Conservatives – Capitol Hill Blue

Supremes set to tackle abortion, immigration, LGBT rights

October 6, 2019October 6, 2019 by MARK SHERMAN

The Supreme Court is seen in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Abortion rights as well as protections for young immigrants and LGBT people top an election-year agenda for the Supreme Court. Its conservative majority will have ample opportunity to flex its muscle, testing Chief Justice John Roberts’ attempts to keep the court clear of Washington partisan politics.

Guns could be part of a term with plenty of high-profile cases and at least the prospect of the court’s involvement in issues revolving around the possible impeachment of President Donald Trump and related disputes between the White House and congressional Democrats.

The court also could be front and center in the presidential campaign itself, especially with health concerns surrounding 86-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Its biggest decisions are likely to be handed down in late June, four months before the election.

If last year was a time for the court to maintain a collective low profile following Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s stormy confirmation, the new term marks a return to the spotlight.

“The court seemed to do everything it could to rise above the partisan rancor,” said David Cole, the national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. “This term, it’s going to be harder for the court.”

How far the court is willing to go in any case that is likely to divide the liberal and conservative justices probably will come down to Roberts. He is essentially the court’s new swing justice, a conservative who is closest to the court’s center. He also has spoken repeatedly against the perception that the court is a political branch of government, much like Congress and the White House.

Last term, on the same day in late June, Roberts joined the conservatives in ending federal court challenges to partisan electoral maps and sided with the liberals to block the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The new term might pose the sternest test yet of Roberts’ stewardship of the court. Roberts also would preside over any Senate trial of Trump, if the House impeaches the president.

The justices return to the bench Monday with cases about whether states can abolish an insanity defense for criminal defendants and allow non-unanimous juries to convict defendants of some crimes.

The next day, they will take up two cases about whether federal civil rights law protects LGBT people from workplace discrimination. They are the first rights cases since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the fifth vote for and wrote the court’s major gay rights decisions.

With Kavanaugh in Kennedy’s place and Trump’s other appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, also on the bench, the outcome is far from certain. The Trump administration also has reversed the Obama administration’s view that LGBT people are covered by the Title 7 provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sex.

“It would be huge for the LGBT community to have protection in the private sector from employment discrimination,” said Paul Smith, a veteran Supreme Court litigator who has argued past gay rights cases.

Legislation is pending in Congress that would remove any doubt about Title 7′s application in cases of sexual orientation and gender identity, but is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

In November, the justices will hear arguments over the Trump administration’s plan to end the Obama-era program that has protected roughly 700,000 young immigrants from deportation and provided them with permits to work in the United States legally.

Lower courts have so far blocked the administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

As in the LGBT rights cases, the court fight over DACA could be made irrelevant by congressional action authorizing the program. But Congress seems unlikely to do anything before the court rules.

The abortion case probably will be argued during the winter and is another test of whether the change in the court’s composition will result in a different outcome. The Louisiana law that forces abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals is virtually the same as a Texas law the court struck down in 2016, when Kennedy joined the liberal justices to form a majority.

Roberts dissented in 2016, but he voted with the liberals in February to block the Louisiana law, at least temporarily. It was a rare vote against an abortion restriction that could point up the tension between Roberts’ legal views on abortion and his institutional interests in upholding even prior decisions with which he disagrees.

Apart from its lineup of big cases, the court itself could be an issue in the unfolding presidential campaign. Some Democrats and liberals are talking about structural changes to increase the size of the court or limit the terms of future justices.

The 2016 campaign played out amid a Supreme Court vacancy following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February. While Senate Republicans blocked any consideration of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, Trump released a list of potential nominees and about one-quarter of Trump voters said the Supreme Court was the most important factor in their vote for him.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said Republicans would confirm a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court, even if a vacancy arose during 2020.

Election-year retirements are very unusual, and the two oldest justices, Ginsburg and 81-year-old Stephen Breyer, would not want to give Trump a third high court seat to fill. Both were appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

But Ginsburg has had two bouts with cancer in less than a year, including radiation treatment in August for a tumor on her pancreas. She has kept up a steady stream of public appearances to signal that she is still here. The events, she said, energize her. “When I am active, I am much better than when I am just lying about feeling sorry for myself,” she said at an appearance in New York.

She’s hardly alone on the lecture circuit. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Gorsuch have been out trying to drum up sales for their new books. Even the newest justice, Kavanaugh, will raise his profile somewhat. He is scheduled to be the principal speaker at the Federalist Society’s November dinner in front of more than 2,000 people.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

GOP strategy is paying off at the Supreme Court

June 28, 2018 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/jonathan-lemire" rel="tag">JONATHAN LEMIRE</a>

Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for an official group portrait to include new Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, top row, far right at the Supreme Court Building in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Three years of political upheaval. Early morning Twitter blasts. Scores of startling headlines. For the Republican Party, all the chaos of the Trump era has been building toward a week like this.

The party’s long-term strategy to focus on the Supreme Court — highlighted by an audacious decision not to allow a vote in 2016 on President Barack Obama’s judicial pick — culminated this week with a series of conservative rulings and another vacancy. With Justice Anthony Kennedy set to retire at the end of next month, President Donald Trump is poised to appoint his second justice in as many years, giving conservatives a potential bulwark on the bench that could offset national demographic trends that appear set to favor Democrats in the decades ahead.

Though Trump, who has little fixed ideology, has been an unpredictable and at times frustrating governing partner for the Republican leadership, he has largely adhered to GOP orthodoxy when it comes to judicial appointments, including his selection of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court a year ago. And the president, in the moments after Kennedy’s retirement was announced, made clear that he understood the opportunity to shape the court for generations.

“It’s always been considered a tremendous — a tremendously important thing,” the president said at the White House on Wednesday. “Some people think outside of, obviously, war and peace, it’s the most important thing that you could have.”

White House aides signaled the president would look to quickly move toward announcing a nomination. And Senate Republicans said they would be willing to hold a confirmation vote this fall to replace Kennedy, a perennial swing vote on the court, despite Democratic cries of hypocrisy since the GOP refused to hold hearings on Obama’s choice of Merrick Garland because it was an election year.

Kennedy’s retirement sets up a monumental confirmation fight and raises the stakes even higher for the November midterm elections, in a campaign season that already featured the future of the Supreme Court as a defining issue after several significant rulings in recent days. The court’s conservative majority asserted itself on Trump’s travel ban, worker rights, voting rights and religious freedom.

With the White House reeling after a week’s worth of heart-wrenching images of forced family separations at the southern border, the court’s support for the travel ban gave Trump a welcome boost and is sure to embolden him in pressing hard-line immigration policies heading into the midterms. Though the ruling was at its heart a defense of executive powers, the president took it as affirmation of the hawkish policies and incendiary rhetoric he unveiled in his June 2015 campaign kickoff and now wants at the heart of the GOP’s efforts this November.

The court also ruled on a cause celebre for the right, as Kennedy — despite his long history of supporting gay rights — wrote the court’s 7-2 opinion on narrow grounds that absolved a Colorado baker of discrimination for refusing to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Moreover, the court overruled a 41-year-old precedent that allowed public employee unions to collect fees from non-members, a decision viewed as a major blow for Democrats.

Liberals compared that ruling to the 2010 decision that let corporations spend unlimited amounts on elections and the 2013 ruling that struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act as actions that could fundamentally change how campaigns are waged and votes are cast. A 2018 study released as a National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that states with right-to-work laws that weaken unions reduce the vote shares of Democratic presidential candidates by 3.5 percentage points.

McConnell said Wednesday that the Senate “stands ready” to swiftly move on Trump’s impending choice and added that “it’s imperative that the president’s nominee be treated fairly.”

Democrats immediately cried foul and accused the GOP of a double standard.

“Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016: Not to consider a Supreme Court justice in an election year,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

But Republicans appeared unbowed. Installing conservative justices has long been paramount to the GOP, a sentiment that only accelerated after the power of the court was on full display with the 2000 decision that ruled in favor of George W. Bush’s right to the presidency. In 2013, McConnell, then minority leader, cautioned Democrat Harry Reid not to invoke the “nuclear option” — lowering the vote threshold for confirmation of judges and Cabinet officials from 60 to 51 votes. Since becoming majority leader, McConnell has held Supreme Court justices to the same lower threshold.

But the centerpiece of the GOP plan was McConnell’s refusal to hold hearings for Garland after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February 2016. Though the precedent had held that new justices be seated even in election years, McConnell kept the spot open on the bet that a Republican could win that November — even if that Republican were Donald Trump.

A court seat being on the line proved a powerful incentive for Republicans that fall, many willing to set aside their distaste for Trump’s personal failings and incendiary rhetoric in order to add a conservative to the court. Trump himself took the unusual step of publicly releasing a list of Supreme Court candidates, most of whom were traditional jurists that many Republicans believed would uphold conservative values.

Since his election, the president has often acted as a thorn in Republicans’ side, frequently breaking with GOP dogma while attacking members of his own party, including McConnell. Their reward is another GOP pick for the court, and Trump suggested that he would again nominate someone Republicans would cheer.

“We have a very excellent list of great talent and highly educated, highly intelligent, hopefully tremendous people,” Trump said. “It will be somebody from that list.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire has covered the White House and politics since 2013.

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Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire

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Right-wing goes berserk over House immigration plans

June 16, 2018June 16, 2018 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/steve-peoples" rel="tag">STEVE PEOPLES</a>

The push toward immigration votes in the House is intensifying the divide among Republicans on one of the party’s most animating issues and fueling concerns that a voter backlash could cost the GOP control of the House in November.

To many conservatives, the compromise immigration proposal released this past week by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is little more than “amnesty.”

One tea party group described the Republican plan as “the final betrayal.” Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who is close to President Donald Trump, tweeted Friday that Ryan is “trying to open our borders even more and give illegal immigrants the biggest amnesty in American history.”

The tension threatens to exacerbate the GOP’s political challenges this fall, when their majorities in the House and Senate could be at risk.

Passage of the bill could alienate conservatives and depress turnout at a time when enthusiasm among Democrats is high. Yet scuttling the bill could turn off independent voters, an especially important bloc for House Republicans competing in dozens of districts that Democrat Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election.

“The GOP’s in a tough spot,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “The hardcore Trump voter has a different point of view than the ever-important independent voter, and there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.”

The draft legislation, resulting from intense negotiations between moderates and conservatives, includes a path to citizenship for an estimated 1.8 million young immigrants in the country illegally. The plan includes $25 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and other security measures sought by the White House.

“While the bill contains some positive provisions, including full funding for the border wall and closing loopholes in current law that sustain illegal border surges, it is still a mass amnesty,” said RJ Hauman, of the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform.

“This bill hardly fulfills President Trump’s bold promise to fix immigration, and sure isn’t a winning message for the GOP in the midterms,” Hauman said.

Republicans had trumpeted Trump’s support for the plan, yet he told reporters early Friday he would not sign it if it reached his desk. Later in the day, the White House said he was confused by a reporter’s question and clarified his support.

Skittish conservative lawmakers have indicated there’s little chance they would support the current plan unless Trump were to give it a full embrace — a tall order, given the confusion Friday about the president’s position.

“House Republicans are not going to take on immigration without the support and endorsement of President Trump,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the GOP’s chief deputy vote counter.

The politics of the immigration debate have grown more heated since the administration adopted a “zero tolerance” approach at the Southern border. The policy is leading to an increase in the number of detained immigrants being separated from their children.

Trump has tried to blame Democrats for his own administration’s policy, tweeting Saturday that they “can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!”

Facing a national uproar, House GOP leaders included a provision in the immigration proposal that would require families to be kept together for as long as they are in the custody of the Homeland Security Department.

The proposed fix won approval from moderate House Republicans locked in difficult re-election battles, but not from Republican Senate candidates running competitive races in GOP-leaning states. None spoke in support of the bill.

“We’re studying the proposal,” said Arizona Rep. Martha McSally, who is viewed as the GOP establishment’s favorite in one of the top Senate races. “I try not get swayed by what the emotions are or the pressure. I really try to look at the policy issues.”

Kelli Ward, one of McSally’s main opponents in the Arizona Senate primary on Aug. 28, was more scathing in her assessment.

“Compromising on the rule of law to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants is the wrong path to take,” she said of the House plan. “Congress should focus on border security and stop talking about amnesty as a solution.”

In Pennsylvania, Rep. Lou Barletta, the Republican nominee against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey took an equally aggressive approach against his own party’s immigration plan.

“I hate it,” he told The Associated Press. “What does it accomplish? It’s amnesty.”

Barletta said he has compassion for the children caught up in the immigration debate. But he said he wouldn’t support an immigration bill unless it also blocked employers from hiring immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, eliminated “sanctuary cities” and ended family-based migration.

Barletta said his party should “absolutely” fear a political backlash from its base this fall should Republicans push through the current compromise.

Other high-profile Republican candidates avoided questions about the immigration plan altogether, highlighting the political sensitivity of the issue.

The Republicans who declined to comment or ignored AP questions included Senate candidates Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mike Braun of Indiana and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

In an election year in which Democrats appear to have an advantage on voter enthusiasm, Republicans can ill afford to alienate any voters this fall, particularly their most passionate supporters.

Former White House counselor Steve Bannon lobbied against the compromise in private meetings with House conservatives earlier this past week.

He warned that Republicans “will lose the House and Trump will be impeached” if the House backs the new measure, according to Iowa Rep. Steve King, an immigration hard-liner who was in attendance.

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House approves $1.3 trillion spending bill

March 23, 2018March 22, 2018 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/richard-cowan" rel="tag">RICHARD COWAN</a>

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader voice opposition to spending bill.
(Reuters/Aaron P. Bernstein)

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a $1.3 trillion spending bill to avert a government shutdown and fund federal agencies through Sept. 30, despite a revolt by fiscal conservatives worried about what they called runaway spending.

The Republican-led chamber backed the measure 256-167, sending it to the Senate ahead of a midnight Friday deadline. But 90 of the 238 House Republicans ignored pleas for support from House Speaker Paul Ryan and voted against it.

Coupled with recently enacted tax cuts, the bill is projected to lead to budget deficits of more than $800 billion for this year. Conservatives balked at the deficit spending and warned it could create problems for Republicans running for re-election in November.

“This omnibus doesn’t just forget the promises we made to voters – it flatly rejects them,” Representative Mark Meadows, head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said after the vote. “This is wrong. This is not the limited government conservatism our voters demand.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the measure late on Thursday or Friday, before current government funding expires at midnight on Friday. The White House said President Donald Trump will sign the bill, which significantly boosts defense funding but scales back spending requests on some of his other priorities.

Passage of the spending bill would end several months of intense bickering between Republicans and Democrats over spending priorities, which led to two short government shutdowns earlier this year.

SCALED-BACK TRUMP PROPOSALS

It also would include setbacks for Trump, who did not receive all of the funding he requested at one point in the negotiations for the southern border wall and whose proposals for severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department and other federal agencies also would be scaled back.

Democrats complained that in the rush to pass the bill, few if any lawmakers had time to read through the 2,232-page tome to see what it actually contained. The bill was unveiled late on Wednesday.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters the White House did not get everything it wanted in the massive spending package but the president planned to support it.

Trump said on Twitter the bill will allow him to start building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. “Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming,” he wrote.

But Democrats argued the added funds will help build or restore a range of other barriers, including existing fencing, and would not pay for a concrete edifice that Trump originally said would be financed by Mexico – a claim the Mexican government has denounced.

Trump at one point wanted $25 billion included in the bill to fully fund construction of his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, but negotiations with Democrats on that fell apart early this week, according to congressional aides.

Instead, Trump would get nearly $1.6 billion more for border security this year. More border patrol agents could be hired, but there would not be the significant increase in immigration agents working the interior of the country.

The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big buildup in those officers to boost deportation of undocumented immigrants.

FIGHTING RUSSIAN HACKING

Besides the $80 billion boost in military spending, the largest in 15 years, the measure includes new money for infrastructure improvements and combating Russian election hacking.

In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings, including a Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school, the bill also contains modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.

These provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups say are needed to stop the shooting deaths of school children, concert-goers, church worshipers and others.

A so-called “grain glitch” included in a tax law enacted at the end of last year would be repaired by the legislation.

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Right-Wingers Attack GOP as Trump’s ‘Spendthrift’ Party

February 13, 2018 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/steve-peoples" rel="tag">STEVE PEOPLES</a>

The GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility no more.

That’s according to some conservatives who are grappling with a Republican-backed spending binge that threatens to generate trillion-dollar deficits for years to come while staining a cherished pillar of the modern-day Republican Party.

While President Donald Trump and his allies hope economic growth may ease future deficits, few fiscal conservatives cheered Monday’s release of the president’s $4 trillion-plus budget, which would create $7.2 trillion in red ink over the next decade if adopted by Congress. That follows congressional passage of last week’s $400 billion spending pact, along with massive tax cuts, which some analysts predict will push deficits to levels not in generations.

Deficit hawks in Congress and conservative activists who railed against President Barack Obama’s spending plans called the GOP debt explosion “dangerous,” ″immoral” and “a betrayal.”

American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp warned the Republican-controlled Congress not to underestimate the impact of responsible spending for voters.

“If the Republicans in Congress don’t realize that spending control is one of the most important issues that our winning coalition cares about, if they are cavalier about spending decisions, I think we do risk our ability to go to the voters and say it matters to have us in the majority,” he said.

The conservative backlash against government spending comes at a delicate moment for Trump’s Republican Party.

Barely a year into his first term, the populist president has shown inconsistent commitment at best to the three planks that have defined his party since the Reagan era: fiscal responsibility, traditional family values and a strong national defense. With the GOP’s fiscal responsibility now in question, the party’s commitment to family values also continues to suffer as Trump and some high-profile allies struggle under the weight of repeated allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse.

Fiscal discipline has long helped unify an otherwise divided GOP, but that no longer appears to be the case as Republicans brace for a difficult midterm election season.

Americans for Prosperity, the political arm of the network backed by the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, described the recent spending from Trump and Congress “a far cry from the so-called fiscal responsibility Americans heard on the campaign trail.”

Voters may forgive Trump’s spending habits because he’s new to Washington, but they will not be as kind to Republicans on the midterm ballots, said David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, who lashed out at last week’s Republican-backed spending plan as “of the swamp, by the swamp and for the swamp.”

“They’re not going to give a pass to the Republicans in Congress unless they start doing something to restrain the growth of government,” he said.

“You can’t let (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell and the spenders in the Senate set the agenda this year,” McIntosh continued. “Because politically, if they set the agenda, then you’re going to see big losses in the House and the Senate.”

All told, Trump’s budget plan sees accumulating deficits of $7.2 trillion over the coming decade. And that’s assuming Trump’s rosy economic predictions come true and Congress follows through — in an election year — with politically toxic cuts to social programs, farm subsidies and Medicare providers.

The president’s spending outline for the first time acknowledges that the Republican tax overhaul passed last year would add billions to the deficit and not “pay for itself” as Trump and his Republican allies asserted. If enacted as proposed — though no presidential budget ever is — the plan would establish an era of $1 trillion-plus yearly deficits.

Trump’s spending plan is like “throwing gasoline on a house that’s already on fire,” said David Biddulph, co-founder of a national organization fighting for a balanced budget amendment. “I think it’s awful what we’re doing to our grandkids.”

A self-described fiscal conservative, he blamed the political system more than the Republican Party for the latest spending binge. Yet he encouraged Trump to do more to cut spending on Medicare and Social Security, which he left largely untouched in his budget.

If not, Biddulph said, “I don’t know that we’ll ever dig our way out of this hole.”

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GOP leaders, right-wing at odds over possible gov’t shutdown

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/alan-fram-and-andrew-taylor" rel="tag">ALAN FRAM and ANDREW TAYLOR</a>

Hard-line conservatives are threatening to scuttle Republican leaders’ plans to prevent a weekend government shutdown and saying GOP leaders lack the votes to push their proposal through the House.

The setback late Tuesday came as a deal between President Donald Trump and Congress to protect young immigrants from deportation also remained distant.

The intransigence by the House Freedom Caucus came as Republican leaders raced against a Friday deadline for pushing a short-term spending bill through Congress. If they fail, federal agencies would start shutting their doors over the weekend. That’s an election-year debacle that GOP leaders and many Democrats are eager to avoid for fear of alienating voters.

The leader of the Freedom Caucus emerged from a Tuesday night meeting to say its members — and other GOP lawmakers as well — want a short-term bill keeping federal agencies open to contain added money for the military.

“There’s not enough support to pass it with GOP-only votes in the House,” the group’s leader, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told reporters. He said he planned to discuss their concerns with Republican leaders.

The GOP focus on keeping government open comes as it’s become certain there’s no time to cut a deal by Friday on protecting young immigrants.

Those talks were soured by Trump’s incendiary remarks about “shithole” countries in Africa last week. Democratic leaders said they would not promise to vote to keep the government open past Friday without a plan to preserve a program that protects the young immigrants known as “Dreamers.”

“We don’t want to shut down the government. … We want to keep the government open,” Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters. “But we’re not going to be held hostage to do things that we think are going to be contrary to the best interests of the American people.”

House Republican leaders tried to win over wary conservatives with a promise to repeal unpopular taxes as part of the bill preventing a shutdown.

They sweetened the plan with a two-year delay on implementation of unpopular taxes on medical devices and generous employer-subsidized health care plans. The taxes, also unpopular with many Democrats, are part of former President Barack Obama’s marquee health law.

The temporary funding bill would also include a long-delayed, six-year renewal of a popular health insurance program for children of low-income families. It would fund the government through Feb. 16.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled the plan at a Tuesday evening GOP meeting. Lawmakers and aides initially said it was received well, raising hopes that a potential shutdown would be sidestepped with relative ease. A Ryan spokeswoman declined later to comment on the Freedom Caucus’ opposition.

Many Democrats said they’re still unlikely to support the measure without an agreement on immigration. The prospects for such a deal were complicated as Democrats appeared to see scant reason to bargain with a president many in their party view as holding racist views.

“There’s no trust there,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

Negotiations on immigration were to resume Wednesday but Marc Short, a top White House aide, said an agreement was very unlikely to come this week. “We’re optimistic that we’ll get a deal,” Short said. “I think this week would be fairly Herculean.”

Even if they succeed in the House, Republicans would still need at least nine Democratic votes to push a spending package through the Senate, which the GOP controls 51-49. Democrats seeking leverage are forcing that bill to require 60 votes for passage.

When the Senate approved a similar short-term spending bill in December, 17 Democrats plus Maine independent Angus King voted to keep the government open. Seven of those Democrats face re-election in November in Trump-won states — including West Virginia, North Dakota and Montana, which have small numbers of minority voters.

Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, said Tuesday he’ll vote for a short-term spending bill without a plan to assist the immigrants facing possible deportation.

“I think everyone has the empathy and compassion to want to help these young people who are stranded and we’re trying to find that, but shutting down the government isn’t going to help them,” Manchin said.

Democrats voting against that December bill included some senators — such as Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California — who might seek the presidency in 2020 and would love support from their party’s liberal voters.

On the left, liberal groups are ramping up pressure on Democrats to resist any spending plan. Groups like MoveOn, United We Dream and CREDO shifted their focus from Republicans to Democrats earlier in the month, threatening primary challenges and public ridicule for Democrats unwilling to risk a government shutdown to save the program for young immigrants.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan group of senators continued work to build support for a plan to protect the “Dreamers” and toughen border security, including funds to start building Trump’s long-promised border wall.

Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, late last year but gave Congress until March 5 to pass legislation extending the initiative created by President Barack Obama. It has protected around 800,000 young immigrants from deportation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sought to highlight the later deadline, suggesting there was more time to work out a deal. A shutdown now would be “a manufactured crisis,” he argued.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Marcy Gordon and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.
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Troubling times for Republicans

September 29, 2017September 28, 2017 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/erica-werner" rel="tag">ERICA WERNER</a>

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., center, with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., left, and other GOP members as they talk about the Republicans’ proposed rewrite of the tax code for individuals and corporations, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Senate Republicans are reckoning with an insurgent’s win in Alabama that poses clear threats to their own grip on power and the leadership of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Nearly $10 million spent by a McConnell-backed super PAC couldn’t save incumbent GOP Sen. Luther Strange, who had been endorsed by President Donald Trump as well. It came the same day that McConnell, short of votes, pulled the plug on the latest and possibly final GOP effort to repeal and replace “Obamacare.”

Coming together, the events raised questions Wednesday about McConnell’s leadership within the Senate and without, casting doubt on his reputation both as a seasoned political operator and a nearly unbeatable vote-counter on Capitol Hill.

“I’d hate to think about where we would be without Sen. McConnell’s efforts. But I think we’ll learn from it, and we’ll adjust,” McConnell’s No. 2, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said of the victory of rabble-rousing former jurist Roy Moore, known for hanging the Ten Commandments in his courtroom in defiance of federal court orders. “We’re all listening and watching very closely and trying to understand the message that’s being sent.”

To some conservative campaign operatives, there was little question about that message.

“Alabama was a rejection of Mitch McConnell and the entire Republican establishment that he represents,” said Andy Surabian, senior adviser to the pro-Trump group Great America Alliance, which spent more than $150,000 on Moore’s behalf.

“Everyone is going to be under the microscope. That doesn’t mean everyone is going to have a serious primary challenger,” he said. “But if you think you’re going to be able to take a cheap shot at the president to score a few political points in the mainstream media, you have another thing coming.”

McConnell allies strongly disputed claims that he was a drag on Strange, arguing that despite low approval ratings that come with being a party leader in Congress, there was scant real evidence that opposition to the Kentucky Republican was a motivating factor for voters in a race where local issues, including the former governor’s corruption scandal, played a major role. But one Republican operative working on 2018 Senate races, who requested anonymity to discuss internal GOP dynamics, said the party is increasingly worried about the impact of McConnell’s unpopularity among GOP voters on establishment primary candidates, particularly after another health care failure.

McConnell did get a vote of confidence, of sorts, from Trump, who told reporters asking whether he had confidence in the majority leader: “I do have confidence in him, yes. I do have confidence. But it’s really not up to me, it’s up to the Senate, but I do have confidence in him. I will say they used him in the race, and I was very honored by the way I was treated in the race, but they used him in the race.”

Republican senators, too, worried about the political fallout from Strange’s loss heading into an election cycle where they will be defending a slim 52-48 majority. Although few GOP incumbents are seen as truly vulnerable, others could attract troublesome primary challenges like those already looming for Republican Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Jeff Flake of Arizona and potentially Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

“This is going to be interpreted by the so-called anti-establishment forces as a victory they can build on and I suspect they’ll be out recruiting candidates to try and primary many of our incumbent senators,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.

Already this week, rounding out McConnell’s woes, Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker announced plans to retire rather than seek re-election next year in face of certain primary opposition.

Strange’s loss in Alabama was the first for McConnell’s well-funded and highly professional operation since he made the decision to get involved in Senate primaries five years ago, after a spate of oddball conservatives got into general elections in the 2010 and 2012 cycles and went on to lose to Democrats. The Senate Leadership Fund, led by former McConnell Chief of Staff Steve Law, invested heavily in the race to try to keep Strange in the Senate.

The group’s failure could send hesitant GOP incumbents the message that for all his efforts, McConnell might not be able to save them from a roiled and angry electorate.

In a memo assessing the election, Law ticked off several conclusions that bode ill for the GOP in the election cycle ahead, including that “the Republican Congress has replaced President Obama as the bogeyman for conservative GOP primary voters” and “the Obamacare repeal fiasco is political poison.”

Also problematic for McConnell may be Moore’s arrival in the Senate, presuming he beats the Democrat in December’s general election. McConnell is already struggling to hold together his 52-vote majority, as the failure on health care shows, and will now have an additional squeaky wheel to deal with rather than the reliable vote Strange offered.

An aide to McConnell said the majority leader spoke with Moore on Wednesday.

Moore declared his opposition to McConnell throughout the campaign, but interviewed Wednesday on Fox News Channel he said he would support the majority leader when their goals align.

“As long as he stands for a conservative agenda and what we promised the people as Republicans, I’ll work with anyone,” Moore said.

That apparently doesn’t include health care, though. While Trump insisted repeatedly Wednesday that the latest GOP health care plan would eventually succeed, Moore decried it as “socialized medicine at best.”

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Associated Press writer Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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O’Reilly’s influence remains at Fox

April 20, 2017April 20, 2017 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/lynn-elber" rel="tag">LYNN ELBER</a>

A pedestrian walks past the News Corp. headquarters building in New York displaying posters featuring Fox News Channel personalities. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Despite the inglorious end to Bill O’Reilly’s two-decade Fox News Channel career, observers say his deep imprint on Fox and other cable news outlets and his influence on barbed political discourse are intact for the foreseeable future.

Fired on Wednesday amid a drumbeat of sexual harassment allegations, the vacationing host’s “The O’Reilly Factor” was quickly redubbed “The Factor” and Fox News announced his time slot will be filled by Tucker Carlson, another adamantly conservative Fox host who dovetails with the channel’s audience.

But it was O’Reilly who created the template for how to succeed in cable TV punditry, delighting his viewers with unapologetic attacks on liberal politicians and media members that he delivered with gusto.

“In many ways, he led Fox’s cable news revolution,” said Frank Sesno, a journalism professor at George Washington University and former CNN Washington bureau chief. “Cable news is someone standing on a mountain top shouting, and Bill O’Reilly was on the highest peak so he echoed across the landscape.”

And he keeps echoing in the broader media landscape. O’Reilly’s success at appealing to like-minded viewers made him and Fox into cable news leaders.

“That left CNN and MSNBC to figure out how to survive, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that MSNBC figured out the only path to success was to segment and go for the liberal audience,” said Tom Hollihan, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

That multiplying effect gave O’Reilly a role in a seismic change, he said.

“He helped shape the kind of very polarized discourse that has come to define politics over the past few years in America,” Hollihan said.

His ratings made him Fox’s most lucrative personality, with his show generating $178 million in advertising revenue in 2015, according to Kantar Media. There was the prospect of even more, with his audience larger in the first three months of 2017 than it has ever been.

Then came an April 1 report in The New York Times that five women had been paid a total of $13 million to keep quiet about disturbing encounters with O’Reilly. While O’Reilly denied wrongdoing, dozens of his show’s advertisers fled within days even as O’Reilly’s viewership increased.

Following the Times story, Fox parent company 21st Century Fox said it had asked the same law firm that investigated Ailes to look into O’Reilly’s behavior. 21st Century Fox leaders Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James said in a memo to Fox staff that their decision to ax O’Reilly came following an “extensive review” into the charges.

“I understand how difficult this has been for many of you,” Rupert Murdoch said in the memo.

With a profit center gone, 21st Century Fox stock fell almost 1 percent Wednesday in heavy trading.

O’Reilly lost his job on the same day he was photographed in Rome shaking the hand of Pope Francis. In a statement, he called it “tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.”

His exit came nine months after his former boss, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, was ousted following allegations of sexual harassment.

O’Reilly’s lawyers said he was the victim of an orchestrated campaign by liberal organizations like Media Matters for America, which contacted his advertisers to pressure them to leave the show. Conservative personality Glenn Beck — who once lost a job at Fox because a similar campaign choked his program of paying advertisers — came to O’Reilly’s defense on his radio show and called on viewers to pressure Fox, to no avail.

O’Reilly had ruled the “no spin zone” on television with a quick smile and an even quicker temper. He pushed a populist, conservative-leaning point of view, and was quick to shout down those who disagreed with him.

O’Reilly and President Donald Trump are both “crowd-pleasing showmen who know how to signal to loyalists in their audience that they are not taking themselves quite as seriously as their detractors are,” said news consultant Andrew Tyndall. “Half of the fun that they have with their audiences comes from watching the outrage that they manage to provoke.”

Don’t expect O’Reilly to slip quietly away, said Annenberg’s Hollihan.

“Some other media outlet is going to pick him up and syndicate what he does. He’s a brand on his own, as you can tell from all the best-selling books he’s got,” he said.

O’Reilly’s “Killing” historical series, including “Killing Lincoln” and “Killing Reagan,” have consistently sold 1 million or more copies in hardcover, a rare achievement in publishing, and his platform on Fox enabled him to promote his work. He has also had best-sellers with everything from the memoir “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity” to his most recent work, “Old School,” which includes passages urging the respectful treatment of women.

O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard are due to release another book in the “Killing” series in September, and a spokeswoman for publisher Henry Holt and Co. said that plans had not changed.

Even with O’Reilly gone from Fox, Sesno said he doubts that the public appetite for his brand of “angry, high-decibel” chatter will give way to a new regard for civility.

“I’m not sure I see much evidence of that; otherwise, Judy Woodruff would be off the charts,” he said, referring to the anchor of “PBS NewsHour.”

Stephen Colbert, who mercilessly parodied O’Reilly on “The Colbert Report,” paid tongue-in-cheek homage to the deposed host Wednesday on Colbert’s late-night CBS show.

“Nation, shame on you. You failed him, you failed Bill O’Reilly. You didn’t deserve this great man,” Colbert said, channeling his Comedy Central character. “And what, suddenly sexual harassment’s a crime?”

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AP writers David Bauder, Hillel Italie and Marley Jay in New York and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this story.
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Strong reactions to transgender rollback

February 23, 2017February 23, 2017 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/sadie-gurman-and-maria-danilova" rel="tag">SADIE GURMAN and MARIA DANILOVA</a>

Activists and protesters with the National Center for Transgender Equality rally in front of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Conservatives are praising the Trump administration’s rollback of public school bathroom requirements for transgender students, saying the move corrects a legal overreach by the Obama administration that is best left for states to decide. Transgender rights advocates, meanwhile, are vowing to overcome a major setback.

“We’re not discouraged. And we’re going to keep fighting like we have been and keep fighting for the right thing,” said Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen who sued his Virginia high school over its bathroom access policy and whose case is set to be heard by the Supreme Court next month.

The Justice and Education departments said Wednesday that public schools no longer need to abide by the Obama-era directive instructing them to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their chosen gender. That guidance, issued in May, led to a spate of lawsuits over how it should be applied, according to a letter from the departments being sent to schools nationwide.

The agencies said they withdrew the guidance to “in order to further and more completely consider the legal issues involved.”

Anti-bullying safeguards for students will not be affected by the change, according to the letter. But advocates of protections for transgender teens said the overall rollback sends “a message that something is wrong with them, which is harmful,” said Nancy Haque, co-executive director of Basic Rights Oregon.

Grimm’s case also could be in jeopardy with the guidance now lifted. The high court could decide not to hear it and direct lower courts to settle that issue instead.

There won’t be any immediate impact on schools, because the Obama guidance had been temporarily blocked since August by a federal judge in Texas, one of 13 states that sued over the directive. And schools remain free to provide the same treatment to students even without guidance.

The earlier guidance was based on the Obama administration’s determination that federal sex discrimination law known as Title IX, applies to gender identity. It will now be up to states and school districts to decide the issue of bathroom access.

The Obama guidance did not sufficiently explain its interpretation of that law, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.

“Congress, state legislatures and local governments are in a position to adopt appropriate policies or laws addressing this issue,” Sessions said, adding that the department is still committed to protecting students from bullying.

“This is an issue best solved at the state and local level,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos added. “Schools, communities and families can find — and in many cases have found — solutions that protect all students.”

Earlier Wednesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer denied media reports that DeVos, who has been criticized for her stance on LGBT issues, had opposed the change but was overruled by Sessions. Spicer said any disagreement was merely over wording and timing.

“There is no daylight between anybody,” Spicer said, adding that DeVos was “100 percent” on board with the decision.

Conservative activists who saw it as the Obama administration meddling in local matters praised the change. Wisconsin state Rep. Jesse Kremer said he was pleased by the change but still intends to re-introduce a bill to force public school students to use bathrooms that correspond with their birth gender.

“No longer will federal officials distort federal law that is meant to equalize educational opportunities for women, and no longer will they force local officials to intermingle boys and girls within private areas like locker rooms, showers, hotel rooms on school trips and restrooms,” said Gary McCaleb, senior counsel for the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

However, the reversal is a setback for transgender rights groups, which had been urging Trump to keep the guidelines in place. Advocates say federal law will still prohibit discrimination against students based on their gender or sexual orientation. But, they said, lifting the guidance puts children in harm’s way.

“The mother lions in this country are not going to let anything go backward in transgender equality because it’s been very hard fought,” said Linda Fishbaugh, the mother of a transgender New Hampshire teenager.

A patchwork of state laws could continue to emerge as a result of the change. Fifteen states have explicit protections for transgender students in their state laws, and many individual school districts in other states have adopted policies that cover such students on the basis of their gender identity, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign. Just one state, North Carolina, has enacted a law restricting access to bathrooms in government-owned buildings to the sex that appears on a person’s birth certificate. Lawmakers in more than 10 states are considering similar legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, and Steven Dubois in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.
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Angry Republicans look to a third party

May 6, 2016May 6, 2016 by <a href="https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/byline/ginger-gibson-and-jonathan-allen" rel="tag">GINGER GIBSON and JONATHAN ALLEN</a>

U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) speaks at the American Conservative Union 2016 annual conference in Maryland March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File photo — U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) speaks at the American Conservative Union 2016 annual conference in Maryland March 3, 2016. (REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File photo)

Donald Trump’s emergence as the last man standing in the Republican presidential race has prompted his critics inside the party to intensify their search for a candidate they could back as a serious third-party alternative.

Political operatives are courting donors, calling potential candidates and developing legal contingency plans for overcoming onerous ballot qualification laws.

“This is as much as anything a battle for the future of American party politics,” said Republican strategist Joel Searby, who is working with conservative writer Bill Kristol, among others, on an effort to identify a third-party candidate to run in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

A separate group, Conservatives Against Trump, which includes blogger Erick Erickson, has been holding calls and meetings to discuss third-party candidates as well as other options to stop the New York billionaire from winning the White House.

The hurdles to a third-party candidacy are immense. No independent candidate has ever won a presidential election, although some have played spoilers. But the efforts by the Republican groups underscore the unusual divisiveness of Trump’s candidacy within Republican ranks ahead of a likely general election fight with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s opposition to free trade is at odds with the views of many Republicans, especially in the party’s business wing. Many of Trump’s critics also find his rhetoric offensive, including his call to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country and his comment describing Mexican immigrants to the United States as rapists and drug dealers.

Some Republicans say they worry that any third-party candidate would only siphon votes away from Trump and help Clinton win the election.

Ralph Nader’s independent presidential run has been blamed by some Democrats for the razor-thin defeat of Democratic nominee Al Gore in the 2000 election. Ross Perot’s independent candidacy in 1992 was seen by some Republicans as contributing to President George H.W. Bush’s loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.

One outcome, though rare, may be that no candidate crosses the necessary threshold of 270 votes in the U.S. Electoral College. In that case, the vote for the next president would pass to the U.S. House of Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans.

Deborah DeMoss Fonseca, who recruited donors for former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and is working with Conservatives Against Trump, said her group was trying to find a candidate who would be high-profile enough to compete with Trump and Clinton.

NO EASY TASK

But finding a candidate of that caliber who would be willing to run is no easy feat. Searby’s group has reached out to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, among others, but both declined after discussions.

Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has emerged as a favorite of the Republicans seeking a third-party candidate. Kristol has had warm words for him.

Sasse, a freshman lawmaker and former Bush administration official, is a strong critic of Trump and has called for an alternative candidate to him. But he says that person should be someone other than him.

On Wednesday, the morning after Trump emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee, phones at the office of Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson were ringing off the hook with calls from small-government Republicans who feel they cannot get behind Trump.

But as a Libertarian, Johnson holds views on some issues, such as the legalization of marijuana, that are antithetical to the views of some Republicans.

In March, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, said he had considered jumping into the race as a third-party candidate but opted against it, saying he feared it would only serve to help get Trump elected.

One of the biggest hurdles to a third-party run is simply getting on the ballot in enough states to mount a viable campaign.

Texas requires more than 79,000 signatures from voters who did not participate in either primary. Its deadline is Monday. Among other states, North Carolina’s deadline is the end of May, and Illinois and Florida in mid-July.

“A third-party candidate is a pipe dream,” said Republican strategist Tony Fratto, who worked in Bush’s administration and strongly opposes Trump. “What’s going to happen is Hillary Clinton is going to win big. It won’t be close.”

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