partisanship – Capitol Hill Blue

Trump preaches unity, accepts no blame for partisanship

February 6, 2019February 6, 2019

President Donald Trump turns to House speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., as he delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Face to face with emboldened Democrats, President Donald Trump called on Washington to cast aside “revenge, resistance and retribution” and end “ridiculous partisan investigations” in a State of the Union address delivered at a vulnerable moment for his presidency.

Trump appealed Tuesday night for bipartisanship but refused to yield on the hard-line immigration policies that have infuriated Democrats and forced the recent government shutdown. He renewed his call for a border wall and cast illegal immigration as a threat to Americans’ safety and economic security.

Trump accepted no blame for his role in cultivating the rancorous atmosphere in the nation’s capital, and he didn’t outline a clear path for collaborating with Democrats who are eager to block his agenda. Their opposition was on vivid display as Democratic congresswomen in the audience formed a sea of white in a nod to early 20th-century suffragettes.

Trump is staring down a two-year stretch that will determine whether he is re-elected or leaves office in defeat. His speech sought to shore up Republican support that had eroded slightly during the recent government shutdown and previewed a fresh defense against Democrats as they ready a round of investigations into every aspect of his administration.

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” he declared. Lawmakers in the cavernous House chamber sat largely silent.

Looming over the president’s address was a fast-approaching Feb. 15 deadline to fund the government and avoid another shutdown. Democrats have refused to acquiesce to his demands for a border wall, and Republicans are increasingly unwilling to shut down the government to help him fulfill his signature campaign pledge. Nor does the GOP support the president’s plan to declare a national emergency if Congress won’t fund the wall.

Wary of publicly highlighting those intraparty divisions, Trump made no mention of an emergency declaration in his remarks. He did offer a lengthy defense of his call for a border wall, declaring: “I will build it.” But he delivered no ultimatums about what it would take for him to sign legislation to keep the government open.

“I am asking you to defend our very dangerous southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and to our country,” he said, painting a dark and foreboding picture of the risks posed to Americans by illegal immigration.

The 72-year-old Trump harkened back to moments of American greatness, celebrating the moon landing as astronaut Buzz Aldrin looked on from the audience and heralding the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. He led the House chamber in singing happy birthday to a Holocaust survivor sitting with first lady Melania Trump.

“Together, we represent the most extraordinary nation in all of history. What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered?” Trump said.

The president ticked through a litany of issues with crossover appeal, including boosting infrastructure, lowering prescription drug costs and combating childhood cancer. But he also appealed to his political base, both with his harsh rhetoric on immigration and a call for Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the “late-term abortion of children.”

Trump devoted much of his speech to foreign policy, another area where Republicans have increasingly distanced themselves from the White House. He announced details of a second meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, outlining a Feb. 27-28 summit in Vietnam.

Trump and Kim’s first summit garnered only a vaguely worded commitment by the North to denuclearize. But the president said his outreach to Pyongyang had made the U.S. safer.

“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” he said.

As he condemned political turmoil in Venezuela, Trump declared that “America will never be a socialist country” — a remark that may also have been targeted at high-profile Democrats who identify as socialists.

The president was surrounded by symbols of his emboldened political opposition. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was praised by Democrats for her hard-line negotiating during the shutdown, sat behind Trump as he spoke. And several senators running for president were also in the audience, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Another Democratic star, Stacey Abrams, delivered the party’s response to Trump. Abrams narrowly lost her bid in November to become America’s first black female governor, and party leaders are aggressively recruiting her to run for U.S. Senate from Georgia.

Speaking from Atlanta, Abrams calls the shutdown a political stunt that “defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values.”

Trump’s address amounted to an opening argument for his re-election campaign. Polls show he has work to do, with his approval rating falling to just 34 percent after the shutdown, according to a recent survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

One bright spot for the president has been the economy, which has added jobs for 100 straight months.

“The only thing that can stop it,” he said, “are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations” — an apparent swipe at the special counsel investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, as well as the upcoming congressional investigations.

The diverse Democratic caucus, which includes a bevy of women, sat silently for much of Trump’s speech. But they leapt to their feet when he noted there are “more women in the workforce than ever before.”

The increase is due to population growth — and not something Trump can credit to any of his policies.

The president also defended his decisions to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan over the opposition from national security officials and many Republican lawmakers.

“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” he said, adding that the U.S. is working with allies to “destroy the remnants” of the Islamic State group and that he has “accelerated” efforts to reach a settlement in Afghanistan.

IS militants have lost territory since Trump’s surprise announcement in December that he was pulling U.S. forces out, but military officials warn the fighters could regroup within six months to a year of the Americans leaving. Several leading GOP lawmakers have sharply criticized his plans to withdraw from Syria, as well as from Afghanistan.

Trump’s guests for the speech included Alice Marie Johnson, a woman whose life sentence for drug offenses was commuted by the president, and Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Delaware, who has been bullied over his last name. They sat with Mrs. Trump during the address.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Catherine Lucey at http://twitter.com/catherine_lucey

_______________________________________________________

GOP Coverup? House Intel Committee claims ‘no collusion’

March 13, 2018

Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, left, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have completed a draft report concluding there was no collusion or coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, a finding that pleased the White House but enraged Democrats who had not yet seen the document.

After a yearlong investigation, Texas Rep. Mike Conaway announced Monday that the committee has finished interviewing witnesses and will share the report with Democrats for the first time Tuesday. Conaway is the Republican leading the House probe, one of several investigations on Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

“We found no evidence of collusion,” Conaway told reporters, suggesting that those who believe there was collusion are reading too many spy novels. “We found perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment in taking meetings. But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take this series of inadvertent contacts with each other, or meetings or whatever, and weave that into sort of a fiction page-turner, spy thriller.”

Hours later, Trump tweeted his own headline of the report in excited capital letters: “THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

Conaway previewed some of the conclusions, but said the public will not see the report until Democrats have reviewed it and the intelligence community has decided what information can become public, a process that could take weeks. Democrats are expected to issue a separate report with far different conclusions.

In addition to the statement on coordination with Russians, the draft challenges an assessment made after the 2016 election that Russian meddling was an effort to help Trump. The January 2017 assessment revealed that the FBI, CIA and NSA had concluded that the Russian government, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, waged a covert influence campaign to interfere in the election with the goal of hurting Democrat Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and helping Trump’s campaign.

House Intelligence Committee officials said they spent hundreds of hours reviewing raw source material used by the intelligence services in the assessment and that it did not meet the appropriate standards to make the claim about helping Trump. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the intelligence material.

Conaway said there will be a second report just dealing with the intelligence assessment and its credibility.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement soon after the GOP announcement, saying it stood by the intelligence community’s findings. DNI spokesman Brian Hale said the office will review the findings of the committee’s report.

According to Conaway, the report will agree with the intelligence assessment on most other details, including that Russians did meddle in the election. It will detail Russian cyberattacks on U.S. institutions during the election and the use of social media to sow discord. It will also show a pattern of Russian attacks on European allies — information that could be redacted in the final report. And it will blame officials in President Barack Obama’s administration for a “lackluster” response and look at leaks from the intelligence community to the media.

It will include at least 25 recommendations, including how to improve election security, respond to cyberattacks and improve counterintelligence efforts.

Democrats have criticized Republicans on the committee for shortening the investigation, pointing to multiple contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia and saying they have seen far too few witnesses to make any judgment on collusion. The Democrats and Republicans have openly fought throughout the investigation, with Democrats suggesting a cover-up for a Republican president and one GOP member of the panel calling the probe “poison” for the previously bipartisan panel.

The top Democrat on the intelligence panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, suggested that by wrapping up the probe the Republicans were protecting Trump. He called the development a “tragic milestone” and said history would judge them harshly.

Republicans “proved unwilling to subpoena documents like phone records, text messages, bank records and other key records so that we might determine the truth about the most significant attack on our democratic institutions in history,” Schiff said.

The report is also expected to turn the subject of collusion toward the Clinton campaign, saying an anti-Trump dossier compiled by a former British spy and paid for by Democrats was one way that Russians tried to influence the election. Conaway did not suggest that Clinton knowingly coordinated with the Russians, but said the dossier clearly “would have hurt him and helped her.”

He also said there was no evidence that anything “untoward” happened at a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between members of the Trump campaign and Russians, though he called it ill-advised. Despite a promise of dirt on Clinton ahead of the meeting, there’s no evidence that such material was exchanged, he said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating the Russian intervention, is expected to have a bipartisan report out in the coming weeks dealing with election security. The Senate panel is expected to issue findings on the more controversial issue of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia at a later date.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, also investigating the meddling, is expected to release transcripts soon of closed-door interviews with several people who attended the 2016 meeting between the Trump campaign and Russians. It’s unclear if the Judiciary panel will produce a final report.

The congressional investigations are completely separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, which is likely to take much longer. It has already resulted in charges against several people linked to Trump’s campaign.

___

Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.

___________________________________________________________

Congress faces royal mess when it returns

November 26, 2017November 26, 2017

Capitol at sunrise, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The crush of unfinished business facing lawmakers when they return to the Capitol would be daunting even if Washington were functioning at peak efficiency.

It’s an agenda whose core items — tax cuts, a potential government shutdown, lots of leftover spending bills — could unravel just as easily as advance in factionalism, gamesmanship and a toxic political environment.

There’s only a four-week window until a Christmas deadline, barely enough time for complicated negotiations even if December stays on the rails. And that’s hardly a sure bet in President Donald Trump’s capital.

Trump and congressional leaders plan a meeting Tuesday to discuss how to sidestep a shutdown and work though the legislative to-do list.

For the optimistic, it’s plain that Democrats and Republicans have reasons to cooperate, particularly on spending increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies whose budgets otherwise would be frozen. An additional round of hurricane aid should be bipartisan, and efforts to reauthorize a popular health care program for children seem to be on track.

Republicans are advancing their cherished tax cut measure under special rules that mean Senate Democrats cannot use delaying tactics. The measure passed the House just before the Thanksgiving break and moves to the Senate floor this coming week.

After the Senate GOP’s failure on health care this summer, the majority party is under enormous pressure to produce a victory on taxes. Still, GOP deficit hawks such as Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona remain uneasy about the overhaul.

While Democrats are largely sidelined on taxes, they hold leverage over a mix of budget-related issues.

First, there’s the need to avert a government shutdown after a temporary spending bill expires on Dec. 8. The most likely scenario, congressional aides say, is for an additional extension until Christmas. On a parallel track are talks to raise spending limits that are keeping agency budgets essentially frozen unless those caps are raised. If that happens, then negotiations could begin in earnest on a massive catchall spending measure in hopes of having it signed into law by year’s end.

Taxes have gotten all the attention so far, but the showdown over a potential shutdown right before Christmas could soon take center stage. Democrats are counting on GOP fears of a holiday season closure to ensure Republican concessions during December talks.

Both sides would have to make concessions that may upset partisans in either party. Just as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., fears a revolt on the right, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California risks an uprising on her left. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., round out the quartet of top negotiators.

“Everybody’s got complicated politics. The chance of short-term failure is pretty high — short-term failure being a shutdown,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist. “But the four of them, assuming they don’t want to shut the government down for a long time, are going to have to come to an accommodation.”

Talks on the spending caps are stuck, however, aides say. A GOP offer to lift the Pentagon budget by more than $54 billion next year and nondefense limits by $37 billion was rejected by Democrats demanding balance between the two sides of the ledger.

Long-delayed battles over immigration and Trump’s promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border are huge obstacles. Many Democrats whose votes are needed on the spending bills insist they won’t vote for any legislation that includes the wall. Trump remains dead set on his $1.6 billion request for a down payment on the project.

Those same Democrats also insist that Congress must act by year’s end to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and whose protected status is set to lapse next year. Trump backs the idea despite issuing an executive order reversing the Obama administration protections, starting next spring. Conservatives oppose drawing in the immigration issue to legislation to keep the government running.

Hurricane relief is adding one more wrinkle.

Congress has approved more than $50 billion in aid in response to a series of devastating hurricanes. The most recent request by the White House is the largest yet at $44 billion, but it’s not nearly enough to satisfy the powerful Texas delegation, which is pressing behind the scenes for more.

“Completely inadequate,” said Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. “We must do far more to rebuild, repair and allow Texans to return to normal as quickly as possible.”

Trump is a wild card. He warmed to the idea of cutting deals with Democrats after a September pact with Schumer and Pelosi to lift the government’s debt ceiling.

He promised Democratic leaders that he would sign legislation to give the young immigrants legal status — provided border security is addressed as well.

But that demand on border security came with a long list of conditions subsequently added by the White House. Among them: building his Mexico border wall, overhauling the green card system and strengthening measures against people who stay after their visas expire.

Trump has not really engaged on the year-end agenda, however, and his impulsiveness could be a liability. He almost disowned an omnibus spending bill in May after media accounts portrayed the measure as a win for Democrats.
_____________________________________________________

Partisan sabotage claimed in Russia probe

October 20, 2017October 20, 2017

Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr (R-NC) listens to testimonies during a hearing about Russian interference in U.S. elections in Washington. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

Democrats on a congressional panel say members of its Republican majority are trying to sabotage an investigation into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, raising concerns the two parties will reach contradictory conclusions.

Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee have coached witnesses, scheduled interviews without first requesting important documents, and many fail to attend witness interviews, four sources close to the investigation said.

On one occasion, three sources said, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy told Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House aide, that he was testifying voluntarily and could leave whenever he liked. After about two-and-a-half hours, one of the sources said, Kushner took the cue and left before Democrats had finished questioning him. Kushner’s lawyer and Gowdy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The panel has heard from about 10 witnesses, the sources said. But given the lack of preparation and the absence of many Republican members, hearings amount to “going through the motions” rather than a serious investigation, one source said.

Two Republican committee staffers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also criticized what they called a partisan effort to discredit rather than investigate allegations that some aides or advisers to Republican Trump’s election campaign may have colluded with Russia, which has been under U.S. sanctions for several years.

The conduct of the probe so far, those staffers and other sources said, threatens to undermine the committee’s reputation for bipartisanship under former Republican chairman Mike Rogers, who led the committee from 2011 to 2015.

Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, said that while she would like to believe the panel “will come together unified in its conclusions and submit a joint report, I‘m not overly optimistic that this will be the case.”

Another committee Democrat, Representative Eric Swalwell, said, “That is our North Star, unity and consensus on what happened. Now along the way we’ve seen disruptive behavior that has I think impeded our investigation, and despite that we still are doggedly trying to find out what happened.”

Asked for comment, Jack Langer, a spokesman for Republican committee chairman, Representative Devin Nunes, said in a statement: “With this article, Reuters is acting as a loyal, obedient stenographer of the Democrats’ utterly baseless complaints.”

Langer did not respond to Reuters’ request to address specific complaints made by the Democrats.

POSSIBLE MOTIVES?

Democratic members and staffers on the committee have said nothing publicly about the Republicans’ possible motives for fear of destroying any chance to produce a bipartisan report, four sources said.

Democrats said that the Republicans appear to want to undermine the credibility of Fusion GPS, a political research firm that commissioned former British spy Christopher Steele to produce a dossier on Trump while he was running for president.

Investigators are attempting to confirm or dismiss the contents of Steele’s dossier, which outlined Russian financial and personal links to Trump’s campaign and associates.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign of hacking and propaganda to undermine faith in the U.S. election, denigrate Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and help Trump. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Trump disputes he and his associates colluded with Moscow, calling probes by Congress and a special counsel a “witch hunt.”

Panel chairman Nunes, a Trump ally, was forced to step aside from leading the probe in April after the House Ethics Committee said it was investigating allegations that he disclosed classified information without authorization. Democrats on the committee praise Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican who took Nunes’ place leading the investigation.

Nevertheless, Nunes is investigating Fusion GPS and Steele on his own. On Oct. 10, Nunes subpoenaed the firm’s partners, a source familiar with the matter said.

Sources familiar with the origins of the dossier said Steele received no money for his work on it from any Russian entity or person or from the FBI. It has been widely reported that supporters of Republican Jeb Bush, one of Trump’s opponents for the party’s presidential nomination, initially paid for research that was later picked up by Clinton supporters.

The House and Senate intelligence committees, created in the aftermath of U.S. spy scandals exposed in the 1970s, have long traditions of avoiding partisan feuds.

Three sources familiar with the House committee’s workings said Democrats had requested a meeting of all members to resolve differences, but the Republicans rejected the idea.

If the rift cannot be healed, the sources said, the Democrats could write their own report and seek to associate it with what is expected to be a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Representative Adam Schiff, the House committee’s top Democrat, wrote in The Washington Post last weekend that he still hoped members could arrive at a common conclusion.

“This remains my hope – not consistency for the sake of consistency, or at the cost of incomplete work, but in the service of a public that has too often been forced to choose between competing narratives of the same events,” Schiff wrote.

_______________________________________________________

What next for healthcare?

September 28, 2017September 27, 2017

Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., accompanied by the committee’s ranking member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. speaks on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Congress is at a crossroads after Republicans’ stinging failure to repeal Barack Obama’s health care law. But what’s next — more partisan conflict, or a pragmatic shift toward cooperation?

Unless Republicans and Democrats in Congress can work together — and bring along an often unpredictable President Donald Trump — political conflict over health care may spread. Bipartisan talks on legislation to stabilize the health law’s shaky insurance markets are on again, but time is short and there’s no guarantee of success.

Adding to concerns: Congress has yet to renew funding for programs that traditionally enjoy broad support, such as children’s health insurance and community health centers, despite approaching deadlines.

Feelings were raw Tuesday after Senate GOP leaders announced they would not take their latest “repeal and replace” bill to the floor for lack of support. But some lawmakers said it’s still possible to bridge the partisan gap on a limited set of priority issues.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said he would resume efforts to reach a bipartisan deal with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington to stabilize markets for individual insurance policies that 18 million people rely on. More than half of those consumers are covered under the health law.

Alexander is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, and Murray is his Democratic counterpart. He runs the risk of being accused by some fellow Republicans of trying to “bailout Obamacare.”

Murray is under pressure from fellow Democrats not to make concessions to Alexander, who is seeking changes that would ease the path for states to get waivers from some of the law’s requirements, potentially leading to plans with lower premiums.

“I’m still concerned about the next two years, and Congress has an opportunity to slow down premium increases in 2018, begin to lower them in 2019, and do our best to make sure there are no counties where people have zero options to buy health insurance,” Alexander said in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, who has worked with Republicans on a range of health care issues, said cooperation is the only way to avoid creating needless problems for constituents.

“You recognize the opportunities that are in front of you,” said Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, which oversees health care funding. “My hope is we can come together.”

Wyden’s list includes renewing the Children’s Health Insurance Program for 9 million kids, whose funding expires this week, as well as short-term action to stabilize the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets, by guaranteeing subsidies for copays and deductibles. Experts say that could cut expected double-digit premium increases in many states by about half.

The missing ingredient seems to be leadership, say outside observers.

Neither Trump, nor House Speaker Paul Ryan, nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch Connell has given clear approval for a bipartisan approach. Some Republican and Democratic governors have called for a health care reset that would involve both parties working together on a limited agenda, but their suggestion hasn’t been embraced in Washington.

“The question is whether you can you forge a coalition that doesn’t include either the hard right or the hard left,” said GOP health economist Gail Wilensky. “I have not been able to answer who would provide the leadership for such an effort. Neither the leadership in the House or the Senate has embraced the notion of trying to forge a bipartisan coalition, and it is very hard to move legislation without that.”

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said Tuesday that Trump at a meeting with lawmakers raised the possibility of seeking a deal with Democrats. There’s no hint what that might entail.

If anything, Democrats have been moving to the left after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders relaunched his “Medicare for all” plan recently. Under Sanders’ plan, government would pay for medical services, replacing employers and insurers. Some liberal activists argue that support for “single-payer” should be a qualifying test for Democratic candidates in 2018 and beyond.

Other Democrats say single-payer would lead to political defeat, because of the massive tax increases required.

“It’s not going to happen,” said former congressman Henry Waxman, one of the main authors of the Obama law. “You can talk about it, and plant a flag, and say that’s where you’d like to go, but in the meantime people need their insurance coverage.”

Wednesday is the deadline for insurers to sign contracts to offer policies for 2018 on the health law’s markets. Sign-up season starts Nov. 1. About half the 18 million Americans with individual policies get no subsidies under the health law. Without congressional action some are facing premiums that rival a mortgage payment.

Saturday is the deadline for Congress to act on children’s health insurance and community health center funding. Brief delays are not expected to cause disruptions, but a protracted holdup would.
_______________________________________________________

America’s world of political violence

August 14, 2017August 13, 2017

White nationalist demonstrators use shields as they guard the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

The videos that rolled across the television screen were startling: Americans beating each other with clubs and sticks on the streets of a quiet college town. White supremacists with torches; anti-fascists pushing back. An improvised flame thrower fashioned from an aerosol can. Bottles of frozen water hurled like bricks at one another’s skulls.

Kevin Boyle, an American history professor at Northwestern University, watched it unfold, the feeling in his gut both horror and a sense that the racial tension bubbling for years had finally, almost inevitably, begun boiling over.

“Given our political moment, I’m not surprised that we’ve come to this point,” he said. “I’m terribly depressed we’ve come to this point but I’m not surprised. It didn’t come out of nowhere.”

Historians and political scientists have been warning that American politics had become a pressure cooker, full of racial tension building once again to the point of a deadly clash, like the one in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday that claimed three lives.

White supremacy has always lurked in America’s shadow, said Boyle, whose teaching focuses on the history of racial violence and civil rights. Then, he believes, President Donald Trump was elected and emboldened their hate.

“Donald Trump gave them permission to come out into the real world,” he said. “As long as they were existing in this kind of sad little shadow world where they were just talking to each other, it was disturbing, but it’s not as profoundly dangerous as when they feel they can take the public square.”

Saturday’s chaos erupted around what is believed to be the largest group of white nationalists to come together in a decade — more than 1,000 neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members who descended on the city of Charlottesville to “take America back” by rallying against plans to remove a confederate statue. Hundreds came to protest against the racism. The two sides engaged in bloody brawls on the street. The day turned deadly when a car plowed into a crowd of peaceful anti-racism protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. A Virginia State Police helicopter deployed in a large-scale response to the violence then crashed into the woods outside of town and both troopers on board died.

The violence had been building for months during a series of confrontations between members of the “alt-right” — a loose collection of white nationalists, racists and anti-immigration populists — and people who oppose them. It began the very day Trump put his hand on a Bible and took the oath of office. Skirmishes broke out at his inauguration between his supporters, some of them white nationalists, and those against him. More than 200 were arrested.

It was on that day that Richard Spencer, among the nation’s foremost white nationalists, realized that something had fundamentally shifted in American political discourse. He was giving a media interview when someone ran toward him and punched him in the head on video.

“We’re in a totally new world,” he remembers thinking. “Political violence is a real thing.”

Days later, anti-fascists hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and ignited a massive bonfire at the University of California at Berkeley to protest a planned speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Violent clashes have piled up since: 11 arrested after fights broke out at New York University when the founder of a right-wing men’s organization was scheduled to speak; clashes outside one of Spencer’s appearances at Auburn University; a shouting match between the two sides in Pikeville, Kentucky; confrontations in New Orleans when the city moved to remove a confederate monument; police opening fire with stun grenades and arresting more than a dozen during conflicts in Portland.

Spencer, and others who support white nationalism, blame the other side.

“With Trump’s election, the radical left of this county has come unhinged,” said Kyle Bristow, the founder of a law firm dedicated to alt-right legal advocacy.

But both sides agree on the general narrative of how the widening racial and ideological divide took root: Some white Americans began feeling left behind by progress. The decline of the white working class coincided with drastic cultural changes, like quickly diversifying demographics and the election of the nation’s first black president.

“With the election of Barack Obama, there was so much talk about being this post-racial moment, and on some levels it was extraordinary,” said Steven Hahn, a history professor at New York University. “But it didn’t take long for the really vicious racism to surface. It turned out to be an instigator of an enormous amount of rage, and I think Trump both fanned it and inherited it.”

Trump was long among the prominent members of the birther movement — those who questioned Obama’s citizenship and his legitimacy as president. His campaign was launched with racially-tinged rhetoric about the dangers of immigrants, which has continued into his presidency, said Hahn, who watched videos of Saturday’s clashes and saw in them reflections of the Ku Klux Klan movement of the 1920s.

Now white supremacist groups are actively trying to move into the mainstream. The Daily Stormer, a popular alt-right website, published a story in the run-up to the Charlottesville gathering, calling on followers to leave white hoods or Nazi costumes at home, and go for fitted shirts and suits instead, to attract recruits. They needed to look sexy, the author wrote.

Whether they might be successful in spreading their message depends a lot on how American leaders respond, said Boyle.

Trump quickly came under fire for his response. He said “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

The “on many sides” emphasized at the ending drew the ire of his critics, who pushed back on his statement as failing to specifically denounce racism and equating the white supremacists with those who came to protest their hate.

“The bottom line is if it weren’t for a bunch of neo-Nazis marching around it would have been a regular peaceful day in Charlottesville,” said Kyle Kondik, with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Whether he likes it or not, the president, the person that holds that office, is supposed to act as the person setting a moral standard for the country, and I think he’s been falling far short in that regard.”

He pointed to other Republican leaders who took a strong stand against the racists who descended on Charlottesville on Saturday.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, for example, tweeted: “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

Kondik worries about how quickly the nation’s toxic political divides will continue seeping into all parts of American life if the president doesn’t realign the country’s moral compass.

“It’s been an ugly couple of days, and you just wonder if we’re backsliding in terms of race relations,” he said. “It’s an unpleasant thing to think about, but something we have to think about as a country.”

_______________________________________________________

Trump urged to avoid partisan pick for FBI

May 16, 2017May 15, 2017

Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

As President Donald Trump considers a replacement for fired FBI Director James Comey, lawmakers are urging the president to steer clear of appointing any politicians.

The advice came Sunday amid more criticism over Trump’s dismissal of Comey during an FBI probe of Russia’s meddling with last year’s election and any ties to the Trump campaign. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said the Founding Fathers created three co-equal branches of government with checks and balances, but with Trump as president, that was now “eroding.”

“I think, in many ways, our institutions are under assault, both externally — and that’s the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system,” Clapper said “I think as well our institutions are under assault internally.”

When asked, “Internally, from the president?” Clapper responded, “Exactly.”

The White House had no immediate comment. No White House aide appeared on the Sunday news shows, leaving Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to defend Trump. “The president is the CEO of the country. He can hire and fire whoever he wants,” she said.

Lawmakers from both parties reprimanded Trump for his actions, which included shifting explanations from the White House for Comey’s dismissal and an ominous tweet by Trump that warned Comey against leaks to the press because Trump may have “tapes” of their conversations.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said selecting an FBI agent to lead the agency would allow the nation to “reset.” He dismissed as less desirable at least two of the 14 candidates under consideration, ex-FBI agent and former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate.

“It’s now time to pick somebody who comes from within the ranks, or has such a reputation that has no political background at all that can go into the job on Day 1,” said Graham, R-S.C.

“The president has a chance to clean up the mess he mostly created,” Graham said, adding: “I have no evidence that the president colluded with the Russians at all … but we don’t know all the evidence yet.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, continued to argue that the president should consider Merrick Garland, the federal judge nominated to the Supreme Court last year by President Barack Obama but who was denied a hearing by Republicans. A former top aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell, Josh Holmes, said that McConnell is interested in the suggestion.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the new FBI director should be someone “not of partisan background” with “great experience” and “courage.” Declining to comment on a Garland nomination, Schumer left open the possibility that Democrats might withdraw support for a new FBI director unless the Justice Department names a special prosecutor for the Russia probe.

Under Senate rules, Republicans could confirm an FBI director with 51 votes. Republicans hold 52 seats in the chamber to Democrats’ 48.

Calling Trump’s remarks about possible taped conversations “outrageous,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his panel or another committee would “absolutely” subpoena such tapes.

“We have got to make sure that these tapes, if they exist, don’t mysteriously disappear,” Warner said, adding that he hopes to have Comey testify in a public hearing before his committee.

The blowback against the firing of Comey angered the increasingly frustrated president, who made the decision after consulting only a small group of advisers, worried the news would leak out. Trump has openly vented his frustration with the media and Democrats on Twitter, musing about canceling press briefings and arguing that it’s difficult for aides to know his thinking.

The administration has interviewed at least eight candidates to replace Comey, just over half of the 14 being considered. Trump has said a decision could come before he leaves Friday for the Mideast and Europe, his first overseas trip as president. He was also set to welcome foreign leaders to the White House, with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday and President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia on Thursday. A leader of the United Arab Emirates was scheduled to visit Monday.

Clapper and Schumer made their comments on CNN’s “State of the Union”; Graham spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press”; Haley and Warner appeared on ABC’s “This Week”; and Warner spoke on “Fox News Sunday” along with Lee and Holmes.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey, Sadie Gurman and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
_______________________________________________________

A partisan mess called Congress

September 29, 2016

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2016 file photo, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nev. speaks to reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Democrats opened a last-minute push Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016, for new talks on must-do legislation to prevent the government from shutting down this weekend, fight the Zika virus and help flood-ravaged Louisiana rebuild. “Democrats have been clear that Congress should not leave Flint and other lead-tainted communities out of any (stopgap spending) negotiation that includes emergency disaster funding,” said Reid, and other top Democrats in a Tuesday morning letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) — Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nev. speaks to reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Acutely partisan and all but dysfunctional, Congress has completed its most elementary task after an intense weekslong struggle, finalizing a deal to fund the government just days ahead of a shutdown deadline.

The legislation extends existing spending levels a mere 10 weeks, past Election Day, while finally addressing the Zika crisis with $1.1 billion and providing long-sought help for the residents of Flint, Michigan, as well as flood victims in Louisiana. After a last-minute burst of deal-making, the legislation passed the Senate on a 72-26 vote Wednesday and was backed by the House 342-85 in a late-night vote Wednesday.

It was a conclusion in sight and within reach since lawmakers returned from their summer recess just after Labor Day. But with the Capitol awash in election-year politics and shadowed by the contentious presidential race and engulfed in a fierce battle for control of the Senate, the simplest task became a nearly impossible heavy lift impeded by needless delays and bitter finger-pointing.

Republicans, defending a fragile Senate majority and eager to get a handful of vulnerable incumbents back home to campaign for re-election, accused Minority Leader Harry Reid of holding up a deal to keep GOP lawmakers off the campaign trail.

“The Democrats are determined to keep us here as long as they can,” groused one at-risk Republican senator, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Democrats denied it but lobbed their own allegations, all but accusing Republicans of racism for holding up money for people affected by lead-tainted water in predominantly black Flint, the final sticking point in the talks.

“All they’d have to do is put Flint in and we’d be out of here in a minute. We want to get out of here. They’re the ones holding it up,” complained Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.

Compromise on a $170 million Flint aid package ultimately gave Democrats a partial victory while the GOP-dominated Louisiana delegation won a down-payment on President Barack Obama’s $2.6 billion request for their state. The Zika deal was the resolution of a long and vexing dispute on that issue after Obama made his initial request for federal money in February.

The situation produced frustration all around as lawmakers of both parties lamented their inability to get their basic work done, even if each party insisted the other was to blame. The gridlock that has kept Congress’ approval ratings below 20 percent for years was on vivid display at a moment when the electorate has made crystal clear that it wants an end to Washington’s dysfunction and inability to address the many real problems confronting the nation.

Yet even as they stumbled to a messy solution at close to the last possible moment â the deadline was midnight Friday â some lawmakers were already looking ahead to next year, when much weightier tasks await the next Congress and a new president in what may be an even more fraught era of divided government.

A two-year budget deal agreed to a year ago under the former House speaker, Republican John Boehner, pushed a number of major issues into next year, in particular the next fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit. The debt limit will need to be raised by around mid-summer of next year, something that has provoked major knock-down, drag-out battles among the Capitol’s warring factions and the administration in recent years.

Lawmakers will need to revisit major programs that are ripe for battles including the Children’s Health Insurance Program under Medicaid, payments to hospitals and community health centers, expiring tax credits for a range of industries, a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, the annual defense policy bill, as well as the annual budgeting process. And there is a vacancy to fill on the Supreme Court.

This year, even though getting the appropriations process on track was a top goal for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Congress deadlocked and couldn’t get a budget done while passing just one of the 12 annual spending bills that fund government agencies. The rest of them will need to be lumped together in what’s sure to be another messy struggle in the lame-duck session after the election.

Regardless of whether the next president is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, the White House will confront numerous tricky cross-currents on Capitol Hill next year. Whichever party controls the Senate, the majority is likely to be razor-thin and senators will likely be focused immediately on the 2018 midterms, when Democrats will be defending tough seats in red states. In the GOP-led House, the number of moderate-minded House Republicans is likely to be reduced, potentially giving more power to the House Freedom Caucus, which frequently opposes routine legislation and impedes deal-making by leadership.

Ryan himself is widely seen as having presidential ambitions in 2020, which may complicate his willingness to cut deals with Clinton or Trump.

Yet with the outcome of the election uncertain, many lawmakers said it remained to be seen whether a new Congress might provide an opening for more productive relations in Washington, or more of the same.

“It depends on what kind of message the voters send,” said Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. “If they express enough frustration I think you’ll have members understanding that they have a responsibility to govern. But the voters have to hold us accountable and it remains to be seen whether or not they will.”
_______________________________________________________

Most Americans want new Supreme Court justice now

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016

FILE - The Supreme Court in this Feb. 17, 2016 file photo. An Associated Press-GfK poll shows that nearly 2 in 3 Americans back Democrats demands that the Republican-run Senate hold hearings and a vote on President Barack Obamas pick for the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) — An Associated Press-GfK poll shows that nearly 2 in 3 Americans back Democrats demands that the Republican-run Senate hold hearings and a vote on President Barack Obamas pick for the Supreme Court.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Nearly 2 in 3 Americans back Democrats’ demands that the Republican-run Senate hold hearings and a vote on President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court. But an Associated Press-GfK poll also suggests that GOP defiance against considering the nominee may not hurt the party much because, to many people, the election-year fight is simply not a big deal.

Just 1 in 5 in the survey released Wednesday said they’ve been following the battle over Obama’s nomination of federal judge Merrick Garland extremely or very closely.

That included just 26 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of Republicans expressing intense interest, along with a scant 8 percent of independents. That aligns with the political reading of the issue by many Republicans that while it motivates each side’s most committed partisans, people in the middle consider it a yawner — making the fight essentially a wash.

Another clue that voters not dedicated to either party find the court fight tiresome: While just over half of Democrats and Republicans said the issue is extremely or very important, only around a third of independents — and half of Americans overall — said so.

About 8 in 10 said that about the economy and about 7 in 10 took the same stance about health care and the threat posed by the Islamic State group. Immigration and the U.S. role in world affairs both attracted slightly more intensity of interest than the court battle.

“It gets me irritated, the bickering and all that kind of stuff,” Julie Christopher, 49, a Republican and flight attendant from Fort Worth, Texas, said in a follow-up interview, describing her modest attention to the issue.

Christopher said that while she agrees with the GOP’s refusal to hold hearings on Garland, when it comes to backing candidates in November, “That’s not going to be my only thing, like boom, I’m not going to vote for them.”

Hours after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said his chamber would not consider an Obama nominee and would instead wait until the president elected this November makes a pick. With the remaining justices split 4-4 between those leaning conservative or liberal, most GOP senators have lined up behind McConnell.

Democrats have been spewing outrage ever since. Along with liberal groups, they’ve been using television ads, news conferences, public demonstrations and Senate speeches to ratchet up pressure on GOP senators, especially those facing re-election this fall in swing and Democratic-leaning states like Illinois, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Democrats’ theory is that the public wants Republicans to end their obstruction and let the Senate do its job, forcing GOP senators to relent on Garland or risk defeat in November. The AP-GfK poll has some data backing that up.

The 64 percent who favor hearings and a vote this year on Garland include an overwhelming proportion of Democrats and a sizable minority of Republicans, 40 percent. Independents, who can be pivotal in closely divided states, back action this year, 52 percent to 36 percent.

“I’d rather see at least deliberations, and see Congress do its job,” said Marc Frigon, 33, a high-tech worker from Beverly, Massachusetts, who leans Republican and wants the Senate to reject Garland’s confirmation. “I feel like that’s why we elected them in the first place.”

Just over half of moderate and liberal Republicans want the Senate to hold hearings this year, while fewer than 3 in 10 GOP conservatives say that.

Overall, people say by 59 percent to 36 percent that they want the Senate to approve Garland should a vote be held. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats favor confirmation and independents tilt slightly that way, while 69 percent of Republicans favor rejecting him.

In another sign that the public tips toward Obama on the issue, 57 percent approve of the way he’s been handling the Garland nomination. That’s more than the number who gave the president positive reviews on any other issue in the poll: the economy, health care, Islamic State militants, immigration and world affairs.

The AP-GfK Poll of 1,076 adults was conducted online March 31-April 4, using a sample drawn from GfK’s probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using telephone or mail survey methods and later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn’t have access to the Internet were provided access for free.

___

Online:

http://ap-gfkpoll.com

___________________________________________________________

With budget done, back to partisanship?

December 23, 2015December 23, 2015

FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2015 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks with House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., right, during a commemoration ceremony for the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which abolished slavery in the United States, in Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington. Congressional leaders and the White House reached an agreement on a massive year-end tax and spending package last week, without shutting down the government. The deal represented something once commonplace in Washington: a compromise, with elements for all sides to like and dislike. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) — President Barack Obama speaks with House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., right, during a commemoration ceremony for the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which abolished slavery in the United States, in Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Five days after Paul Ryan was sworn in as House speaker, the White House promised to invite him to meet President Barack Obama for a perfunctory but traditional photo opportunity. It would be a chance for the leaders to shake hands for the cameras and exchange pledges to work together.

Ryan never got that invitation.

It turns out the White House didn’t want a photo marking the advent of a new Republican speaker. And despite the new leadership, neither side was eager to signal a reset in relations. Instead, both Republican and White House officials say they picked up this fall where Obama and former House Speaker John Boehner left off.

As Ryan himself put it, the House has an agenda and “it doesn’t require the president.”

The mutual lack of interest has taken hold with little drama.

Seeing scant reason to dig in and fight, congressional leaders and the White House reached an agreement on a massive year-end tax and spending package last week, without shutting down the government. The deal represented something once commonplace in Washington: a compromise, with elements for all sides to like and dislike.

But no one is talking about the dawn of a new era of cooperation.

“Kudos to him,” Obama said of Ryan’s work in “actually” passing a budget the way Congress used to. In his year-end press conference, the president said he had “some optimism” on “a narrow set of issues.”

After years of battling an unruly opposition, Obama long ago let go of the notion that he could find a secret to working with Congress. As “charm offensives,” dinners, and golf with Boehner yielded little, the White House relied on executive actions and negotiations with foreign leaders to advance its agenda. With just a year left in office, Obama has pared down his legislative expectations to two major pieces of business — final approval of the massive Pacific Rim free trade deal and a criminal justice reform bill.

Republicans complain of a president eager to thwart Congress’ prerogatives, but his allies on Capitol Hill endorse the strategy.

“He’s tried, and thank goodness he came to the realization that the crazy Republicans won’t help him on anything,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told The Associated Press.

From the perspective of Hill lawmakers — Republicans, and some Democrats — their interests are only drifting further away from a lame-duck president.

Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell see few areas of potential overlap. McConnell has sent mixed signals on criminal justice reform and poured cold water on the prospect for a major Asia trade bill. His goal for 2016 is to get the annual appropriations process back on track and promoting and protecting vulnerable Senate Republicans.

He blames Obama.

“The president’s a smart, capable guy but he’s very, very liberal,” McConnell told The AP. “So you’re left — when you have a president who’s this liberal — with a smaller set of things that you can agree to do.”

Ryan says he wants to put together a “bold” GOP agenda that shows what the party stands for and offers an alternative to Democrats in a campaign year.

That does not include passing legislation intended to win Obama’s signature.

“We owe the country a fresh approach, a new plan, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Ryan said. “And so no, it doesn’t require the president.”

There was reason to believe the Ryan era might have ushered in warmer relations. White House officials consider the new speaker an earnest negotiator and have voiced respect for his interest in policy. He was recruited by his party to be a unifier between the conservative and moderate factions in the House, and has shown success in working with his caucus.

But the White House hasn’t changed its approach to Congress very much to account for the new leadership.

“The question should be less about the relationship between two people and the public perception around that, and more about what is possible with the current makeup of the Republican caucus,” White House communications director Jennifer Psaki said.

Obama doesn’t see a point in wooing lawmakers, especially because his public advocacy can serve to repel Republican support. That partly explains Ryan’s delayed invitation for the photo opportunity, said an official familiar with the president’s strategy.

Sometimes the best thing the president can do is get out of the way, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and demanded anonymity.

The speaker also isn’t focused on White House invitations, Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said. The leaders have talked by telephone a handful of times. Ryan attended a White House reception for lawmakers. They chatted at a ceremony on Capitol Hill.

After Congress passed its budget deal last week, Obama called to congratulate Ryan. He also invited the speaker to dinner at the White House, Ryan’s office said.

No date was set, however.

__________________________________________________________________________