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, held a joint town hall-style campaign event Monday in New Hampshire. Ryan also visited Romney headquarters in Boston.At the White House, President Barack Obama told reporters that Akin's remarks were "offensive" and didn't make sense. Asked if Akin should withdraw, Obama said that was up to Missouri Republicans.Earlier, Romney told National Review Online the comments by Akin were "insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong.""What he said is entirely without merit and he should correct it," Romney said, according to the website.When news of Akin's comments broke Sunday, the Romney campaign responded by declaring a definitive stance on one of the most volatile political issues in the country.A campaign statement on Sunday night said the former Massachusetts governor and Ryan differed with Akin on the matter and that "a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape."The issue is particularly sensitive for Ryan, a devout Catholic and staunch anti-abortion politician who has previously expressed opposition to abortion in all cases except when the life of the mother is endangered.A Romney-Ryan campaign official, speaking on condition of not being identified, confirmed to CNN that Ryan's personal view opposes abortion in the case of rape. The campaign official said Ryan's stance differed with Romney's view, which was described in the statement on Sunday and is the formal position of the GOP presidential ticket.Democrats challenged the Romney-Ryan team on the issue."While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are working overtime to distance themselves from Rep. Todd Akin's comments on rape, they are contradicting their own records," said an Obama campaign statement Monday. "Mr. Romney supports the Human Life Amendment, which would ban abortion in all instances, even in the case of rape and incest. In fact, that amendment is a central part of the Republican Party's platform."It also said that Ryan worked with Akin "to try to pass laws that would ban abortion in all cases, and even narrow the definition of 'rape.' "Other Democrats and some Republicans piled on.Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said he hoped Akin would not come to the national convention in Florida."If it was me and I had an opportunity to let someone else run to actually give ourselves a better chance of winning, I would step aside," he told CNN's Erin Burnett."Congressman Akin's statement is another manifestation of the total disregard and disrespect of women by Republican leaders," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, adding that it was "almost impossible to believe that any political leader would suggest that any case of rape is 'legitimate.' "In Massachusetts, Republican Sen. Scott Brown called on Akin to drop out of the race because of the "outrageous, inappropriate and wrong" comments.The nation's largest tea party political action committee, the Tea Party Express, similarly called on Akin to step down, describing the candidate's comments as "unfortunate and inappropriate."However, one of the nation's most prominent conservative organizations rallied to Akin's defense. Top officials from the Family Research Council said Akin is the target of a Democratic smear campaign, and they also chided Republicans calling for him to step down.Connie Mackey, who heads the group's political action committee, said the organization "strongly supports" Akin. "Todd Akin is getting a really bad break here," Mackey told reporters. "I don't know anything about the science or the legal implications of his statement. I do know politics, and I know 'gotcha' politics when I see it."Akin's controversial comments give Obama and Democrats an opportunity to further strengthen their advantage with women voters -- a demographic that already favors them, according to the polls.The controversial remarks about whether abortion should be legal in the case of rape were made in an interivew with Missouri television station KTVI. A clip of the interview was posted online by the liberal super PAC American Bridge. In it, Akin explained his opposition by citing unnamed bodily responses that he said prevented pregnancy."First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said of rape-induced pregnancy."If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin continued. He did not provide an explanation for what constituted "legitimate rape."He added: "But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."Statistics on pregnancies that result from rape are difficult to produce, since rape is a crime that often goes unreported.The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, along with Planned Parenthood, each estimate that 5% of rapes lead to pregnancy. A 1996 study from the Medical University of South Carolina found the same percentage, adding that 32,101 pregnancies occurred annually from rape."Rape can make you pregnant. Period," Aaron Carroll, associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the director of the university's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, wrote in an opinion piece for CNN. "If you put sperm near egg, women can get pregnant."Akin, a six-term U.S. congressman, touted his socially conservative values on the primary campaign trail.He opposes abortion in all circumstances and has said he also opposes the morning after pill, which he equates to abortion.McCaskill responded almost immediately to her opponent's comments, writing Sunday on Twitter: "As a woman & former prosecutor who handled 100s of rape cases, I'm stunned by Rep Akin's comments about victims this AM."She later released a statement condemning her rival as "ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape."Republicans consider McCaskill, first elected in 2006, highly vulnerable in her bid for a second term. Ahead of the GOP primary, a Mason-Dixon poll showed the senator falling behind Akin and the two other main GOP primary competitors in hypothetical match ups among registered Missouri voters.Akin was one of the first members of Congress to join the Tea Party Caucus in 2010 and has easily won reelection in recent years. The lawmaker raised $2.2 million this cycle, as of July 18.Before the new controversy, the top nonpartisan political handicappers had rated the Missouri race a "toss-up."Among Akin's constituents, reactions to his comments were mixed."It strikes me that this is a tempest in a teapot," said Gene Wood, who voted for Akin and plans to vote for him again."I think he used a word that in reflection he wouldn't use again ... But this is just a matter of semantics," he said.Jennifer Derfeld, an independent who voted for Akin in the past but is not leaning toward him in the upcoming race, compared his comments to a slap in the face for rape victims."I mean either you have been raped or you have not been raped. It's not legitimate or illegitimate," she said.Should Akin quit the race? Share your views with us on CNN iReport. | 0 |
(CNN)Joe Biden is heading abroad, just at the moment when his hopes for a historic legislative legacy at home seem headed for a wall.For all the talk among Democrats of Biden assembling a Rooseveltian legacy, the moment was always going to come when his vast political agenda would hit the blockade of Washington's uncompromising political math.Recent days have chastened Democrats who dreamed of using what may be a brief two-year window of congressional power to forge the most fundamental economic and political change for a generation.Biden had a strong start to his presidency. The country is awakening, albeit with a few economic hiccups, from a pandemic that has never been closer to ending thanks to his rollout of vaccines developed during the previous administration. He's restored decorum to the White House, and his approval ratings are above 50% consistently -- a level never reached by ex-President Donald Trump.But the reality of a 50-50 Senate, the ideological tension in the Democratic coalition and a Republican Party transformed into Trump's personality cult have brought Biden to a moment of truth.His bipartisan effort to forge an infrastructure deal with Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia finally expired on Tuesday. The setback followed Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's announcement that he would not vote to outlaw filibuster rules or to pass a huge voting rights bill. Each blow put a new hole in soaring progressive ambitions that always seemed a leap ahead of reality.Previously, Republicans -- using that 60-vote filibuster supermajority rule -- blocked a Democratic bid to set up a bipartisan, independent commission into the January 6 insurrection.Swelling liberal frustration, the Washington impasse is coinciding with an aggressive push by Republicans in the states and conservative judges to cement hardline right-wing orthodoxy on access to the ballot, gun rights and abortion, which is enshrining Trump values even with a Democrat in the White House.Suddenly a presidency built on an already-passed multitrillion-dollar Covid-19 relief plan and a vast federal jobs and families plan is looking a little shaky."If the second two planks don't make it, that would be a big disappointment for the President," former Obama administration strategist and CNN political commentator David Axelrod said on Tuesday. Still, the overall picture is complex and not all discouraging for the White House.The Senate did pass a bipartisan bill on Tuesday equipping US industry and the tech sector to meet the challenge from China. And a push for police reform in the wake of George Floyd's murder may be about to deliver after tortuous bipartisan talks. Negotiators hope to announce a deal next week, a source told CNN's Manu Raju. If it pans out, the police effort may be a sign that even in a Congress as bitterly divided as this one, patience and dogged negotiating could be a template for progress.Where next for Biden and Schumer? An emerging question is how much the President and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, can salvage from an agenda that was being hailed as the most fundamental reordering of the US economy and society in decades. While there are tactics, including using the budgetary device of reconciliation, to pass bills opposed by Republicans, there are no easy routes to political wins in Congress and some issues are unsuitable for such maneuvering.The series of reversals for Democrats in Congress poses a fierce test of Biden's powers of persuasion and the capacity for legislative improvisation that he refined over a half century in Washington. The current unpromising prospects for passing major legislation also threaten to curtail the record that Biden will take into midterm elections that are already dominating Republican tactics.Yet at the same time, the current difficulties are not all Biden's fault and may be manageable for a President who has both portrayed himself as pragmatic fixer of the nation's problems -- like the pandemic -- but has also advanced proposals that drew comparisons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. For instance, his infrastructure bill redefined the term, packing social and child care spending into a package normally considered as limited to transportation spending.Many progressive Democrats advocate an almost limitless application of power to enact the most liberal agenda possible while they narrowly control the levers of power in the White House and Congress. But the President actually ran as a moderate in 2020 and his centrist appeal helped peel away some suburban voters who had previously backed Trump. For all the declarations by progressives of a bold new political era dawning, the left wing of the party failed to amass a majority in Congress for its lofty program. And were it not for Manchin's ability to hold a seat in a state Trump twice won with nearly 70% of the vote, Democrats would not even control the Senate. So it is not certain that a more modest legacy would spell disaster for Biden's presidency. While the President made no secret of his desire to rebalance the economy in favor of working Americans, the multitrillion-dollar scale of his program did surprise many observers. It's just possible the brakes being applied by Manchin and other Democratic senators on the right of the party may spare Democrats the kind of overreach that could hurt them in the 2022 midterm elections. After all, voters last year paired a Democratic President with an evenly balanced Congress -- not a combination that looked conducive to fundamental political change.'Time to move on'The White House said on Tuesday that the President would keep in touch with Washington machinations from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean during a weeklong trip to the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland.Schumer has now moved to a two-track strategy on infrastructure -- working with an expanded group of bipartisan senators, but also preparing for an effort to pass a bill on the issue with only Democratic votes.Several prominent Democrats declared that the time for working with Republicans is over and it is time for the party to forge ahead with their radical, transformational agenda alone. Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, on Tuesday began the work of packaging a $2.3 trillion American jobs plan and a $1.8 trillion American families plan in a nonbinding resolution that could be passed with a simple majority with no Republican votes. Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said she believed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, when he said he wanted to thwart Biden's major priorities."I've been ready to move on from bipartisanship for major priorities for the Biden administration for quite a while now," Hirono said.That's a position shared by many progressive Democrats. But it doesn't change the harsh facts in the Senate. There are no guarantees that there are 50 Democratic votes for big-spending liberal legislation either. Manchin has already expressed concerns. Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona shares Manchin's views on the filibuster and is another moderate Biden will need to keep on his side. Other Democrats, like Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who has a tough reelection bid next year, could expose themselves politically by backing multitrillion-dollar liberal spending bills easily misrepresented by Republicans as a massive "socialist spending spree."With this in mind, it is significant that both Sinema and Manchin are in a new bipartisan group of 20 senators discussing infrastructure -- even though big hitters in both parties have doubts the process can work."I think that there is a possibility here to get something meaningful done," said Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper.""Is it going to be everything that I would want? No. Is it going to include some things that potentially some Republicans might be uncomfortable with? Yes."Any deal would likely be a shadow of the original $2.2 trillion splash envisaged by Biden. The President, seeking a deal, has already come down by more than $1 trillion on the price tag. But intractable differences on paying for the bill that could have reversed parts of Trump's tax overhaul scuppered the previous effort. The symbolism of a deal may be as important for Biden as its exact terms, however, given his brand-defining promise to Americans to try to repair splintered national unity by forcing common solutions with Republicans where possible.As always in Washington, a move toward one faction brings the risk of shattering another part of a coalition for a bill. CNN's Lauren Fox reported that progressive Democrats warned they will not just blindly back any bipartisan infrastructure package that emerges from the new talks. "A group of four or five people don't get to carry 50 Democratic votes on their back," one Democratic senator said. Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, who took part in Capito's original infrastructure compromise effort, twisted the knife by saying he doubted that the new configuration in the Senate would attract the 60 votes needed for passage because it would alienate more liberal Democrats.Still, any deal that did unite 20 senators -- a fifth of the chamber -- would be a powerful statement and liberal Democrats would come under extraordinary pressure to cave and offer Biden a much-needed victory.If the deal ultimately fails, Biden could tell Manchin and his fellow travelers he had done everything he could for a bipartisan product and plead for their backing.A bipartisan deal on infrastructure might also give senators like Manchin and Sinema the political cover to caucus with fellow Democrats on a partisan drive to enact other aspects of Biden's jobs and families plan, though it would still be unlikely to get them to budge on filibuster abolition, which is critical to liberal hopes of counteracting GOP restrictive voting bills in the states.Biden has the advantage of having been involved in the teeth-pulling process of passing bills in Washington for longer than anyone on either side of the negotiations that will ultimately define his presidency. That experience may leave him more sanguine than most. But just months into his presidency, his legacy is already on the line. | 0 |
Iran Nuclear Deal: High Hopes for Economy Amid 'New Beginning'You could almost see the dollar signs in the eyes of Iranians who spilled onto the streets of after news that Tehran had signed a nuclear deal.July 15, 2015, 1:03 PM UTC / Updated July 15, 2015, 1:05 PM UTCTEHRAN , Iran — You could almost see the dollar signs in the eyes of Iranians who spilled onto Tehran's streets after the Islamic republic signed a historic nuclear deal in exchange for an easing of bruising economic sanctions."Maybe Iran and America’s government don’t like each other but Iranian people love ... American products," cellphone store owner Hooman Masumi told NBC News. "This could be a new beginning for both of us."The 36-year-old said there was a huge pent-up demand for quintessentially American goods, such as iPhones."Everyone wants an Apple phone — Iranians like good things," he said.Hooman Masumi, 36, owns cellphone store in Tehran, Iran.NBC NewsMany consumer products have been off-limits to Iranians under crippling economic sanctions that caused the country's economy to shrink by 20 percent since 2012. They also made it very difficult for business owners like Masumi to give their customers what they want.While it could be months before Iran starts to feel the effects of the sanctions easing, the oil-rich country will eventually gain access to some $100 billion in frozen assets. Firms like Turquoise Partners, a financial services company in Tehran, are banking on this boosting business."As soon as the U.S. government is OK with investment in Iran we will see a lot of U.S. investors coming to Iran," said Radman Rabii, CEO of Turquoise Partners.Businesses outside of Iran have been hoping and preparing to cash in, he said."A lot of U.S. companies that were active in Iran before will be thinking of coming back because if they don’t their European competitors will be taking advantage of the situation in Iran and American business will lose out," he added.His colleague Sanam Mahoozi says the environment really turned around when moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013 and began talks with the U.S. and other world powers.Sanam Mahoozi, 33, PR manager at Turquoise Partners Group, an Iranian financial services company.NBC News"Things have been 100 percent different," the public relations manager said. "I come to work very, very excited I am looking forward to the things that are going to happen."The feeling that the lifting of sanctions would spell a better life for a new generation was shared by many in the joyful crowds in Tehran on Tuesday night."I am so happy — this is a great day for Iran," said 34-year-old mother-of-two Maryam. "I want a good future for my kids. We don’t want war and problems.”Ali ArouziAli Arouzi is NBC News' Tehran bureau chief and correspondent.F. Brinley Bruton is senior editor in charge of NBC News Digital’s London bureau. | 0 |
A day after Vice President Mike Pence announced a pause in the battle between Turkish and Kurdish forces, there were conflicting reports of whether Turkish troops were advancing or holding fire. Credit...Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOct. 18, 2019ISTANBUL — Sporadic fighting continued in northern Syria on Friday, casting uncertainty over an American-brokered truce, as conflicting reports emerged about whether Kurdish forces were retreating or hunkering down and whether Turkish troops were advancing or holding fire.Clashes continued on and off in the vicinity of a strategic Syrian border town, despite President Trump hailing the cease-fire, announced on Thursday night by Vice President Mike Pence, as “an incredible outcome.”Mr. Pence had promised that fighting would halt for five days to allow Syrian Kurdish forces to evacuate a central pocket of northern Syria that Turkey wants to wrest from Kurdish control. But though fighting eased, gunfire could still be heard in the area of Ras al-Ain, a town next to the Turkish-Syrian border, during the early morning and early afternoon. By nightfall the Kurdish military leadership said its forces remained in a “defensive position” in the places they had been deployed when the cease-fire was agreed — contradicting Turkish and American claims that they had started to retreat, as required by the terms of the deal.Most international news organizations were absent from the battlefield, leaving a dearth of independent information about the situation, which everyone from the lowliest militiaman to the most senior politician had an interest in interpreting to their favor.Around midday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey denied any fighting had taken place, hours after the Kurdish leadership said it was being shelled by Turkish forces. Then Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Erdogan had conceded by phone that there had been, briefly, “minor” sniper and mortar fire.What was clear by nightfall was that the cease-fire’s desired outcome — a complete cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Kurdish troops from part of northern Syria — had not yet fully taken place. Should Kurdish forces remain in position by Tuesday night, Turkey has pledged to renew its full-scale assault, which began on Oct. 9.“If the United States can keep its promise, in 120 hours the issue of the safe zone will be resolved,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters at a news briefing in Istanbul. “If not, the operation will continue where we left off.”The stuttering nature of the cease-fire raised further concerns about the United States’ waning influence on the outcome of Syria’s eight-year civil war.These fears were compounded on Friday when Mr. Erdogan issued a menacing response to a private letter sent by Mr. Trump to the Turkish president on the day the invasion began.“Don’t be a tough guy,” Mr. Trump had written, in a letter characterized by informal language rarely seen in diplomatic communications.Mr. Erdogan responded publicly to the letter for the first time on Friday, saying that his country “cannot forget” the harshly worded communiqué, since it was “not in harmony with political and diplomatic niceties.” “We also want it to be known that, when the time comes, the necessary response will be taken,” Mr. Erdogan said. However, he also noted that the issue was not a current priority for Turkey.The Turkish government defines the Kurdish militia that controls most of northern Syria as a terrorist group, and Mr. Erdogan hailed the planned withdrawal as a victory over it. He also said that Turkey would establish 12 observation points in a 20-mile deep buffer zone along a 250-mile stretch of the border east of the Euphrates River.American troops would remain in southeastern Syria and would maintain control of the airspace of the entire northeastern zone, said Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for the Turkish president.Responding to the claims that Turkey had violated the truce, Mr. Erdogan told a reporter after leaving Friday prayers at a mosque in Istanbul: “I do not know where you get your information from. Conflict is out of the question.”But Mr. Trump posted on Twitter Friday afternoon that Mr. Erdogan had told him in a phone call that “there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated.”Nevertheless, Mr. Trump dismissed concerns about the viability of the cease-fire. “There is good will on both sides & a really good chance for success,” he said.Mr. Trump also said that some European states were now prepared to take back European citizens from the Islamic State who are currently incarcerated in Kurdish prisons, allaying concerns that they might be released during the fighting.“This is good news, but should have been done after WE captured them,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Anyway, big progress being made!!!!”Gunfire continued to be heard in Ras al-Ain midafternoon by members of a civilian convoy attempting to reach the city, according to Robin Fleming, an American researcher traveling with the convoy.Watching the town from a nearby hilltop shortly before 1 p.m., Ms. Fleming said she could see smoke rising from the town and hear gunshots, but no artillery.The convoy ultimately turned back before reaching the town because of fears of attack by Turkish-led Arab militias.Turkish-led forces also prevented a convoy of international aid workers from gaining access to Ras al-Ain to treat people wounded in the fighting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent war monitor based in Britain.Ras al-Ain has been the site of the fiercest clashes since Turkish troops invaded Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria early last week. On Friday, Kurdish health officials said they were investigating whether six civilians in the town had been hit by chemical weapons during Turkish airstrikes. Photographs shared by the Kurdish Red Crescent, a medical charity working in the area, showed at least two children with burns on their faces.Mr. Erdogan denied the claim and said the Turkish Army had no chemical weapons in its inventory. He accused the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the Y.P.G., of sowing disinformation also about civilian casualties and accusation of war crimes committed by Turkish-backed Syrian forces. ImageCredit...EPA, via ShutterstockBut Amnesty International, a global rights watchdog, accused the Turkish military and Arab militias fighting under its command of carrying out “serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians.”In a statement, Amnesty’s secretary general, Kumi Naidoo, added: “Turkish military forces and their allies have displayed an utterly callous disregard for civilian lives, launching unlawful deadly attacks in residential areas that have killed and injured civilians.”At least 218 civilians in northern Syria have died since the invasion began, according to the Kurdish authorities. A further 20 have been killed in Turkey by Kurdish mortar attacks, Mr. Erdogan said.Turkey wants to force out the Syrian Kurdish militia that has used the chaos of the conflict to establish an autonomous region across roughly a quarter of Syrian territory. The militia is an offshoot of a guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey. The Turks view the group as a terrorist organization.Since 2014, the group had operated under the protection of the United States military, which partnered with the Kurdish fighters to help sweep the Islamic State from the region and, in the process, allowed the Kurdish militia to control most of the land lining the Turkish-Syrian border.But after Mr. Trump abruptly ordered the withdrawal of United States troops from the border this month, ending their protection of the Kurdish fighters, Turkish forces invaded with the aim of establishing a Turkish-friendly zone, roughly 20 miles deep, along the border.By Friday, the Turkish troops had captured around 850 square miles of Syrian territory, Mr. Erdogan said in his speech.The deal announced on Thursday by Mr. Pence and Mr. Pompeo effectively gave American assent to Turkish territorial ambitions in part of the area, handing Turkey a huge diplomatic victory and completing the sudden reversal of a central plank of American policy in the Middle East. It was sealed without the involvement of the Syrian or Russian governments, to whom the Kurdish authorities turned for protection after the American evacuation and the onslaught of Turkish-led forces.On Friday, Mr. Erdogan said he would discuss the future of the rest of northeastern Syria with Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a meeting in Sochi on Tuesday.“Our aim is to reach a reconciliation with Russia about those matters that are reasonable and acceptable to everyone,” Mr. Erdogan said.Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Lara Jakes from Jerusalem. | 0 |
Washington (CNN)The House voted on Tuesday night to condemn racist language from President Donald Trump, capping off a tumultuous couple of hours on Capitol Hill including a brief time in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was barred from speaking in the chamber.The vote was 240-187. Four Republicans and one independent -- Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan -- supported it as well as all Democrats who voted. Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of the congresswomen Trump attacked, said Tuesday's vote sent a message to young kids who "are wrestling with the weight of those words now coming from the President, that we hear them, we see them and we never will allow anybody to tell them that this isn't their country."The resolution denounced the President for racist comments targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color, but tensions surrounding the procedural fight over Pelosi's language halted floor action for a heated debate for more than an hour while her words were deliberated. Pelosi violated House rules with her choice of words condemning Trump's racist language, leading to a dramatic series of events ahead of the vote. In one such moment of frustration, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri who had been presiding in the chair for much of the fight, blasted Republicans and threw his gavel down, abandoning the chair.House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made the announcement that the House parliamentarian had ruled Pelosi's comments were not in order and should not be used in debate. The breach of decorum led to a vote on whether to strike her words from the record and a separate vote as to whether the speaker should have her speaking privileges for the day reinstated, privileges that are removed if a lawmaker is found not to be in order.As expected, the Democratic-controlled House voted not to strike Pelosi's comments from the record and to allow Pelosi to speak on the floor of the House again, but the dramatic and unprecedented series of events highlighted the partisan anger ignited by Trump's racist language.Pelosi told reporters she had "absolutely" no regrets for her language describing the resolution. "Look, I stand by my statement," Pelosi said off the House floor. "I'm proud of the attention has been called to it because what the President said was completely inappropriate against our colleagues but not just against them but against so many people in our country and he said to them 'go back to where you came from.'"Members have to be careful with how they debate this condemnation resolution because they're not allowed to attack the personalities or character of members, senators, or the President on the House floor. House rules specifically say members can't say that a President has made a bigoted or racist statement. The deliberations over whether Pelosi's words should be taken down took more than an hour. The top three Republican leaders in the House as well as Pelosi's staff came to the floor as they awaited the decision, talking with each other as well as with other GOP members who were on the floor during the deliberations.Cleaver later told reporters that he acted out of "frustration" arguing that it was an unnecessary escalation by Republicans to challenge what Pelosi had said."I had been calling balls and strikes all day and all of a sudden, let's escalate it," Cleaver said, describing what had happened. "It's one of those moments where you realize that people have come here for the purpose of conflict, being engaged in conflict as opposed to getting something done.""People were violating the rules the whole time, on both sides," he added.Cleaver had harsh words for the President too, saying, "I think the whole world is at a standstill because of the President's tweet. ... We spend the day waiting on the next tweet and I think we're doing great damage to this republic."Trump has faced intense backlash, including from some congressional Republicans, after suggesting in a series of tweets over the weekend that the four Democratic progressive women known on Capitol Hill as "The Squad" should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." The President's tweets did not explicitly mention the lawmakers by name, but it was clear who Trump was referring to and his comments came on the heels of a public clash between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the four lawmakers, which includes Omar as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The President has continued to defend his remarks amid backlash, claiming on Tuesday that the "tweets were NOT Racist," and urging Republicans to vote against the resolution. "The so-called vote to be taken is a Democrat con game. Republicans should not show 'weakness' and fall into their trap," the President tweeted on Tuesday. While a significant number of congressional Republicans have rebuked the President over his comments, House GOP leadership has come to Trump's defense. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, insisted the President's tweets were not racist at a news conference on Tuesday. The top House Republican said he'll be voting against the Democratic-backed resolution condemning the tweets and suggested he was encouraging other members to vote against it as well."Yeah, it's all politics," McCarthy said when asked if he's encouraging Republicans to oppose it.Democrats have been united in their condemnation of the President over his attacks on the progressive lawmakers. Pelosi urged the caucus in a closed-door meeting Tuesday to support the resolution. "These are our sisters," she said, referring to the so-called squad. "We are offended by what he said about our sisters." But that unity comes after a clash between Pelosi and the same lawmakers that escalated after Pelosi told The New York Times in reference to their opposition to a border funding bill in Congress, "They didn't have any following. They're four people and that's how many votes they got."For now, the divide among Democrats appears to have been at least papered over as they come together in opposition to the President. It is unclear how many Republican lawmakers will vote for the resolution. But with the top House Republican vocally opposing the measure and the President pushing back, it is unlikely to be a large number. Pelosi announced on Monday that Democrats would take up a resolution in response to the attacks from the President, saying, "The House cannot allow the President's characterization of immigrants to our country to stand. Our Republican colleagues must join us in condemning the President's xenophobic tweets," in a Dear Colleague letter to House Democrats.The four progressive Democratic congresswomen have also forcefully pushed back. At a press conference on Monday, Omar condemned the President's words as "a blatantly racist attack on four duly elected members of the United States of House of Representatives, all of whom are women of color."Omar went on to say, "This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it's happening on national TV, and now it's reached the White House garden."This story has been updated with additional developments Tuesday.CNN's Sarah Fortinsky, Kristin Wilson and Alex Rogers contributed to this report. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — House Democrats postponed a vote Wednesday on a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill in the hopes a deal could be reached as negotiations drag on with the White House on a plan to help Americans struggling from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. The vote was postponed until Thursday to allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House negotiators more time to discuss a potential bipartisan deal, said a Democratic aide, who was unable to discuss internal deliberations publicly. Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met at the Capitol Wednesday for their first in-person negotiations since August. The two sides have been at an impasse for months over the size and scope of a COVID-19 relief bill, but rank-and-file members have pressured congressional leaders to get some sort of relief deal done by Election Day. “We made a lot of progress over the last few days, we still don't have an agreement, but we have more work to do. And we're going to see where we end up," Mnuchin said Wednesday. The House measure is a pared-down version of the legislation passed by House Democrats in May. It's expected to pass the House, but will face opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate, where lawmakers have balked at a higher price tag for more relief.House Democrats unveiled their proposal Monday, though House Republicans panned the bill as a “socialist wish list” and said they would oppose it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Wednesday it would be "outlandish" to think Republicans would be on board with a $2 trillion bill, though he said he and other Republicans want to see relief for Americans."I mean we had 52 out of 53 republicans willing to spend roughly a half a trillion dollars," McConnell added of a scaled-down $300 billion bill that was blocked in the Senate. "The thought that Senate Republicans would go up to 2.2 trillion is outlandish." Pelosi said the vote, which was originally planned for Wednesday night, would "formalize our proffer to Republicans in the negotiations."Layoffs:Shell plans to cut up to 9,000 jobs as oil demand slumpsAsked if he would be able to negotiate a deal over $1.5 trillion, Mnuchin said, “We’re going to go back and do a little more work again.”Many of the benefits Congress approved in the Spring to fight the economic impact of the virus have run out. The $600 federal boost to unemployment benefits halted in July, a loan forgiveness program for small businesses expired, and airlines have warned of mass layoffs as their billions of dollars in federal payroll assistance expire on Oct. 1.More:House Democrats introduce $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, unlikely to pass in SenateMore:Trump says he doesn't know Proud Boys but 'they need to stand down,' as he faces backlash for not criticizing white supremacists“Tomorrow, tens of thousands of airline workers will be furloughed if the program is not extended,” said Airlines for America President and CEO Nicholas Calio in a statement.Democrats and Republicans have been unable to agree on a stimulus deal despite months of negotiations. Talks fell apart in August leading President Donald Trump to sign several executive orders on COVID-19 relief. Trump's orders however, don't address a number of programs that ended over the summer. House Democrats' latest proposal would provide a round of $1,200 relief checks, reauthorize a small-business lending program, bring back the $600 federal boost to the unemployment benefit through January and provide assistance for the airline industry.The bill includes: $225 billion in education funding, with $182 billion for K-12 schools and about $39 billion for post-secondary education.$120 billion in grants for restaurants.$436 billion in assistance for state, local and tribal governments.$75 billion for COVID-19 testing, tracing and isolation measures.$15 billion in funding for the U.S. Postal Service.Increased food assistance benefits.Among the sticking points in negotiations has been the amount of the unemployment benefit, which Republicans said could disincentivize work if the amount is too much. Democrats offered $600 in their proposals, whereas Republicans offered $200 and $300 in other proposals.Both sides also remain far apart on the amount of aid to give to state and local governments. Republicans are wary of adding to the deficit and say the money would bail out mismanaged local governments.Contributing: Christal Hayes More:Trump-Biden brawl in Cleveland prompts debate commission to consider format changes | 0 |
Credit...Mel Evans/Associated PressJan. 8, 2014Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has built a remarkable brand in Republican politics around a simple message: that his bluster and brashness, grating as they might be, were driven by a desire to transcend partisan rancor and petty politics in the service of the public good.He would never let himself engage, he once pledged, in the “type of deceitful political trickery that has gone on in this state for much too long.”But embarrassing revelations about his office’s role in shutting down some access lanes to the George Washington Bridge now imperil that carefully cultivated image. They suggest that the same elbows-out approach that the Christie administration brought to policy battles at the State House may have been deployed for a much less noble end — punishing an entire borough for its mayor’s sin of not embracing the governor’s re-election campaign.For Mr. Christie, the timing of the blossoming scandal is dreadful, disrupting a highly anticipated plan to present the popular governor to the national electorate as a no-nonsense, bipartisan balm to a deeply divided federal government.The usually verbose and swaggering Mr. Christie, who once mocked questions from reporters about the abrupt closing of lanes to the bridge, seemed at a loss for how to respond on Wednesday.As the drip-drip of internal documents intensified, he hunkered down in his Trenton office, canceling his sole public event, postponing long-planned interviews with local reporters and waiting seven hours before issuing a written statement expressing his own anger over the matter. But by the end of the day, both Democratic and Republican leaders were seizing on the case’s growing links to the governor’s office, zeroing in on crude emails in which one of the governor’s top deputies and a high-level Christie appointee at the Port Authority seemed to celebrate their role in creating gridlock for residents of Fort Lee, N.J.On Thursday morning, Mr. Christie said he would hold a news conference at 11 a.m. to address the controversy.Despite Mr. Christie’s claims to the contrary, many saw an inescapable link to the temperamental governor, whose emotional outbursts at those who challenge him in public are a hallmark of his governing style.Several leading conservatives, long suspicious of Mr. Christie’s allegiance to their cause, seemed eager to pounce. “The point of the story is that Christie will do payback,” Rush Limbaugh said on his popular conservative radio show. “If you don’t give him what he wants, he’ll pay you back.”The episode is tricky for Mr. Christie and his aides. His cantankerous manner and independent streak are essential to his White House ambitions; advisers view them as an asset in early primary states like New Hampshire that have a history of embracing blunt-talking politicians.Now there is a new worry: that what once seemed like a refreshing forcefulness may come off as misguided bullying.“We like mavericks here,” said Thomas D. Rath, a longtime political strategist in New Hampshire. “But there is a line.”Mr. Christie has seemed on the verge of crossing that line in the past, like when he shouted down a voter at a town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.The concept of a governor whose top aides mete out political revenge by triggering a giant traffic jam “could be a problem” for people in the state, said Mr. Rath, who has advised the Republican presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mr. Romney.“Passion has to be tempered by courtesy,” he said. “It shouldn’t be about getting back at people.”The recent contretemps is especially jarring because it revolves around nakedly partisan score-settling against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, the kind of behavior that Mr. Christie has forsworn at every turn.Bipartisanship has become a byword of his administration, turning his news conferences into celebrations of his ability to reach across the aisle.“Our bipartisan accomplishments in New Jersey have helped set the tone that has taken hold across many other states,” Mr. Christie has said, and he routinely scolds lawmakers in Washington for failing to follow his lead.Even if he played no direct role in the lane closures, his administration has lost some of its post-partisan luster. “It’s always hard for anti-politicians when voters find out they have to be politicians, too,” said Alex Castellanos, an adviser to Mr. Romney in his 2008 campaign.And while thus far the story has only entangled the governor’s aides, and not the governor — the newly released emails included messages from Mr. Christie’s campaign manager and statehouse press secretary — any indication that his denials of involvement were less than truthful could do deep damage to his straight-shooting reputation.Still, Mr. Castellanos said he doubted the controversy would inflict lasting harm to Mr. Christie’s reputation outside of New Jersey.National Democrats did everything they could on Wednesday to ensure that it would. The Democratic National Committee blasted out a scorching Web video about the lane closures. It showed Mr. Christie indignantly denying that his staff had a hand in the decision, and the committee’s chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, played up the danger the road changes posed to families in the state.The danger for Mr. Christie, according to Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, is that Republican Party donors on the fence about the governor will find new reasons to doubt his viability as the party’s standard-bearer.“It plays into a narrative,” he said. “That party leaders and donors don’t know everything about Christie that they need to know.”In New Jersey, there were already signs of a remade political landscape. A few days ago, the incoming speaker of the State Assembly, Vincent Prieto, stood side by side with Mr. Christie at an elementary school auditorium, praising him for collaborating with Democrats and Republicans on a piece of legislation.On Wednesday, Mr. Prieto, a Democrat, issued a different kind of message: He vowed that the Legislature’s investigation into the lane closings would extend well into the new year. | 0 |
Bipartisan Group of Senators Say They Reached Agreement on Infrastructure PlanFive Democrats and five Republicans announced a plan that would be fully paid for, though they did not offer details. Many lawmakers remained skeptical that it would be approved.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesJune 10, 2021WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators announced on Thursday that they had reached an agreement on a framework to invest in the nation’s aging public works system, racing to prove that a compromise was feasible despite deep divisions over how to structure and finance an infrastructure package.The announcement came after a dizzying day on Capitol Hill, where senators involved in the bipartisan discussions offered conflicting assessments of their progress and declined to comment on specific proposals. But by early evening, five Democrats and five Republicans issued a joint statement announcing an agreement that would be fully paid for, albeit without any specific details about funding.The framework is expected to include about $579 billion in new spending as part of an overall package that would cost about $974 billion over five years and about $1.2 trillion over eight years, according to two people familiar with the details, who disclosed them on the condition of anonymity. The outline is expected to address a narrower range of physical infrastructure projects and to avoid the Democratic push for tax increases; but it is also likely to suggest indexing the gas tax to inflation as one of the mechanisms for paying for the plan.“We are discussing our approach with our respective colleagues and the White House and remain optimistic that this can lay the groundwork to garner broad support from both parties and meet America’s infrastructure needs,” the group said in the statement. It was unclear when the 10 lawmakers would release details or legislative text.The preliminary agreement faces steep headwinds on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers and aides in both parties remain skeptical that the group can muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. At least 10 Republicans will need to join all 50 Democratic senators for any of the administration’s priorities to clear the chamber.Some Republicans remained frustrated that President Biden ended negotiations this week with Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the lead Republican negotiator on infrastructure, who put forward a series of narrower counterproposals. Liberal Democrats, for their part, are wary of losing an opportunity to enact key policy priorities, including a series of climate provisions and tax increases on wealthy corporations and individuals. They have urged their leaders to focus on delivering the sweeping investments they promised voters.The Biden administration had signaled support for a package that accounted for at least $1 trillion in new funds in addition to the expected maintenance of existing programs. But White House officials have repeatedly said that indexing the gas tax or establishing a mileage tax for electric vehicles would violate Mr. Biden’s pledge to avoid raising taxes on people who make less than $400,000 a year.Democrats briefed the White House staff on the emerging framework, and administration officials are expected to work with lawmakers.“The president appreciates the senators’ work to advance critical investments we need to create good jobs, prepare for our clean energy future and compete in the global economy,” said Andrew Bates, a White House deputy press secretary. “Questions need to be addressed, particularly around the details of both policy and pay-fors, among other matters.”But the bipartisan group of senators are part of a broader coalition of moderates who have quietly met since Mr. Biden took office in an effort to explore avenues of compromise on a number of issues. Moderate Democrats in particular have been resistant to immediately bypassing the need for Republican votes on an infrastructure package, long seen as a particularly ripe area for a bipartisan agreement.The five Republicans are Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. The Democrats are key moderates: Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Mark Warner of Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Jon Tester of Montana.“I think it’s important that there is this initiative, that again is a bipartisan initiative,” Ms. Murkowski said before the announcement. “What is happening now is as Republicans and Democrats, we are going out to folks within our respective conferences, talking about the contours of what we put together to see what that level of support might be.”With razor-thin margins in both chambers, Democratic leaders have begun to quietly work on the legislation needed to use the fast-track budget reconciliation process, which would allow them to move a sweeping infrastructure package with a simple majority. But the maneuver would require near unanimity from the caucus and promises to be challenging, given the strict budgetary rules that govern the process.“We either need to do it in a bipartisan fashion that gets 60 votes, which shows no sign of occurring given the substance of the ongoing bipartisan negotiations, or we need to be prepared to use the reconciliation process,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and one of the most vocal proponents for the preservation of the climate provisions. “It’s got to happen.”Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, refused to comment on the details from the bipartisan group as he left the Capitol on Thursday. “We continue to proceed on two tracks,” he told reporters. “A bipartisan track and a reconciliation track — and both are moving forward.” | 0 |
A 22-year-old student is walking close to her house when a man calls out to her in front of a cafe with outdoor seating. She briefly keeps walking, then turns around to confront him.And then he slaps her across the face.The student, Marie Laguerre, published the footage on her Twitter account and wrote that she was hit by the man “because I responded to his harassment.” Some restaurant patrons jumped up in response to his behavior, but the man walked away.In the aftermath of that incident, French lawmakers passed a bill this week that bans gender-based harassment, both on the streets and on public transit, in an effort to prevent such incidents from occurring. The law also implemented a fining system: Perpetrators could pay the equivalent of $105 to around $875, depending on the case.The bill is part of a larger government push to curb harassment, which included implementing initial $105 fines for street harassment in March.But as Washington Post correspondent James McAuley reported this week, support for the new measures was fueled by France grappling with its own #MeToo movement over the past year, which included a social media campaign that encouraged French women to name their harassers publicly.The law passed this week is not only about street harassment. The legislation includes new protections for rape victims under age 15 by introducing the idea of “abuse of vulnerability.”Last year, a French court acquitted a man accused of raping an 11-year-old girl because it could not determine that she had been forced into the act or threatened with violence. Another similar incident took place in February, prompting widespread calls for changes to provisions that advocates said did not do enough to protect minors.“I don’t think it’s realistic because it means having police officers on every street,” she said.Some lawmakers agreed with her: A number of left-wing politicians apparently abstained from voting in protest of what they saw as a bill that didn't go quite far enough. | 0 |
2016 Comey's decision to not revive email case against Clinton throws another curveball into the presidential race. The development is a major relief to Hillary Clinton. | AP Photo Continue to article content Another day, another bombshell. The ever-turbulent presidential race took another dramatic turn on Sunday afternoon as FBI Director James Comey revealed in a letter to Congress that newly-discovered messages would not affect his bureau’s decision that Hillary Clinton did not deserve prosecution — a revelation that comes a little more than a week after Comey first set the race into a frenzy. The development — immediately cheered by Democrats — is a major relief to Clinton, who is spending the closing hours of her campaign fighting off Donald Trump’s mad fly-around to try to find a path to 270 electoral votes.
But Clinton and her team played it cool, with the candidate declining to bring up the issue at her afternoon rally, and her chief spokeswoman expressing more enthusiasm about Bruce Springsteen joining Clinton on the trail Monday. “We have seen Director Comey’s latest letter to the Hill. We are glad to see that he has found, as we were confident that he would, that he has confirmed the conclusion that he reached in July,” said Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri, shortly before the candidate appeared at her final Ohio rally, introduced by basketball superstar LeBron James. “And we’re glad that this matter is resolved."
She added, “I have one other thing to tell you: we are adding a guest to our rally tomorrow night in Philadelphia,” as she hyped The Boss. But Republicans, eager to see Trump continue to close in on Clinton’s stable but narrow lead, were not letting the matter rest. “The FBI’s findings from its criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s secret email server were a damning and unprecedented indictment of her judgment,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. "None of this changes the fact that the FBI continues to investigate the Clinton Foundation for corruption involving her tenure as secretary of state. Hillary Clinton should never be president.” And House Speaker Paul Ryan, one of Trump’s most tortured supporters, quickly pitched in to boost his nominee, as well. “Regardless of this decision, the undisputed finding of the FBI’s investigation is that Secretary Clinton put our nation’s secrets at risk and in doing so compromised our national security,” he said. “She simply believes she’s above the law and always plays by her own rules ... Let’s bring the Clinton era to an end by voting for Donald Trump on Tuesday."
Trump’s own campaign was defiant, saying Comey’s letter changes nothing about the perception of Clinton’s corruption or Trump’s chances on Tuesday.
"We have not made this a centerpiece of our messaging," Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on MSNBC said, despite Trump calling the initial news "worse than Watergate."
“Some things haven’t changed at all. What FBI Director Comey said on July 7th under oath to Congress is still the same. That she was reckless and careless in her handling of information…the reason that so many Americans have a problem with Hillary Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness and veracity does not change,” Conway said.
She also broke with Trump’s statement just on Friday in which he said he’s “always had a lot of confidence in the FBI.” “I immediately thought that he’s mishandled the investigation from the beginning,” Conway said about Comey. Still, Democrats’ feeling of vindication was mixed with a heavy dose of anxiety: nine days of early voting went by since Comey’s initial letter shook the race. And his Sunday afternoon letter to congressional leaders came as tensions between Clinton and Trump’s camps near their highest points of the cycle.
While her Republican challenger flies around the country in pursuit of any path to victory — hitting reliably Democratic states like Minnesota and others where early voting put Clinton firmly in the driver’s seat, like Nevada — Clinton is piling resources into Michigan, a blue state where her campaign has long had a presence but where it acknowledges polls have tightened. Both campaigns are guardedly optimistic about the sudden turn to Michigan: while Democrats acknowledge that the state is closer than they expected it to be at this point, they see last-minute visits from Clinton, former president Bill Clinton, and President Barack Obama as an insurance policy to stave off a last-second Trump surge while an unprecedented wave of Hispanic voters appears to have handed her unexpected strength in Florida, Nevada, and Arizona. To Trump’s team, it’s evidence that the race has tightened to the point where Clinton needs to play defense — even though no respected survey of the notoriously difficult-to-poll state has shown Trump tied or ahead there all year. And on Sunday morning, the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of the cycle landed with Clinton ahead of Trump by four points nationwide, 44 to 40 percent — roughly the same margin as other national polls have recently shown. A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll also released Sunday morning reaffirmed the small-but-steady lead, showing the Democratic nominee with a three-point cushion, 45 percent to Trump’s 42 percent. But far from settling into a groove, a restless energy has overtaken the contest, as Clinton avoided mentioning the FBI news on Sunday in Cleveland — after stopping through a Philadelphia church — and Trump strove to stay on message in Iowa and Minnesota. Trump’s team in particular has been on high alert after the real estate developer was rushed from the Reno stage on Saturday night when an audience member’s sign was mistaken for a gun and the Secret Service tackled him. Both Donald Trump Jr., the candidate’s son, and Dan Scavino, the campaign’s social media chief, retweeted a supporter’s message calling the moment an “assassination attempt,” despite all evidence to the contrary. And emboldened by his furious fly-around, Trump amped up his similarly unfounded claims of election-rigging, even calling Clinton’s late-campaign concerts featuring celebrities like Jay Z, Beyonce, and Katy Perry “almost like a form of cheating” and “demeaning to the political process." Meanwhile, apparently pointing to long lines at a heavily Latino polling place in Nevada that forced the location to stay open late, Trump questioned whether there had been any improper activity at “certain key Democratic polling locations in Clark County." “Folks, it’s a rigged system. It’s a rigged system, and we’re going to beat it,” he said. “The campaign’s made it very clear: a clear outcome, obviously both sides will accept,” Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said on Fox News Sunday. “I think both campaigns have also been very clear that in the event of disputed results, they reserve all legal rights and remedies." Seeking to further rev up his base on Sunday, the Trump campaign sent supporters a battleground map showing Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, and Maine leaning red, with Arizona, Utah, and Georgia firmly in the Republican camp and Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in the toss-up category — categorizations that do not fit the public polling. Clinton, meanwhile, was visiting Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire on Sunday in a bid to energize African-American voters in Cuyahoga County one more time with a joint rally with LeBron James, and to energize her supporters in the other two states where there’s been no early voting. Still dogged by lagging African-American turnout and the ongoing release of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails by WikiLeaks after what appears to be a Russian hack, the campaign is fighting the perception that it’s trudging to the finish line. “I’ve got pretty thick skin, Chuck. So you know, what I’ve worried about is to make sure that, you know, this is an unprecedented situation where a foreign power hacked my emails as with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange to dribble them out in order to maximize the damage to Hillary and to maximize the help to Donald Trump, who’s adopted — essentially — Russian foreign policy and rejected bipartisan U.S. foreign policy,” Podesta said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “So it’s kind of an unprecedented circumstance. But look, my job is to make sure that we’re doing what we need to do to make sure that those volunteers are on doors, on the phones. And that’s what we’re going to do to win this election." Yet Clinton's campaign’s lingering confidence is largely buoyed by early-voting figures in Nevada and Florida. A surge of Latino voters in Las Vegas’ Clark County, for example, pushed Democrats’ lead in early voting to 72,000 ballots — larger than it was four years ago, when Obama won the state by nearly 7 points. And in Florida, Latino voters have cast roughly 14 percent of the early and absentee votes, far ahead of their 2012 pace, when Obama narrowly beat Mitt Romney there. “We’ve built a different kind of coalition and a bigger coalition,” said Podesta. “You mentioned the historic Hispanic turnout that we’re seeing in Florida, Nevada, where we feel very, very good."
With Clinton clinging to a small but sturdy lead, Trump on Sunday kept up his talk of a “rigged” election, keeping alive the prospect that he might not accept a defeat on Tuesday. “You have to understand it’s a rigged system and she’s protected,” he said at his Minnesota rally. | 0 |
House Republicans defied President Donald Trump’s wishes on Christmas Eve, blocking the passage of a proposal to include $2,000 stimulus checks — something the president demanded in an angry video posted to Twitter on Tuesday night while threatening to upend months of negotiations over government funding and coronavirus relief.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dared Republicans to object to Trump’s call for bigger direct payments, something Democrats have been arguing in favor of for months, by putting up a clean bill for $2,000 stimulus checks on the House floor, while most lawmakers weren’t in town, and trying to pass it via unanimous consent.In what was less than a minute of action on the House floor, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) rejected the unanimous consent attempt, as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Republicans would do.McCarthy put out a letter Wednesday night calling on Pelosi to reopen negotiations on government spending and the COVID-19 relief bill. Pelosi has scheduled for another round of votes on Monday, Dec. 28, when lawmakers are expected to come back to town.Congress had passed — with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate — a $900 billion coronavirus relief package Monday, alongside a $1.4 trillion government spending bill meant to fund federal agencies for a whole year. Trump was said to have been on board with the proposal, which extended an additional $300 per week in unemployment benefits for roughly three more months and approved a round of $600 checks to Americans making less than $75,000.But on Tuesday, Trump released a video threatening to veto the legislation altogether, risking a government shutdown and leaving 12 million unemployed Americans in the lurch as federal programs for the jobless expire Dec. 26. Among Trump’s demands were something his fellow Republicans in Congress have been fighting against: bigger checks.“I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000, or $4,000 for a couple,” the president said Tuesday night on a four-minute video he posted on Twitter, decrying the government spending bill and COVID-19 relief package Congress has spent the last month tediously negotiating.Top congressional Democrats played along with Trump’s demands, knowing that forcing a vote on the proposal would either result in a policy win — with bigger stimulus checks for Americans — or a political one, where Republicans have to not only defy Trump but also show Americans they don’t want to give them more money during this health crisis.On Thursday, Pelosi got the latter. “Today, on Christmas Eve morning, House Republicans cruelly deprived the American people of the $2,000 that the President agreed to support,” she said in a statement. “If the President is serious about the $2,000 direct payments, he must call on House Republicans to end their obstruction.”But because she chose to call Trump’s bluff through a unanimous consent vote that would not require House members to return to Washington from their Christmas vacations ― and that a single member’s objection could derail ― some skeptics warned that Pelosi’s move was little more than political theater. Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, called on Pelosi to summon the House back into session for a roll call vote, arguing that it would either result in the expanded relief package’s passage or put Republican members on record voting against the $2,000 stimulus checks. Pelosi said in her statement that she would bring the House back into session on Monday for a vote on a bill that would increase the stimulus checks to $2,000. But that will be after federal programs for jobless Americans expire on Saturday. In the meantime, she said she hoped the president would sign the government funding and coronavirus stimulus package already passed by both chambers.Trump did not explicitly state that he would veto the spending bill and COVID-19 relief package. But it was clear he was not happy with either. “We finally thought that we’d be able to give people hope ― that’s what people need: hope,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said at a press conference after Thursday’s failed vote on $2,000 checks.The president “doesn’t give a damn about people,” she said. “He threw more fear, he threw kerosene on a terror fire.”On Tuesday, Trump misleadingly conflated the government spending bill with the coronavirus relief bill in an effort to characterize it all as “wasteful spending.” “It’s called the COVID relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with COVID,” Trump said. He then rattled off obscure items, such as U.S. aid to Cambodia and Myanmar, from the annual federal appropriations bill that Congress has combined with the COVID-19 relief bill, making it sound as if Congress had packed the relief bill itself with unrelated spending. Trump’s own budget, which his administration submits to Congress every year, has previously included all the funded measures he decried via Twitter video. But after vetoing the national defense bill this week, Trump is clearly willing to go against Republican leaders in Congress and those in his own administration who had negotiated these bills.In the end, the decision to block larger stimulus checks puts Republicans in a difficult political position. Though their objection doesn’t have the same power as an official roll call vote against the larger checks, they have effectively taken a public stance against both Trump, who remains deeply popular with the GOP base, and the $2,000 stimulus payments he proposed. In Georgia, where two Democrats, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, are due to face off against Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in a Jan. 5 runoff election, the Democratic Party is already hoping that the scuttled effort to expand the stimulus could boost their chances of victory. Ossoff and Warnock have both embraced the call for $2,000 stimulus checks. If they win in January, Democrats will effectively take control of the Senate.A week before Trump’s comments, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged that the political stakes of the Georgia races made passage of a COVID-19 relief bill with direct cash payments more urgent.“Kelly and David are getting hammered” on the issue of stimulus checks, McConnell reportedly told Republican senators. | 0 |
At a time when Muslims in the US are facing scorn and bigotry, the boxing legend is remembered as the face of Islam.At a time when Muslims in America are facing scorn and bigotry, the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali should be remembered as the true, peaceful face of Islam, residents of his home town say.
Hundreds of people filed past his childhood home in Louisville on Sunday, now a museum dedicated to his remarkable life, to honour the three-time heavyweight champion known simply as “The Greatest”.
Mourners left flowers and other mementos remembered his sporting prowess and his activism, but also spoke of Ali and his Muslim faith and how his example can help dispel stereotypes about Islam.
“With the stuff going on these days, most of the time, you see in the media there’s a bad image of Muslims,” said Hamza Shah, a doctor in Louisville, where Ali grew up and first started boxing.
“The one person we can definitely get a good image of was Muhammad Ali, and he portrayed what the real Islam is.” READ MORE: Why we mourn Ali Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in December sparked outrage when he suggested a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States.
Muhammad Ali kisses the Holy Black Stone during his pilgrimage to Mecca [Getty Images]
“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” Ali said in a sharp rebuke to the Trump proposal.
“I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam, and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”
‘Man of truth’
“He stood up as a man of truth, and Muslim countries look to people who not only are truthful but also compassionate and merciful,” Chicago-based imam Syed Hussein Shaheed said.
Ali was respected throughout the Muslim world – from Pakistan to Indonesia, from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia and across Africa – for the values he espoused and promoted, the imam added.
That message of tolerance and compassion was celebrated Sunday at an interfaith prayer service in Ali’s honour at the Islamic Center in Louisville.
“At a time when a candidate for the most powerful position in the world encourages us to fear those who are different from us, we need the voice, we need the presence of Muhammad Ali,” said Derek Penwell, who leads a Christian church in the city.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, Ali sharply cautioned Americans against categorising all Muslims as “extremists”. Muhammad Ali: Rumble in heaven as you did on Earth “Islam is a religion of peace. It does not promote terrorism or killing people,” he said.
“I am angry that the world sees a certain group of Islam followers who caused this destruction, but they are not real Muslims. They are racist fanatics who call themselves Muslims, permitting the murder of thousands.”
He repeated the message in his December response to Trump, saying: “True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so-called Islamic jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.”
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who is fighting Hillary Clinton for the right to face Trump in November, said on Saturday that Ali was not only an elite athlete but a champion of civil rights, and a true believer in Islam.
“To all of Donald Trump’s supporters who think it is appropriate to tell us that they love Muhammad Ali but they hate Muslims, understand that Muhammad Ali was a devout Muslim who took his religion very seriously,” Sanders said.
Ali’s funeral will be held on Friday in Louisville, and will be preceded by a public procession.
The interfaith service will be led by Imam Zaid Shakir, a close friend of Ali and co-founder of Zaytuna College, the first Muslim liberal arts college in the US, who will lead the Muslim funeral prayer.
Former President Bill Clinton, TV journalist Bryant Gumbel and actor Billy Crystal will be among those giving a eulogy for Ali at the service.
Muhammad Ali prays at a press conference before his fight against Ken Norton [File: August 4, 1976 – The Ring Magazine/Getty Images] | 0 |
House Republicans involved with immigration policy are working through possibilities.
The rhetoric heats up as yet another immigration debate surfaces.
House Republicans have begun to talk about how to stop President Barack Obama from issuing an executive order changing the enforcement of immigration laws, according to multiple GOP sources. Several options are being considered, including a standalone bill to strip or restrict funding from agencies that deal with immigration. The staffs of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other lawmakers involved with immigration policy are working through possibilities. No decisions have been made, as discussions have just started. And some in the top rung of the party aren’t certain the House has the ability to stop the Obama administration from using this authority. ( Also on POLITICO: GOP votes to give John Boehner 2 more years) Just a few days into the lame-duck session, the rhetoric is getting hotter, and the brief session of legislating has morphed into yet another immigration debate. In a Thursday morning meeting, Boehner told House Republicans that he warned Obama not to issue an executive order, or else his agenda would be completely stymied on Capitol Hill. And in a news conference in the afternoon, Boehner said Congress would go as far as ignoring requests from the administration if Obama “goes down this path.” “Well, you know, every administration needs this and needs that and needs all kinds of things, and you know, if he wants to go off on his own, there are things he’s just not going to get,” Boehner said, after winning his party’s nomination for another term as speaker. “Our goal here is to stop the president from violating his own oath of office and violating the constitution. It’s not to shut down the government.” But here’s the rub: GOP leadership has not yet coalesced around any mechanism to stop Obama. And even Boehner seemed unsure he could stop him. “We’ll find out,” he said. ( Also on POLITICO: The best last choice) Most importantly, House GOP leadership is very worried about their ability to fund the government if Obama issues an executive action. There is internal debate about whether Congress should fund the government for just a few months instead of nearly a full year as a mechanism to keep a tight leash on the administration. A short-term funding bill sets up another fight in 2015, and it would slow the Republican agenda on Capitol Hill. House Republican leadership doesn’t yet have a good read on the mood of the conference. “Our goal here is to stop the president from violating his own oath of office and violating the constitution,” Boehner said, when asked about using the government funding bill to stop Obama. “It’s not to shut down the government.” In the closed meeting Thursday morning, Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) urged leadership to pass a short-term funding bill, so a Republican Congress can fund the government in 2015. But Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Tom Graves (R-Ga.) said the party should pass a funding bill that lasts through September — the end of the fiscal year. ( Also on POLITICO: McConnell, Reid elected to top posts in Senate) Boehner said Republicans would fight the administration “tooth and nail.” “This is the wrong way to govern,” Boehner said. “This is exactly what the American people said on Election Day they didn’t want and so all the options are on the table, we’re having discussions with our members and there’s no decision been made as to how we will fight this.” | 0 |
The communications director for Hillary Clinton's campaign tweeted that while the candidate would not be responding to Donald Trump's remarks, "everyone who understands the humiliation this degrading language inflicts on all women should." | AP Photo The Clinton campaign says it isn’t responding to Donald Trump’s personal attacks on Hillary Clinton from Monday night, but it still tried to shame the Republican poll leader for the remarks and encouraged others to stand with Clinton. “We are not responding to Trump but everyone who understands the humiliation this degrading language inflicts on all women should. #imwithher,” Clinton's communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, tweeted Tuesday morning. And later, Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney hit Trump by tweeting, "Resorting to disgusting sexist slurs is not leadership Mr. Trump."
The quasi-response comes after Trump’s attacks on the former secretary of state hit a new level of intimacy.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Monday night, Trump talked about the “disgusting” bathroom trip Clinton made during the debate and said she was “schlonged” by President Barack Obama during the 2008 primaries. Attacking Clinton isn’t new for Trump. He often talks about the scandal over her exclusive use of private email while she was secretary of state, mocks her pantsuits, and insinuates she is a lesbian with her aide Huma Abedin. But these latest remarks come after a particularly nasty back-and-forth that began during the Democratic debate Saturday, when Clinton said, “He is becoming ISIS's best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists."
No such videos have been found, and Trump has repeatedly demanded an apology, to which the Clinton campaign Monday responded “hell no.” The Republican candidates have been slow to react to Trump's latest attack on Clinton. Ted Cruz, who has been reluctant to condemn Trump in recent months, again declined to do so on Tuesday during a rally in Tennessee. "You know what, there are an abundance of political pundits in the world who, like Statler and Waldorf, assess every comment every candidate makes," Cruz said. "I don't need to be another political pundit. I'm gonna let Donald Trump speak for himself. I'm gonna speak for myself. And I'm gonna focus on my positive, optimistic conservative vision for this country."
Republican candidate Mike Huckabee also tried to hit Clinton for the bathroom delay, joking Tuesday that she should have stayed there. “Quite frankly, I thought Hillary’s best moment the entire night was when she was in the restroom, not on the stage, and maybe [she] should’ve stayed there and it would’ve been her, perhaps, shining moment through the whole debate,” Huckabee told radio host David Webb on XM radio. | 0 |
The president ratcheted up a fight with a judicial system he sees as biased against him.Credit...Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressPublished Feb. 25, 2020Updated Feb. 26, 2020NEW DELHI — President Trump lashed out at two liberal Supreme Court justices on Tuesday, escalating his battle with the judicial system to new heights despite entreaties by his attorney general to refrain from attacks that complicate the administration’s legal fights.Weighing in on a domestic matter as he began a day of ceremony, meetings and a joint appearance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Mr. Trump seized on a dissenting opinion last week by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and a years-old comment by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to demand that the two Democratic-appointed jurists recuse themselves from any cases involving him.“I just thought it was so inappropriate, such a terrible statement for a Supreme Court justice,” the president said.Besides ignoring the entreaties of Attorney General William P. Barr, the president’s attack on the two justices also risked provoking a reaction from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. In 2018, Chief Justice Roberts admonished Mr. Trump for calling a federal judge who ruled against one of his administration’s policies, “an Obama judge.”“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” he said at the time. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”Kathleen Arberg, a Supreme Court spokeswoman, said Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor declined to comment.Mr. Trump did not confine his criticism to the two justices. At his news conference, he also renewed his calls for an investigation into his longtime foil, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam B. Schiff, for what he said without evidence was Mr. Schiff’s improper disclosure of information provided to the committee at a briefing from intelligence officials.It is unusual for presidents to fixate on domestic issues while overseas on a state visit, but Mr. Trump has veered from that tradition so much that it has come to be expected.Before he took the first question from a reporter during the Tuesday appearance, Mr. Trump said that he did not plan on saying anything controversial. And then he attacked two liberal Supreme Court justices and called for an investigation into a political rival.“Schiff leaked it, in my opinion — and he shouldn’t be leaking things like that,” Mr. Trump said referring to the California Democrat. The president was responding to a question about recent intelligence briefings about Russia’s meddling in the upcoming election.“And if they don’t stop it, I can’t imagine that people are not going to go after them and find out what’s happening,” Mr. Trump said, reviving his accusation that the committee had been a source of improper leaks. Last week the president also called for an investigation into Mr. Schiff, to which Mr. Schiff responded: “Your false claims fool no one.”Justice Sotomayor issued her dissent issued last week against an order by the court allowing the Trump administration to proceed with a plan to deny green cards to immigrants who are deemed likely to become “public charges” reliant on government aid programs.In her seven-page opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the Trump administration had become too quick to run to the Supreme Court after interim losses in the lower courts.“Claiming one emergency after another, the government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited court resources in each,” she wrote. “And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.”Writing on Twitter Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump cited Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News: “‘Sotomayor accuses GOP appointed Justices of being biased in favor of Trump.’”“This is a terrible thing to say. Trying to ‘shame’ some into voting her way? She never criticized Justice Ginsberg when she called me a ‘faker’. Both should recuse themselves on all Trump, or Trump related, matters!”“While ‘elections have consequences,’” he added, “I only ask for fairness, especially when it comes to decisions made by the United States Supreme Court!”Later, during the news conference at his hotel, he added of Justice Sotomayor, “Her statement was so inappropriate.”“When you’re a justice of the Supreme Court — it’s almost what she’s trying to do is take the people that do feel a different way and get them to vote the way that she would like them to vote,” he said. But Justice Sotomayor did not overtly accuse Republican-appointed justices of being biased in favor of Mr. Trump, as the president asserted. She complained in her dissent that the court “is partly to blame for the breakdown in the appellate process,” because it “has been all too quick to grant the government’s” reflexive requests.She added: “Perhaps most troublingly, the court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others,” a reference to the Trump administration.The five justices who voted in the majority in the case were all appointed by Republicans, but Justice Sotomayor did not frame her disagreement in partisan terms, and her dissent was written in much the same way as others by justices who lose divided rulings.Mr. Trump did not seem familiar with what Justice Sotomayor actually wrote but instead seemed to be reacting to a television chryon that characterized her statement in a far balder, more political way than she had.Asked by a reporter what exactly he found inappropriate, Mr. Trump demurred, saying “you know what the statement was.”When the reporter accurately summarized part of the justice’s dissent, the president said, “No, I don’t think that was it.”In adding Justice Ginsburg to his attacks on Twitter and at the news conference, Mr. Trump resumed a four-year-old feud with the longest-serving liberal on the court. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Justice Ginsburg called Mr. Trump a “faker” and said she could not imagine him as president.He responded at the time that she should resign. She did not, but expressed regret, saying her remarks were “ill advised” for a Supreme Court justice and promised that “in the future I will be more circumspect.”The head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Kristen Clarke, said the president’s call for Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor to recuse themselves was “deeply disturbing and unprecedented.”“No president in modern times,” she said “has shown greater disrespect for or worked to actively undermine the independence of the judiciary than President Trump.”The justices are highly unlikely to comply with Mr. Trump’s latest demand that they recuse themselves from the many cases involving him that come before their court. But the president’s attack raised the temperature of his continuing assault on the law enforcement and justice systems, which he has tried to bend to his will in increasingly bold ways.In recent days, he has repeatedly attacked Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case of his friend Roger J. Stone Jr., who was sentenced to more than three years in prison for lying to Congress and intimidating a witness. He targeted her again on Tuesday, reposting a Twitter message from a Fox News host that said, “Roger Stone judge’s bias may have jeopardized entire trial,” and later posting another message of his own calling the judge and the jury forewoman “totally biased.”Mr. Barr has gone on television to ask Mr. Trump to stop weighing in on legal cases involving his friends, because it was making it “impossible” for him to do his work. A group of federal judges convened an emergency conference call because of the attacks on Judge Jackson.Adam Liptak and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting from Washington. | 0 |
Donald Trump met with Mitt Romney, once a fierce critic of the president-elect who is now being floated as a potential pick for secretary of state, on Saturday afternoon, setting aside the friction between the two men and signaling a willingness by Trump to entertain different points of view on foreign policy. Romney appeared to warmly shake hands with Trump, each man gripping the arm of the other, as he arrived at Trump’s New Jersey golf course. The two exchanged pleasantries, with Trump placing his hand on Romney’s back, and disappeared behind a large brown door with Vice President-elect Mike Pence. After the meeting, which lasted for more than an hour, Romney said the men had a “very thorough and in-depth discussion” regarding “the various theaters in the world where there are interests of the United States of real significance.” Romney said that he and Trump exchanged views and that he looks forward to the new administration. Trump said of the meeting: “It went great.” [Trump, Putin agree in phone call to improve ‘unsatisfactory’ relations between their countries, Kremlin says] Romney and Trump hold different views on U.S. relations with Russia. Romney has called the country America’s “number one geopolitical foe.” According to the Kremlin, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Monday, agreeing that U.S.-Russian relations are “unsatisfactory” and vowing to work together to improve them. Trump’s office said in a statement that the president-elect told Putin he was looking forward to “having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the People of Russia.” Here are the people Trump has chosen for his Cabinet The cordiality that Romney and Trump displayed publicly was a marked change from the way the men spoke about each other during the campaign. Romney told CNN in June that a Trump presidency could bring “trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny” to the nation. In a speech, Romney called the real estate mogul a “con man” and a “fake.” Trump said Romney “blew it” and “choked like a dog” in his failed bid to unseat President Obama in 2012, and he called the former Massachusetts governor “one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.” [Trump demands apology from ‘Hamilton’ after cast’s message to Pence] Trump and Pence are spending the weekend at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., in a nearly constant stream of meetings with potential administration hires and others looking to dispense advice. Trump said Saturday evening that he was seeing “tremendous talent.” When asked if his cabinet was being shaped, he said: “Yes. Partially. We’re doing this again tomorrow.” He and Pence met earlier in the day with retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, a potential pick for secretary of defense who could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama. Mattis oversaw U.S. forces in the Middle East from 2010 to 2013. He was said to have consistently pushed the military to punish Iran and its allies, including calling for more covert actions to capture and kill Iranian operatives and interdictions of Iranian warships. Former defense officials said Mattis’s views on Iran caused him to fall out of favor with the Obama administration, which was negotiating the Iranian nuclear deal at the time. Mattis, who also clashed with the administration over its response to the Arab Spring and how many troops to keep in Iraq, was forced to retire earlier than expected to clear room for his replacement at U.S. Central Command. Now a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Mattis has publicly criticized Obama’s defense and national security policies. When asked whether he would choose Mattis as defense secretary, Trump said: “We’ll see.” He called the retired general “the real deal” and a “brilliant wonderful man.” A source familiar with transition discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that no decision has yet been reached about whether Mattis will join the Trump administration. [Trump agrees to $25 million settlement in Trump University fraud cases] Michelle Rhee, the former D.C. schools chief who is being floated as a possible education secretary, and her husband, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, also met with Trump and Pence. Rhee served three contentious years as chancellor of the District’s schools, where she oversaw a rise in test scores but shuttered some schools, laid off nearly 700 teachers for poor performance and filled more than 91 principal openings that were created via firings, resignations and retirements. Rhee has been a supporter of Common Core, which Trump opposes. Trump also met with donor Betsy DeVos, who is also reportedly being considered for education secretary. DeVos is a proponent of charter schools and vouchers. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire oncologist who advised Vice President Biden’s efforts to combat cancer, also met with Trump and Pence on Saturday afternoon, as did conservative community development leader Robert L. Woodson Sr., who told The Washington Post that he is under consideration to be secretary of housing and urban development. The president-elect and vice president-elect are also planning to huddle this weekend with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an immigration hard-liner who is on Trump’s transition team, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Trump’s transition team. [Trump demands apology from ‘Hamilton’ after cast’s message to Pence] “These meetings that the president-elect and vice president-elect are having really show . . . the depth to which we’re going to pull in diverse ideas and different perspectives as we form this administration,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said Saturday. Some visitors, he said, are “potential administration hires,” while others are coming only to offer advice. “The president-elect is bringing together folks who have been on the opposite side of him politically,” Miller said. Questions about Trump’s ability to bring Americans together arose onstage Friday night on Broadway. In a morning tweetstorm — a communication method that Trump often used as a candidate but that is unprecedented for a president-elect — Trump claimed that Pence was “harassed” Friday night at a New York theater, where he went to see “Hamilton,” a Tony Award-winning musical about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton that features a diverse cast and crew. “Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!” Trump tweeted. [Here are the people whose names have been floated for Trump’s Cabinet] At the show’s curtain call, the cast stood onstage as actor Brandon Victor Dixon, who portrays Hamilton nemesis Aaron Burr, addressed Pence, who apparently was walking out of the theater. “We sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir,” Dixon said during his remarks. “But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us — all of us.” A spokesman for the show told the Associated Press that Pence stood outside the theater to listen to Dixon. Later, Trump took to Twitter, saying the cast should apologize for addressing Pence. “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” Dixon tweeted back to Trump: “@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen.” Trump also used Twitter to address a $25 million settlement to end the fraud cases pending against Trump University, a defunct real estate seminar program. Trump, who had repeatedly claimed that he never settled lawsuits, despite doing so for years, now will likely not face the prospect of testifying in court during his presidential transition. “I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country,” Trump tweeted. He added: “The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday that the settlement includes a $1 million penalty paid to the state for claiming the program was a “university” even though it did not offer degrees, violating New York education law. Emma Brown, Greg Jaffe, Missy Ryan and Amy B Wang contributed to this report. | 0 |
Credit...Ted S. Warren/Associated PressFeb. 11, 2019WASHINGTON — House and Senate negotiators on Monday night agreed in principle to provide $1.375 billion for fencing and other physical barriers at the Mexican border, part of a broader agreement that would stave off another partial government shutdown without funding President Trump’s wall.The agreement would allow for 55 miles of new bollard fencing, with some restrictions on location based on community and environmental concerns, according to two congressional aides, who requested anonymity to disclose details of the private negotiations. That is a fraction of the more than 200 miles of steel-and-concrete wall that Mr. Trump demanded — and 10 miles less than negotiators agreed on last summer, before Democrats took control of the House.The deal, which must still pass the House and the Senate, and secure Mr. Trump’s signature, came together just before Mr. Trump, framed by banners emblazoned with “Finish the Wall” at an event in El Paso, doubled down on his demands.“We’re building the wall anyway,” he told the crowd, saying that aides had told him that the negotiators had made progress.The funding for 55 miles of new fencing is a figure far lower than the $5.7 billion that Mr. Trump had demanded and marginally less than the $1.6 billion for 65 miles of pedestrian fencing in the bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee had passed last year.In December, the president, concerned about reneging on his signature campaign promise, refused to sign onto that legislation, forcing the nation’s longest government shutdown.The negotiators also agreed to reduce the number of migrants and undocumented immigrants who can be held in detention. Democrats’ demand for a limit on how much detention space could be used for unauthorized immigrants arrested within the United States had threatened to derail the negotiations over the weekend, but lawmakers agreed to waive the demand.Instead, lawmakers agreed to adhere to levels, set by a number of detention beds, established in the previous budget. That would fund 40,520 beds, a decrease of about 17 percent from current levels, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached in recent months only by surpassing its funding caps.Privately, Democratic aides admitted the provision could have no impact on the number of beds ICE assigned for detainees. There is nothing to prevent Trump administration officials from funding a greater number of slots in excess of the lower target number, and then securing congressional outlays to cover those expenses, as ICE officials have done routinely in recent years, the aides said.Beyond the border barriers, the agreement, which primarily funds the Department of Homeland Security, would provide $1.7 billion more for border security, including technology at ports of entry, more officers and humanitarian aid.[Sign up for Crossing the Border, a limited-run newsletter about life where the United States and Mexico meet.]The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees announced the agreement, which includes seven unfinished spending bills, after three private meetings on Monday. Disaster relief for areas affected by storms and natural disasters last year will not be included, and lawmakers said they would address it separately.It is expected to be finalized as early as Tuesday, well before the Friday deadline when funding would again lapse for a number of federal agencies. With fears of another damaging shutdown, lawmakers seemed confident that they had the support of party leadership and that Mr. Trump would be willing to sign the agreement.“We think so,” Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters when asked about the likelihood of the president’s signature. “We hope so.”“The specter of another government shutdown this close, I thought tonight we didn’t want that to happen,” he added later.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, had urged him to “get it done” in negotiations, Mr. Shelby said. Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, said she had been in close communication with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and expected her support.“She has confidence that I made the right decision,” Ms. Lowey told reporters.White House officials did not respond to requests for comment about the terms of the agreement, and the president’s conservative allies on Monday night were already denouncing the deal. Sean Hannity, a Fox News commentator and a confidant of the president’s, called it “a garbage compromise.”Pentagon officials spent the weekend readying for the possibility that Mr. Trump would declare a national emergency, something that his allies said he is still considering as a means to secure border wall funding.But Republican lawmakers remained optimistic that their agreement would hold.“This has been a difficult one,” said Representative Kay Granger of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. “I think everyone will say, ‘Good work.’”A specific point of contention had been the number of detention beds under the control of ICE, which had stalled talks over the weekend.House Democrats, urged on by immigration rights groups, had pushed hard, hoping to leverage White House fears of another damaging shutdown into a softening of the president’s hard-line immigration policies that they say have torn apart families, wrenched productive workers from the communities they have lived in for years and infused a heartlessness into official American immigration policy.ImageCredit...Lucy Nicholson/ReutersThe Democrats’ goal was to cut the overall number of detention beds, including those occupied by asylum seekers and people caught at the border, from its current level of around 49,000 to 34,000, the number funded during the Obama administration, Democratic aides said. That, they say, would end sweeps and roundups, and force ICE to focus on pursuing hardened criminals.“We started at zero on the wall, and we compromised a lot after that, and we are now asking them to change, too,” said Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and a member of the 17-member House and Senate conference committee tasked with hammering out a compromise.Mr. Trump caught on. When Mr. Shelby presented him with the Democrats’ demand, he rejected it quickly, according to two people briefed on the exchange.“These are the people coming into our country that we are holding and we don’t want in our country,” the president told reporters at the White House on Monday. “That’s why they don’t want to give us what we call ‘the beds.’ It’s much more complicated than beds, but we call them ‘the beds.’”In private, Republicans responded with a plan that would exempt many detained immigrants from the cap, including those people either charged with or convicted of crimes, including misdemeanor drug offenses and violent felonies. That, in turn, was rejected by Democrats.“You have ICE agents picking up mothers and fathers and children in their own neighborhoods. That’s why the beds issue is so much more important than the wall,” said Ms. Roybal-Allard, whose Los Angeles-area district is 85 percent Hispanic, the highest percentage of any district in the country.The number of beds occupied by detainees fluctuates over time, influenced by a variety of factors, including ICE enforcement policies and the flow of migrants at the border with Mexico. The rate of that flow is unpredictable and determined by factors such as the performance of the economies north and south of the border, crime, gang activity and the business practices of coyotes paid to transport migrants from Mexico and Central America to California and the Southwest.The number of monthly apprehensions of migrants at the border has averaged 25,000 to 40,000 for most of the past decade, but has risen to about 50,000 over the past several months, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security.If ICE does not have enough room to place individuals and family members they detain, they must loosen their enforcement actions, creating a powerful motive for new migrants to enter the country illegally, Trump administration officials say.“You cannot have border security, without strong interior enforcement, whether there is a wall there or not,” said Matt Albence, the deputy director of ICE, on Monday in a conference call with reporters.Republicans closed ranks to blast the plan.“This is a poison pill that no administration, not this one, not the previous one, should ever accept,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor. “Imagine the absurdity of this: House Democrats want to set a limit on how many criminal aliens our government can detain.” | 0 |
After years of behind-the-scenes meetings between LGBT advocates and top Mormon leaders, church officials Tuesday announced for the first time general support for legislation to protect LGBT people in areas such as housing and employment – as long as accommodations are made to protect the freedom of religious people who oppose such measures.“We must all learn to live with others who do not share the same beliefs or values,” read a statement released at a midday Salt Lake City news conference.Church officials emphasized that there has been no change of the doctrine. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints teaches that it goes against the law of God to have sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.LGBT advocates had mixed reactions to the announcement, which mirrors a national discussion about how to balance civil rights of gays and lesbians with the religious freedom of conservatives of different faiths who oppose gay equality, among other liberalizing moves.“As a matter of policy, there’s no ‘there’ there,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. “The so-called religious exemption is the size of five Mack trucks. It entirely neuters their proposal.” However, that doesn’t mean the announcement won’t impact the topic, he said. “In the relationship..between Mormon families and their LGBT children and LGBT friends, I have no doubt that this will be deeply meaningful…From the perspective of symbolism, this is a step forward in the continued acceptance of LGBT people by the church.”But Jim Dabakis, a gay, married Utah state senator who was involved in talks with church leaders in recent years, has a different take.“As long as: ‘It’s the whole enchilada or nothing,’ as long as you’re using rhetoric to rev up your base…and not involved in saying: ‘Let’s find that common ground,’ when you find that kind of good will, like the church has…it’s a golden moment and that’s here we need to be going in America,” he said Tuesday.At the news conference — for which the church broke into its regular programming to broadcast on its radio and television stations — and in a statement mailed to faith-based activists around the country, Mormon leaders said the church “will support legislation where it is being sought to provide protections in housing, employment and some other areas where LGBT people do not have protections, while ensuring that religious freedom is not compromised…the Church believes that a ‘fairness for all’ approach, which strives to balance reasonable safeguards for LGBT people while protecting key religious rights, is the best way to overcome the sharp divisions and present cultural divide in our nation,” its statement said.“This appeal for a balanced approach between religious and gay rights does not represent a change or shift in doctrine for the Church,” said the statement, which was e-mailed to faith activists from Lance Walker of the LDS church’s D.C. advocacy office. “It does represent a desire to bring people together, to encourage mutually respectful dialogue in what has become a highly polarized national debate.”Dabakis said talks began in 2009. Before then, he said of church leaders and LGBT advocates, “we shared the same air but could not communicate. Breaking those blocks down was one of the great experiences of my life.”[This post has been updated.] | 0 |
Attorney general Jeff Sessions is directing federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against the vast majority of suspects, a reversal of Obama-era policies that is sure to send more people to prison and for much longer terms.The move has long been expected from Sessions, a former federal prosecutor who cut his teeth at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic and who has promised to make combating violence and drugs the justice department’s top priority.“This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency,” Sessions wrote in a memo sent Thursday night to US attorneys and made public early on Friday.The move amounts to an unmistakable undoing of Obama administration criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a national rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced. Critics said the change will subject more lower-level offenders to unfairly harsh mandatory minimum sentences.Sessions contends a spike in violence in some big cities and the nation’s opioid epidemic show the need for a return to tougher tactics.“The opioid and heroin epidemic is a contributor to the recent surge of violent crime in America,” Sessions said in remarks prepared for a Thursday speech in Charleston, West Virginia. “Drug trafficking is an inherently violent business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you can’t, and don’t, file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun.”The policy memo says prosecutors should “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense” – something more likely to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. Those rules limit a judge’s discretion and are typically dictated, for example, by the quantity of drugs involved in a crime. Jeff Sessions visits a border fencer in San Diego, California, on 21 April. Photograph: Mike Blake/ReutersThe memo concedes there will be cases in which “good judgment” will warrant a prosecutor to veer from that rule. But any exceptions will need to be approved by top supervisors, and the reasons must be documented, allowing the justice department to track the handling of such cases by its 94 US attorney’s offices.Even if they opt not to pursue the most serious charges, prosecutors are still required to provide judges with all the details of a case when defendants are sentenced, which could lengthen prison terms.The requirements “place great confidence in our prosecutors and supervisors to apply them in a thoughtful and disciplined manner, with the goal of achieving just and consistent results in federal cases”, the memo states.The directive rescinds guidance by Sessions’ Democratic predecessor, Eric Holder, who told prosecutors they could in some cases leave drug quantities out of charging documents so as not to trigger long sentences. Holder’s 2013 initiative, known as Smart on Crime, was aimed at encouraging shorter sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and preserving justice department resources for more serious and violent criminals.Though Holder did say that prosecutors ordinarily should charge the most serious offense, he instructed them to do an “individualized assessment” of the defendant’s conduct. And he outlined exceptions for not pursuing mandatory minimum sentences, including if a defendant’s crime does not involve violence or if the person doesn’t have a leadership role in a criminal organization.The Obama policy shift coincided with US Sentencing Commission changes that made tens of thousands of federal drug prisoners eligible for early release, and an Obama administration clemency initiative that freed convicts deemed deserving of a second chance. Combined, those changes led to a steep decline in a federal prison population that now stands at just under 190,000, down from nearly 220,000 in 2013. Nearly half of those inmates are in custody for drug crimes, records show.Obama administration officials cited that decline and a drop in the overall number of drug prosecutions as evidence that policies were working as intended. They argued prosecutors were getting pickier about the cases they were bringing and were seeking mandatory minimum sentences less often.Still, some prosecutors felt constrained by the Holder directive and expressed concern that they’d lose plea bargaining leverage – and a key inducement for cooperation – without the ability to more freely pursue harsher punishments.Sessions and other justice department officials argue Holder’s approach sidestepped federal laws that impose such sentences and created inconsistency across the country in the way defendants are punished. Even while in the Senate, Sessions repeatedly asserted that eliminating mandatory minimums weakened the ability of law enforcement to protect the public.Advocates for the previous policy said the change will revive the worst aspects of the drug war.“It looks like we’re going to fill the prisons back up after finally getting the federal prison population down,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “But the social and human costs will be much higher.” | 0 |
With Bipartisan Deal Elusive, Democrats Push Through Their Own Stimulus BillLawmakers approved the measure along party lines, even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a late-stage agreement with the administration was still possible.VideotranscripttranscriptPelosi ‘Hopeful’ for Another Coronavirus Relief PackageSpeaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that Republicans and Democrats were still in talks about a coronavirus relief package.Right now, we’re at the table discussing how we go forward with a possible Covid bill. Again, at that table, it reflected some of the differences that you saw in the debate. For example, we’re hopeful that we can reach agreement because the needs of the American people are so great. But there has to be a recognition that it takes money to do that. And it takes the right language to make sure it is done right. So again, we have concerns about a sufficient amount of money to address unemployment insurance needs of the American people. We have concerns about, for example — how about this as a stark example — of a difference, not just of dollars but of values.Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that Republicans and Democrats were still in talks about a coronavirus relief package.CreditCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesPublished Oct. 1, 2020Updated Dec. 22, 2020WASHINGTON — House Democrats pushed through a $2.2 trillion stimulus plan on Thursday that would provide aid to families, schools, restaurants, businesses and airline workers, advancing a wish list with little chance of becoming law as negotiations with the Trump administration failed to yield a bipartisan agreement.Even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted there was still room for the talks to produce a deal, the vote reflected the continued failure of Congress and the White House to come together on another pandemic relief package and the dwindling chances that they could do so before lawmakers scatter to campaign for re-election.The dysfunction has left Americans without aid payments or enhanced unemployment benefits they had relied on to weather the pandemic, and allowed help for struggling businesses to lapse at a critical time in a shaky recovery.But the measure passed by a slim margin, 214 to 207, as Republicans panned the latest relief bill as too large and at least 18 moderate Democrats from conservative-leaning districts objected to the lack of Republican support and argued that a vote should have waited until a bipartisan agreement was struck with the administration.“It’s important for people to see that we completely identify with the concerns that they have, and how we have allocated the resources necessary to get the job done,” Ms. Pelosi said.The bill shaved $1.2 trillion from the original $3.4 trillion stimulus bill that Democrats muscled through the House in May, reflecting mounting anxiety over the impasse and bipartisan concerns over the measure’s scope.Ms. Pelosi spoke with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the lead White House negotiator, for about 50 minutes on Thursday, and told reporters that evening that she was reviewing documents and language sent from the Treasury Department.But even as their private talks continued, there was little evidence of a deal coming together. Ms. Pelosi said that “we’re going back and forth with our paper and conversation” but ruled out the possibility of reaching an agreement by the end of the day. House Republicans and White House officials said Ms. Pelosi was unwilling to compromise, and had put forward a measure that remained too expensive and stuffed with unrelated items.The American people “need us to legislate for them, not posture,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, declared. At the White House, Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, blamed the speaker for looming layoffs in the airline industry.“Nancy Pelosi is not being serious” when it comes to the negotiations, she said.The acrimonious impasse persisted even as several industries, notably airlines, were running into severe financial constraints as the virus showed no sign of abating and people avoided traveling. Without the promise of congressional aid, United Airlines and American Airlines began furloughs of 30,000 workers on Thursday. The Labor Department reported Thursday that 787,000 Americans filed for state unemployment benefits for the first time last week, figures — unadjusted for seasonal variations — that are about four times the weekly tally of claims from before the pandemic.In a 90-minute meeting on Wednesday in Ms. Pelosi’s office, Mr. Mnuchin put forward a $1.6 trillion offer, which Ms. Pelosi rejected as inadequate.“We’re hopeful that we can reach an agreement because the needs of the American people are great,” Ms. Pelosi said. “But there has to be a recognition that it takes money to do that, and it takes the right language to make sure it’s done right.”The measure House Democrats pushed through contained many of the elements of their original $3.4 trillion stimulus plan, although lawmakers curtailed how long some provisions would last. In an effort to scale back the cost, lawmakers also halved their original proposal of nearly $1 trillion for state, local and tribal governments.Democrats maintained a provision that would revive a lapsed $600-a-week enhanced federal unemployment benefit and another that would send an additional round of $1,200 stimulus checks to Americans. (Mr. Mnuchin said on Wednesday that if an agreement were struck, it would likely include another round of stimulus checks.)They also included $225 billion for schools and $57 billion for child care, an extension of an expiring program intended to prevent the layoffs of airline workers through March 31, and the creation of a $120 billion program to bolster restaurants struggling to survive.Ms. Pelosi insisted that approval of the Democratic plan would not signal the end of negotiations, telling reporters that “it just says” that “this is how we came down” from the package approved in May.On the House floor, Ms. Pelosi urged lawmakers not to “take the path of least resistance, and just do whatever they put forth.”But some moderates balked at a bill that failed to gain any Republican support, arguing that voting on a partisan measure was not a substantial improvement amid the impasse.“We are closer than we have been in months, but the only thing that will deliver the help my constituents need is a bill that will actually become law,” Representative Cindy Axne, Democrat of Iowa, said in a statement. She was among a number of moderate Democrats personally lobbying Ms. Pelosi to keep House lawmakers in Washington until a bipartisan agreement had been reached, according to a person familiar with the effort.Mr. Mnuchin’s offer would revive the lapsed federal unemployment benefits at $400 a week and provide $75 billion for testing and tracing, according to one person briefed on the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of the proposal. The proposal also included $150 billion for schools and $250 billion for states and municipalities, details that were reported earlier by Roll Call.Ms. Pelosi, who declared on Bloomberg TV that “what they are offering is the heel of the loaf,” also said Republicans were unwilling to include a refundable child tax credit.On Wednesday evening, Mr. Mnuchin said the talks had been “productive,” adding that a deal would include direct payments to Americans that would be similar in size to the previous round of payments. But he and other administration officials warned that the Democratic offer in its current form was unacceptable.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, who has been largely absent from the talks, did not appear optimistic about the prospects for a deal.“I’d like to see another rescue package — we’ve been trying for months to get there,” Mr. McConnell said. “I wish them well.”Alan Rappeport contributed reporting. | 0 |
Hayden said the biggest task for Obama in his speech is to be reassuring. Ahead of a high-profile speech about changes to the National Security Agency by President Barack Obama, former NSA Director Michael Hayden said Friday he doesn’t believe any of the proposed reforms will change the way the government collects intelligence. “I think what we are going to see in the speech, Joe, is all of the language in the speech kind of fading left about transformation and transparency and checks and balances, but, frankly, I think the substance of the speech is going to be holding his ground,” Hayden told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough based on news reports of what Obama will unveil on Friday. “I don’t know that American intelligence agencies are going to be doing a whole lot of things different in a week, a month, or a year than what they are doing right now,” Hayden continued. ( Also on POLITICO: Public 'all over the map' on NSA) Shortly after Hayden’s appearance on MSNBC, news broke that Obama would be proposing that the NSA relinquish control over the phone data the NSA collects, but would not offer up who should collect the data instead. But Hayden said the biggest task for Obama in his speech is to be reassuring. “His mission here, I don’t think, is to change what we’re doing. His mission here is to make people more comfortable about what it is that the intelligence agencies are doing,” Hayden said. ( Also on POLITICO: Obama to halt part of NSA program) The retired general and former CIA director said the big questions Obama will have to address on the NSA’s phone data collection are where the data is held and how it can be queried. “I think the president’s going to punt the first question to Congress and NSA will continue to hold the data, and Congress won’t come up with an acceptable change,” Hayden said. On the second question, Hayden said he was concerned about requiring intelligence agencies to go to a judge every time they want to query data. “I was the director of NSA prior to 9/11, and if you direct the agency that they’ve got to go to a judge before they query data that is already there and already lawfully collected, that really feels like Sept. 10 to me,” Hayden said. “It’s a pre-9/11 mindset, and that would make me feel uncomfortable.” The president’s 11 a.m. speech is the culmination of a months-long review of the surveillance programs made public last summer by leaker Edward Snowden. Before Hayden’s interview, the White House had not confirmed what changes to the program Obama would suggest making. | 0 |
STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: 37 U.S. lawmakers urge Obama to consult with Congress before OK'ing strike NEW: "Consequences are too great for Congress to be pushed aside," Republican says White House: Chemical attack in Syria represents a U.S. security risk
Vice President Biden says there is "no doubt" the Syrian regime is to blame
Washington (CNN) -- With a flurry of comments and activity, U.S. officials sought Tuesday to lay the groundwork for a military strike in Syria -- though some in Washington are pushing back.
The moves by top members of President Barack Obama's administration come less than a week after rebels claim more than 1,300 people were killed in a Syrian government, most of them dying from use of chemical weapons.
The White House offered legal justification for a strike, with spokesman Jay Carney telling reporters the large-scale use of chemical weapons in Syria presented a national security threat to the United States that required a response.
Carney said Obama had yet to make a final decision on how to respond to what U.S. officials characterize as the worst chemical weapons attack since former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein launched a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds in 1988.
The president continues to review options, Carney said, adding "nothing has been decided." Carney assured reporters some sort of response will come.
"Allowing the use of chemical weapons on a significant scale to take place without a response would present a significant challenge to or threat to the United States' national security," he said.
Vice President Joe Biden made clear the administration's view of who was to blame, telling the American Legion that "there is no doubt who is responsible for the heinous use of chemical weapons -- the Syrian regime." 'No doubt' chemical weapons used in Syria
Does U.S. have 'smoking gun' on Syria?
What are Obama's options for Syria?
U.S. makes case against Syria
On the same day Obama talked with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and UK Prime MInister David Cameron, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry consulted allies and indicated potentially imminent action by a coalition likely to include key NATO partners and regional powers.
The United States has already moved warships armed with cruise missiles into the region. Hagel told the BBC on Tuesday that forces were ready to carry out a strike if ordered. A senior Defense Department official told CNN that any strike could be completed "within several days."
"We are ready to go, like that," Hagel told the BBC, adding that "the options are there, the United States Department of Defense is ready to carry out those options."
Syria warns West amid growing talk of military strike
White House: No decision yet
Options available to Obama range from ordering limited missile strikes to continued diplomatic efforts labeled by critics as a "do-nothing" approach.
The White House has ruled out sending ground troops to Syria or implementing a no-fly zone to blunt al-Assad's aerial superiority over rebels fighting to oust his regime.
On Monday, Carney said that the first step toward a military response in Syria would be the public release of a U.S. intelligence report on the August 21 event near Damascus that reportedly killed and wounded thousands.
A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak on the record told CNN that release of the intelligence report was planned for Tuesday, but Carney later said it would come out some time this week.
Another official told CNN the intelligence report would include forensic evidence and intercepted communications among Syrian military commanders.
Yet there's been some debate, within the administration, over what information should be released. The CIA and other intelligence agencies, for instance, have argued there was no need, and perhaps harm, in divulging details, two U.S. officials told CNN's Evan Perez.
One of the officials noted that the U.S. conclusion that the Syrian government was responsible, as expressed by Biden and Kerry, made releasing underlying intelligence superfluous. U.S. makes case against Syria
Horror stories coming out of Syria
On Syria, avoid 'Western vs. Islamic'
Rep. Peter King: We have to act in Syria
Carney said Tuesday there was "no doubt" in the administration that chemical weapons were used by the al-Assad government, telling reporters that "we see no evidence of any alternative scenario."
For almost two years, Obama has avoided direct military involvement in Syria's civil war, only escalating aid to rebel fighters in June after suspected smaller-scale chemical weapons attacks by Syrian government forces.
However, last week's attack obliterated the "red line" Obama set just over a year ago against the use of Syria's chemical weapons stocks.
Opinion: How Al-Assad used chemical weapons to poison debate
Legislator: Congress can't 'be pushed aside'
Yet some in Congress say that before Obama orders any strike, they should go through them first.
A group of 31 Republican and six Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday sent a letter to the president urging him "to consult and receive authorization" before authorizing any such military action.
"Any U.S. military action could bring serious consequences or further escalation," said Rep. Ed Royce, a California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was not among the letter's initial signatories. "The president should be making the case to the American public, and his administration should come to Congress to explain their plans.
"The consequences are too great for Congress to be pushed aside."
Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican and influential member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the U.S. response to the Syria situation will influence another regional proliferation issue -- Iran's potential development of nuclear weapons.
Obama "time and again has basically said that Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, that's the red line," King told CNN on Monday, adding that failure to enforce a similar threat against Syria on chemical weapons would undermine the president.
"This is as much a warning to Iran as I see it, as it is action against Syria," King said.
Even some in Obama's own party are cautioning against action that's not suitably inclusive. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island told CNN on Monday the United States should only act in concert with an international coalition from at least NATO allies and Arab League members.
"Without their participation, it looks as if this is just a Western-vs.-Islamic struggle. It's not," said Reed, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is to vindicate a basic rule of international law that these weapons will not be used, not by Iran, not by any power."
Reed said the most realistic option would be cruise missiles launched from U.S. Navy ships at sea, noting that "we can have precision weapons that could be fired and keep our aircraft out of Syrian airspace and away from their anti-aircraft systems."
"The most effective targets would have command-and-control, because you could send a signal to the Syrian regime that if they don't agree to international standards, if they don't make it clear and make it obvious that they're not going to use these weapons, and that we can inflict additional damage on their command-and-control," he added.
Earlier, a senior administration official said that assuming Obama decides to go ahead with a military response, any action could come as early as mid-week.
Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week for a summit with G8 allies, and before the administration has to make a decision on whether to suspend aid to Egypt because of the ongoing political turmoil there, the official explained.
Why Jordan wants military meeting to be hush-hush
American officials are consulting with allies to ensure they are supportive of any U.S. action, which the senior administration official said would be very limited in scope and a direct reaction to the use of chemical weapons. Representatives of three allied governments involved in those top-level consultations said the goal is to reach a consensus as soon as possible.
"No one is talking about a long process," one European diplomat told CNN.
Russia, China opposition make U.N. action unlikely
While U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday that the use of chemical weapons was a crime against humanity and must be punished, certain opposition by Syrian ally Russia and possibly China undermined the possibility that the Security Council would support a military mission.
Instead, a limited coalition of NATO partners such as Germany, France and Britain -- all of which have called for action against Syria -- and some Arab League members appeared more likely to provide political backing for Obama to order U.S. missile strikes.
Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said Kerry spoke Monday with his British, Jordanian, Qatari and Saudi counterparts, as well as the secretary-general of the Arab League.
The diplomatic efforts appeared to be working, with an Arab League spokesman condemning the al-Assad regime Tuesday for the chemical attack.
Opinion: For U.S., Syria is truly a problem from hell
In another move, the United States postponed its involvement in talks scheduled for this week in Geneva on seeking a political solution to the Syrian civil war. Russia expressed disappointment at the U.S. decision and warned against any Western military strike on Syria.
Last month, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey provided Congress with a list of declassified U.S. military options for Syria that emphasized the high costs and risks of what he said would amount to "an act of war" at a time of deep budget cuts.
Dempsey's letter, dated July 19, listed U.S. assets in the region including Patriot missile defense batteries in Turkey and Jordan, as well as F-16 jet fighters positioned to defend Jordan from possible cross-border trouble. In addition, the Pentagon has sent four warships armed with cruise missiles to the region.
U.S. official: Almost no doubt al-Assad regime used chemical weapons
According to U.S. officials, updated options offered to the president in recent days included:
• Cruise missiles fired from one of four Navy destroyers deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. The missiles would be used to strike "command and control" facilities such as command bunkers, or the Syrian regime's means of delivering chemical weapons: artillery batteries and launchers. There is no indication that the missiles would strike actual chemical weapons stockpiles.
• Military jets firings weapons from outside Syrian airspace. This option carries additional risks and is considered less likely.
Chemical weapons inspectors reach alleged attack site
To Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, the situation is forcing Obama to shift from being an "avoider-in-chief" regarding military involvement in Syria.
"It's almost inevitable that the president will authorize some form of military action," Miller told National Public Radio in an interview broadcast Monday.
He said he expected a significant response that amounts to "a warning that lays down this time a red line that the president intends to enforce, not one that turns pink."
"It cannot simply be a couple of cruise missiles into a storage shed somewhere," Miller said, adding that the goal was to deter al-Assad rather than topple him or radically shift the balance in Syria at this time. "The president's not on the verge of becoming the cavalry to rescue the country."
CNN's Chris Lawrence and Jill Dougherty reported on this story, which was written by Tom Cohen. CNN's Frederik Pleitgen, Elise Labott, Greg Botelho, Hamdi Alkhshali and Ben Brumfield contributed to this report. | 0 |
The House passed a major expansion of labor rights, but it’s likely headed for G.O.P. obstacles in the Senate.ImageCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe House on Tuesday approved the most significant expansion of labor rights since the New Deal, advancing a bill that would neutralize right-to-work laws in 27 states and bolster workers’ ability to unionize after years of eroding clout.The bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, would amend a decades-old labor law to protect workers seeking to form a union from retribution or firing, strengthen the government’s power to punish employers who violate workers’ rights and outlaw mandatory meetings that employers often rely on to try to quash an organizing drive.It would also make it harder for companies like Uber and Lyft to classify workers as independent contractors, paving the way for a potentially dramatic expansion in the pool of workers eligible to unionize.The measure was all but certain to run into a brick wall of opposition in the Senate, where 60 votes would be needed to advance it past a filibuster and Republicans are broadly opposed. It passed the House 225 to 206, with five Republicans joining Democrats in favor.Democrats, led by President Biden, have embraced the bill as a centerpiece of their agenda, seeking to elevate labor rights as an answer to economic and racial inequality and woo back white working-class voters who abandoned the party for former President Donald J. Trump. It comes as Mr. Biden, an outspoken defender of unions, has already taken an unusually active stance to wade into a battle over unionization at Amazon.“As America works to recover from the devastating challenges of deadly pandemic, an economic crisis, and reckoning on race that reveals deep disparities, we need to summon a new wave of worker power to create an economy that works for everyone,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Tuesday.Business groups and most Republicans fiercely oppose the measure, arguing that it is a giveaway to union leaders by Democrats looking for campaign donations. They contend that it would hurt workers, trample on states’ rights and decimate businesses at a time when thousands of small companies have folded because of the economic turmoil surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.The bill is “radical, backward-looking legislation, which will diminish the rights of workers and employers while harming the economy and providing a political gift to labor unions and their special interests,” Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, said during the House’s debate.The vote on the labor bill is one of almost a dozen House Democrats are plotting this month to push forward a flurry of long-sought liberal priorities on gun safety, gay rights, immigration, voting rights and other issues that would reshape the economy and several aspects of American society. Each faces similarly long odds in the Senate, but Democrats are working to ratchet up pressure on Republicans ahead of the 2022 midterm elections while persuading conservative Democrats to agree to eliminate the filibuster to achieve lasting policy changes.The defense secretary approves keeping 2,200 National Guard troops at the Capitol through late May.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Pentagon announced Tuesday evening that more than 2,200 National Guard troops would remain in Washington for at least 10 more weeks to assist federal law enforcement agencies in protecting Congress, continuing a deployment that began during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said Guard troops would remain on Capitol Hill through May 23, approving a request from U.S. Capitol Police to extend a deployment that had been set to expire on Friday.“This decision was made after a thorough review of the request and after close consideration of its potential impact on readiness,” John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. He noted that the number of soldiers that would remain in the Capitol under the new agreement was approximately half of the contingent currently serving there.Mr. Kirby said that the Defense Department would work with the Capitol Police to further reduce the number of Guard personnel guarding Congress “as conditions allow.”The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda D. Pittman, formally asked the Defense Department on Thursday to keep thousands of National Guard troops on Capitol Hill beyond their scheduled departure. She cited a 93 percent increase in threats against lawmakers during January and February compared to the same period last year as part of the reason for requesting the extension.Last week, House leaders canceled a session on March 4 in response to warnings from federal officials that militia groups inspired by the pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon might try to attack the Capitol that day. No such assault materialized.White House says Biden’s name won’t appear on future stimulus checks.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times The next round of stimulus checks that Congress is expected to approve this week will not include President Biden’s name, a White House official said on Tuesday, a decision that breaks with the practice of his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump, who sought to take credit for the payments by personally branding them.Millions of Americans are expected to receive direct payments of up to $1,400 in the coming weeks once Congress enacts a $1.9 trillion relief package. Most of those payments will be made electronically, by direct deposit, but some Americans will receive paper checks in the mail.The last two rounds of checks included Mr. Trump’s name, along with a signed letter accompanying the funds, prompting criticism from Democrats and watchdog groups that he was politicizing the relief money, which passed on a bipartisan basis.“He did not want his name to appear on the checks,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters, “and he didn’t think that was a priority.”The announcement came as Mr. Biden visited a hardware store in Washington to promote the Paycheck Protection Program, a small-business lending program that was started under Mr. Trump but has been criticized for allowing money to go to big companies rather than mom-and-pop shops.“A lot of money went to people who shouldn’t have gotten help,” Mr. Biden said to the employees of , W.S. Jenks & Son, which received a loan from the program along with Little Wild Things Farm, an adjoining business.Mr. Biden, who announced changes to the program that were intended to get more funds to smaller businesses, said that Mr. Trump had not done enough to fairly distribute the loans.“In the previous round of P.P.P., in the previous administration, there was documented problems from the inspector general of the Small Business Administration that tens of thousands of companies that were not eligible for P.P.P. ended up receiving it,” Bharat Ramamurti, a deputy director of the National Economic Council, told reporters when he was asked to explain what the president meant. “We’ve changed that.”The Paycheck Protection Program has made some $687 billion in loans to more than 7 million borrowers since last spring, according to data from the Small Business Administration. But it has also been plagued with problems. The Trump administration initially put few safeguards on the application process, allowing large, often publicly-traded companies to qualify for loans. Recipients have complained that their applications were delayed by technology glitches. A single typo could tank an application.The Biden administration announced a series of changes to the program late last month, including opening a two-week window to better prioritize businesses that employ fewer than 20 people. as well as those owned by noncitizens who are lawful residents of the United States.Mr. Ramamurti said that the two-week period led to an increase in loans to minority and women borrowers, and the administration logged 200,000 loans to first-time borrowers.“There’s still plenty of money available,” he said.The White House is under pressure from banks to extend the deadline for loans past March 31, the date the program is set to expire, because of the influx of applications. Several lawmakers have signaled a willingness to extend the deadline, but the White House did not respond to a request for comment on a possible extension on Tuesday.The program has historically been a rare opportunity for bipartisan negotiation — Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, has gone so far as to call it a “slam dunk” — but economists have said it has saved relatively few jobs at a high cost.On Thursday, Mr. Biden will deliver a prime-time television address from the White House, marking the one-year anniversary of widespread shutdowns caused by the pandemic. Mr. Biden is expected to showcase his economic relief plan and outline the measures his administration is taking to help workers and businesses recover from the pandemic downturn.In a big week for Biden, House to vote Wednesday on his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe House plans to vote Wednesday to clear President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan and send it to the White House for his signature.The bill, which passed the Senate on Saturday, is the first major legislative initiative of Mr. Biden’s presidency, and it appears headed for enactment right around the midpoint of his first 100 days in office. Final approval will clear the way for his administration to beat a March 14 deadline, when federal unemployment benefits are set to begin lapsing, for putting in place the next round of pandemic aid.Democrats, who have rushed the measure through Congress, were already touting its sweeping components in a series of events and speeches around the country.“This legislation represents the boldest action taken on behalf of the American people since the Great Depression,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a leading Democrat.The far-reaching legislation would send direct payments of up to $1,400 to hundreds of millions of Americans; extend a $300-per-week supplemental unemployment benefit until early September; and provide funding for states, local governments and schools, as well as for coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution. It also amounts to an ambitious effort to combat poverty, instituting a substantial one-year expansion of the child tax credit, among other provisions that would benefit low-income people.With Republicans united in opposition, the package is on track to be the first round of pandemic relief not to pass on a bipartisan basis. Powerless to stop it, House Republicans on Tuesday tried to slow the process with a series of unsuccessful procedural requests to bring up legislation that would reopen schools.While the version of the bill slated to go before the House on Wednesday has some notable changes from the measure that the chamber approved on Feb. 27, including top progressive priorities that were removed or pared back, its final passage did not seem in peril.Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 Democrat, declared on Tuesday he was “110 percent confident” that his party had the votes to push it through.Unlike Mr. Biden’s original proposal and the one the House passed last month, the legislation omits an increase to the federal minimum wage. A plan to increase the supplemental unemployment payments to $400 from $300 was scrapped. And stimulus checks would go to fewer people after the Senate imposed more restrictive income limits.“This is a critical step to get our economy back on track and help families that are struggling,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader. “This is a good bill that helps literally millions of people.”Mr. Biden is set to take a victory lap on Thursday night when he delivers a prime-time televised address marking one year since the coronavirus brought much of the nation to a halt.With the arduous process of approving the stimulus bill behind it, the Senate is expected to give Mr. Biden further good news this week, this time involving cabinet nominations. The chamber is likely to confirm three of his cabinet picks on Wednesday, including Judge Merrick B. Garland as attorney general.On Tuesday evening, the Senate voted to limit debate on the nominations of both Judge Garland and Representative Marcia L. Fudge of Ohio, selected to be secretary of housing and urban development, and both nominees are expected to be confirmed on Wednesday afternoon.The Senate is also likely to confirm Michael Regan, the president’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, on Wednesday.‘No more money for RINOS.’ Trump is trying to wrest control of the fund-raising juggernaut he helped create.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIt was a familiar play by Donald J. Trump: lashing out at his enemies and trying to raise money from it.The former president this week escalated a standoff over the Republican Party’s financial future, blasting party leaders and urging his backers to send donations to his new political action committee — not to the institutional groups that traditionally control the G.O.P.’s coffers.“No more money for RINOS,” he said in a statement released on Monday by his bare-bones post-presidential office, referring to Republicans In Name Only. He directed donors to his own website instead.The aggressive move against his own party is the latest sign that Mr. Trump is trying to wrest control of the low-dollar online fund-raising juggernaut he helped create, diverting it from Republican fund-raising groups toward his own committee, which has virtually no restrictions on how the money can be spent.Last week, Mr. Trump sent cease-and-desist letters — which appear to have little legal standing — to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warning them not to appeal to donors using his name and image.Mr. Trump’s actions could give him a stream of money at a time when his private company is struggling under the scrutiny of investigations. Republican fund-raising groups have pushed back against the former president. In a letter on Monday responding to the cease-and-desist request by Mr. Trump’s committee, Justin Riemer, the chief counsel for the R.N.C., stated, “The R.N.C., of course, has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech, and it will continue to do so in pursuit of those common goals.”But in a sign of the delicate dance between Mr. Trump and a Republican Party fearful of alienating its most popular figure, Mr. Riemer also said that the R.N.C. had not and would not make fund-raising appeals using Mr. Trump’s name or likeness without his approval.And on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump released a second statement walking back his earlier attacks on the Republican committees.“I fully support the Republican Party and important GOP Committees, but I do not support RINOs and fools, and it is not their right to use my likeness or image to raise funds,” he said. But even as he tried to clarify that he supported his party, he gave another plug for his own group. “If you donate to our Save America PAC at DonaldJTrump.com, you are helping the America First movement and doing it right,” he said.The House Democratic campaign arm lifts a rule that targeted progressive challenges.ImageCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe House Democratic campaign arm on Tuesday reversed a policy preventing consultants who have aided primary challenges against Democratic incumbents from receiving party money in the future, in a victory for the party’s insurgent progressive wing.Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who took over this year as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had previously said that he intended to overturn the policy, which was put in place after the 2018 campaign season that saw the successful challenges of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s and Ayanna Pressley’s to longtime Democratic incumbents.Chris Taylor, a spokesman for Mr. Maloney, said in a statement on Tuesday that the committee was opening its doors to a diverse array of consultants. “This policy change means that the only criteria for a vendor to be listed in the directory are our standards for fair business practices related to use of organized labor, critical diversity and inclusion standards and other minimum qualifications,” he said.Waleed Shahid — a spokesman for Justice Democrats, an insurgent group that grew out of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign and supported Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Pressley in 2018 — celebrated the move. Mr. Shahid said that the ban on challenger consultants had served to keep out progressive consultants.It is a long-held custom for parties to protect their incumbents, and the D.C.C.C. had for years wielded an unofficial policy of not doing business with consultants or political groups that had supported a challenger against an incumbent House Democrat. But in 2018, the party’s leaders made that policy official at a moment when the progressive wing was gaining clout — and growing more savvy.Soon after Ms. Ocasio-Cortez upset Representative Joseph Crowley in a landslide that year, partly thanks to the work of a few nimble and innovative technology consultants, the committee codified its longstanding de facto policy.That drew fire from many left-leaning Democrats, and some worried that it would put a chill on challenges by women and people of color like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Pressley.Mr. Shahid argued that the party was harming itself by disallowing the work of certain consultants in any of its campaigns. “That happened to some of the best digital vendors in the country,” he said. “They work on a lot of progressive primary campaigns, and they can’t work for the party’s handpicked candidates.”Mr. Shahid added that he was heartened by Mr. Maloney’s decision to reverse the ban, but that he was still waiting to see if the organization would return to its de facto policy of rejecting consultants who help challengers.“I would hate to see the D.C.C.C. go back to an informal blacklist, which is what their policy used to be,” he said. “But it is a step forward to not have an explicit blacklist.”Portraits of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are back on prominent display, a White House official said.ImageCredit...Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe White House has restored the official portraits of former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to a traditional display spot after they were moved to a less prominent location last year, a Biden administration official said.In July, under President Donald J. Trump, the portraits were moved to the Old Family Dining Room, a smaller dining room off the State Dining Room that is less frequented by visitors, and replaced with portraits of Republican presidents, CNN reported.The portraits of Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton were returned to their traditional locations in the Cross Hall on Inauguration Day by the Office of the Curator, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the decision. The Cross Hall runs between the State Dining Room and the East Room.The portrait of Mr. Clinton, painted by Simmie Knox, was unveiled in 2004, according to the White House Historical Association. The portrait of Mr. Bush, painted by John Howard Sanden, was unveiled in 2012. Mr. Bush is portrayed standing in the Oval Office with W.H.D. Koerner’s “A Charge to Keep,” one of his favorite paintings, in the background, the association said.Incoming presidents traditionally redecorate and personalize the White House when they take office. When he arrived in January, President Biden removed the portrait of Andrew Jackson that had hung in the Oval Office during Mr. Trump’s tenure and installed portraits of former Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson, as well as Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, according to The Washington Post.Portraits of former presidents are displayed throughout the White House, including in the East Room, the Blue Room, the Green Room and the State Dining Room.Usually the portraits of the two most recent presidents hang on either side of the Grand Foyer, also known as the entrance hall, but that hasn’t always been the case. Mr. Clinton opted for John F. Kennedy’s portrait, rather than Ronald Reagan’s, to hang on the left side of the entrance hall, with the portrait of Mr. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, on the right.The White House usually hosts an unveiling ceremony in the East Room for new portraits of former presidents, a tradition that has been in place since Jimmy Carter’s presidency — though Mr. Carter did not have a ceremony for his own portrait, according to the White House Historical Association. The most recent unveiling was in 2012, when President Barack Obama unveiled the portraits of George W. Bush and Laura Bush, former first lady.Mr. Obama’s official portrait has not yet been revealed.The portraits of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, as with many others on display at the White House, were gifts of the White House Historical Association.Wyoming lawmakers weigh runoff legislation that could hurt Liz Cheney.ImageCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesWyoming Republicans this week are considering a change to state election law that may make it harder for one of their own — Representative Liz Cheney — to win re-election next year.The Wyoming Senate is set to hold a committee vote on Thursday on legislation that would require runoff contests after a primary election if no candidate wins a majority — a prospect that could doom Ms. Cheney by forcing her into a one-on-one contest with an opponent loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Cheney, who in January became the face of internal Republican opposition to Mr. Trump when she released a scathing statement announcing her vote to impeach him, has faced a significant backlash in her home state. Already, the Wyoming Republican Party has censured her, and there are multiple Republican candidates running against her, with Trump allies coming to the state to rally her opposition.Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, has since Monday posted two messages on Twitter in support of the legislation, saying lawmakers who oppose it are “turning their back on my father and the entire America First movement.” One of his tweets included contact information for state senators on the committee considering the proposal, which he claimed allies of Ms. Cheney were vying to thwart.But in Wyoming, the situation is more complex. Republicans dominate politics there. Twenty-eight of the 30 state senators are Republicans, along with 51 of 60 state representatives. Mr. Trump won 70 percent of the state’s vote in November.Republican contests often draw crowded fields — the state’s G.O.P. governor, Mark Gordon, won a six-way primary in 2018 with just 33 percent of the vote, then won more than two-thirds of the vote in the general election.“We’re a major one-party state so whoever wins the primary is going to win the general,” Bo Biteman, a state senator who wrote the legislation, said in an interview on Tuesday. “This is just a different tactic to make more people happy with our primary system. It has nothing to do personally with Liz Cheney and the Trump supporters.”Indeed, the proposal, which would move the state’s primary from August to May, with an August runoff in races where no candidate wins 50 percent, has support from some prominent Cheney supporters. State Senator Brian Boner, a co-author of the bill, backs the congresswoman. Matt Micheli, a former Wyoming Republican Party chairman, also favors both Ms. Cheney and the runoff proposal.Wyoming Republicans said some state lawmakers opposed it because they preferred to campaign in the state’s warm summer months rather than in the spring, when the legislature is in session.“I’ve seen no indication of Liz Cheney or any of her people in any way being involved in this legislation,” Mr. Micheli said. “As a conservative, this is something I’ve supported and thought would be a good idea for a long time.”An aide to Ms. Cheney declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Gordon did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Biteman, who sought to overturn President Biden’s victory and said it was “best to keep my personal preferences to myself” about Ms. Cheney’s primary, said the Trump involvement in pressuring his colleagues to vote for the legislation has not been helpful.“My poor colleagues on the committee, their phones were blowing up and they had thousands of emails,” he said. “One of the senators said to me in the hallway, ‘If I get one more call, I’m voting against the bill.’ I don’t know if that was a joke or not.”Biden’s dogs were sent back to Delaware after a ‘biting incident.’ They will return to the White House ‘soon.’ImageCredit...Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Biden’s two German shepherds were shipped back home to Delaware for a temporary vacation after Major, the youngest, showed aggressive behavior toward an “unfamiliar person” who surprised him, Mr. Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.“The dogs will return to the White House soon,” after spending time with a caretaker at the family house in Wilmington, Ms. Psaki told reporters at the White House.Ms. Psaki did not provide many details. She did, however, say there had been some kind of an incident resulting in a minor injury that was handled by the White House medical unit, with no further treatment needed. The dogs “are still getting acclimated to their new surroundings,” Ms. Psaki said.The Delaware trip was already in the works before the episode, she added (At least one media reporter noted that language echoed the formulations used to explain the absence of misbehaving humans).A report published by CNN on Monday evening said that the dogs, Champ and Major, had been moved after Major had what one person described as a “biting incident” with a member of the White House’s security staff.A person familiar with the dogs’ whereabouts said it was typical for Champ, and Major, to be shuffled back to Delaware when Jill Biden, the first lady, is on the road; Dr. Biden is currently on the West Coast.The dogs joined the Bidens at the White House shortly after the family relocated to Washington. Since then, they have been allowed to roam unleashed on the White House grounds. They are often part of the backdrop in Oval Office photos.“They really don’t have any rules, they’re really good dogs,” Dr. Biden told People magazine during a joint interview with her husband published in February. In that interview, Mr. Biden said that Champ was 14 years old, and Major was about a year-and-a-half old, though the dog, adopted as a puppy in 2018, is likely closer to three.Mr. Biden adopted Major from the Delaware Humane Association after his daughter sent him a Facebook post about a litter of puppies up for adoption. Major was part of a six-pup litter that had been exposed to toxins and was nursed back to health before the agency listed the animals for adoption.Major underwent a “special training” to become acclimated to the Biden household, and was fostered for several months before the Bidens officially adopted him, Kerry Bruni, the association’s director of animal care, said at the time.“I imagine he has to learn how to travel on planes and stuff that normal house dogs don’t have to worry about,” Ms. Bruni said.For Chuck Schumer, a dream job comes with tall orders.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe moment Chuck Schumer achieved his longtime dream of becoming Senate majority leader, he was in a secure room hiding from a violent pro-Trump mob that was rampaging through the Capitol.As rioters prowled the halls hunting for top lawmakers — Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, later heard that one had been looking for his desk, saying, “Where’s the big Jew?” — he was being evacuated with other leaders to a safe room at an undisclosed location.It was then that news outlets confirmed that Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, had won the final Georgia Senate race that would give the party the majority, handing Mr. Schumer the top job. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, turned to the man who had engineered his defeat and offered a brief concession and congratulations.With that, Charles Ellis Schumer, 70, the Brooklyn-raised son of an exterminator and a homemaker, became the first New Yorker ever to lead the United States Senate.“Jan. 6 was the best of times,” Mr. Schumer said in a recent interview in his office, where he cracked open a Diet Coke. “And it was the worst of times.”His dream job has come with huge challenges and a practically nonexistent margin for error. Mr. Schumer rose to power on the strength of his skills as a party messenger and relentless campaign strategist, not his talent as a legislative tactician.Now it falls to him to maneuver President Biden’s ambitious agenda through a polarized, 50-50 Senate without one vote to spare, navigating between the progressive and moderate factions in his party in the face of a Republican opposition that is more determined than ever.Mr. Schumer passed his first test over the weekend, squeezing Mr. Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion stimulus measure through the Senate along party lines — an effort that nearly fell apart as Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and a crucial moderate, balked at the 11th hour. Mr. Schumer negotiated a concession, and the bill passed, paving the way for emergency aid and the most far-reaching antipoverty effort in a generation.“I’ve never seen anyone work as skillfully, as ably, as patiently, with determination to deliver such a consequential piece of legislation,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Schumer.The effort forced the Senate leader to straddle his party’s centrist and progressive wings, a trick he will have to master if he hopes to keep the president’s agenda on track and Democrats in control of the chamber, as well as fending off a possible 2024 primary challenge from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the high-profile progressive from the Bronx.Asked what he would do about her, Mr. Schumer shrugged and said he talked to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez “all the time.”“What I’ve done throughout my career,” he added. “I do my job well, and everything works out.”Jimmy Carter is ‘disheartened, saddened and angry’ by the G.O.P. push to curb voting rights in Georgia.ImageCredit...Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesFormer President Jimmy Carter — a one-term Georgia governor who first ran for office in the 1960s — said efforts by Republicans in the state to restrict ballot access represented an attempt to “turn back the clock” on hard-won progress in empowering disenfranchised voters.“I am disheartened, saddened and angry,” Mr. Carter wrote in a statement released by his charitable foundation on Tuesday, a day after the Republican-controlled State Senate approved a bill repealing no-excuse absentee voting.“American democracy means every eligible person has the right to vote in an election that is fair, open and secure,” Mr. Carter, 96, wrote.“We must not lose the progress we have made. We must not promote confidence among one segment of the electorate by restricting the participation of others. Our goal always should be to increase, not decrease, voter participation.”Mr. Carter said he was particularly upset that Republicans in the state repeatedly invoked a 2005 report he prepared with former Secretary of State James Baker, which recommended the use of identification checks to avert fraud.Mr. Carter now says that “new technologies” have made the use of absentee ballots much safer.“In the 16 years since the report’s release, vote-by-mail practices have progressed significantly,” he added. “In light of these advances, I believe that voting by mail can be conducted in a manner that ensures election integrity.”The Georgia bill is part of a nationwide effort by Republicans in red or swing states to clamp down on the expansion of ballot access championed by Democrats and civil rights groups after the 2020 presidential election. (President Biden narrowly won Georgia, as did the two Democratic Senate candidates in January.)At almost the same time that the Georgia Senate was passing its legislation on Monday, the governor of Iowa was signing new voting restrictions into law.But the Georgia bill’s passage is by no means assured.After hours of intense and occasionally emotional debate on Monday, multiple Republican senators abstained from voting. The Senate bill passed just one vote above the required 28-vote majority threshold.The bill will now go to the State House of Representatives, which is also led by Republicans. Last week, the House passed its own omnibus bill of voting restrictions that included similar barriers to the ballot box, including limiting early voting times.Though each chamber passed its own bill, some legislators in Georgia view the House legislation as the likely central vehicle for voting overhauls in the state.Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, has indicated that he generally supports “securing the vote,” but has not weighed in on many of the specific provisions in either bill.Democratic Socialist-backed candidates win control of Nevada’s Democratic Party.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThey called it the Reid machine, the state Democratic Party apparatus that the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid built in Nevada. The machine not only helped him win re-election, but also helped to win Democratic presidential victories and sent a majority Democratic delegation to Washington.But the machine lost last weekend.A coalition of liberal candidates backed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter overtook the leadership of the state Democratic Party. And within hours of Judith Whitmer’s victory as the state chair, the party’s executive director sent an email informing her that she would be resigning, along with the rest of the staff.The incumbents’ losses were not unexpected. Before the employees and consultants resigned, they transferred roughly $450,000 from the state party to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which will most likely use the money to campaign for Catherine Cortez Masto, who will be up for re-election in 2022.The party leadership change comes just a year after Senator Bernie Sanders won the Nevada presidential caucus, demonstrating the ascendancy of the left wing of the party in the state.A surge in migrant children detained at the border is straining shelters.ImageCredit...Guillermo Arias/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe number of unaccompanied migrant children detained along the southern border has tripled in the last two weeks to more than 3,250, filling facilities akin to jails as the Biden administration struggles to find room for them in shelters, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.More than 1,360 of the children have been detained beyond the 72 hours permitted by law before a child must be transferred to a shelter, according to one of the documents, dated March 8. The figures highlight the growing pressure on President Biden to address the increased number of people trying to cross the border in the belief that he will be more welcoming to them than former President Donald J. Trump was.The children are being held in facilities, managed by the Customs and Border Protection agency, that were built for adults. The border agency has been the subject of widespread criticism for the horrific conditions in its federal detention facilities, in which children are exposed to disease, hunger and overcrowding.Under the law, the federal government is required to move unaccompanied children within three days from the border facilities to shelters managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, where they are held until they are placed with a sponsor. Homeland Security officials have often pointed to delays by Health and Human Services in picking up the children as a reason for the prolonged detention.Until last Friday, when the government lifted the restrictions, the shelters managed by Health and Human Services were at reduced capacity because of the pandemic. The shelters for migrant children are 13 days away from “maximum capacity,” according to the documents. The data shows the stress on the system designed to hold the migrant children as Mr. Biden tries to make good on a campaign promise to be more compassionate to migrants during a global pandemic.Border agents encountered a migrant at the border about 78,000 times in January, the highest number for that month in at least a decade. Most of those were adults or families who were rapidly turned away under a pandemic emergency rule. The administration is expected to announce an increase in those crossings this week, according to officials.The rules are different for unaccompanied children, who, rather than being turned back, are taken into custody, forcing the administration to find space for them. More than 5,800 unaccompanied children were found at the border in January, an increase of more than 1,000 from October 2020.The Biden administration recently reopened an emergency facility used during the Trump administration in Carrizo Springs, Texas, to create more space for the children. The shelters where migrant children are supposed to be held have been strained. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directed the shelters to return to full capacity last Friday.Health and Human Services had more than 8,100 unaccompanied children in its shelters as of Sunday, with space readily available for only 838 more, according to the documents. More than 42 percent of the roughly 3,250 children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection were held longer than the maximum of three days, even though they were referred for placement in shelters by Homeland Security, according to the documents. Border agents had yet to refer more than 440 of the young migrants in its custody to the child migrant shelters.The Border Patrol and Health and Human Services have long struggled to efficiently transfer migrant children to shelters.“It’s a difficult coordination process,” said Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary under the Obama administration. She said the rise of unaccompanied children at the border presented an urgent challenge for the administration. “That’s why they need some facilities at the border,” she said, “and I think what they need to do is move as quickly as humanly possible to place those minors with a vetted adult.”R.N.C. says it ‘has every right’ to use Trump’s name to raise money but won’t do so without his OK.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Republican National Committee on Monday rebuffed a cease-and-desist letter from former President Donald J. Trump that warned it not to use his name or likeness to raise money from donors.In a letter to the former president’s new political action committee, Save America, Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, stated, “the R.N.C., of course, has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech, and it will continue to do so in pursuit of those common goals.”But in a sign of the delicate dance between Mr. Trump and a Republican Party fearful of alienating him, Mr. Riemer also said that the R.N.C. had not and would not make fund-raising appeals using Mr. Trump’s name or likeness without his approval.The letter followed a friendly conversation over the weekend between Mr. Trump and his longtime ally Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the R.N.C. During a phone call, according to someone familiar with the conversation, Mr. Trump played down any intent to directly target the R.N.C. or prevent it from reaching its donors directly. The takeaway from an overall pleasant conversation, people familiar with the call said, was that Mr. Trump was still supportive of Republican donors giving money to the R.N.C. and did not plan to stand in the way.But Mr. Trump is also known to be less confrontational in person than in fiery statements or legal threats.The letter to the R.N.C. was among a handful of similar threats made to Republican groups, warning them to stop relying on Mr. Trump in their fund-raising appeals. Politico earlier reported the cease and desist letters.The R.N.C. is planning to hold part of its spring fund-raising gala at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and his post-presidential base.“President Trump and Chairwoman McDaniel enjoy a close relationship and we understand that President Trump reaffirmed to her over the weekend that he approves of the R.N.C.’s current use of his name in fund-raising and other materials,” Mr. Riemer said in the letter.On Monday night, Mr. Trump also sent out a statement that did not directly mention the R.N.C. or other groups. But it encouraged people to “send your donation to Save America PAC” and directed them to his personal website. | 0 |
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