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economy_and_jobs
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Fox Online News
| 22
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/05/taxpayer-backed-free-lunch-program-feeds-kids-in-need-and-those-who-arent/
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Taxpayer-backed free lunch program feeds kids in need -- and those who aren't
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2012-07-05
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Claudia Cowan
|
Every summer across the country , more than 3 million children eat for free at more than 30,000 sites , from schools to recreation centers to migrant worker camps .
It 's a valuable resource for families who are struggling -- but , critics say , a convenient freebie for those who are n't .
At the `` Summer Fun Cafe , '' which Fox News visited in northern California , and others like it , meals are funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided at least half the children in the area qualify for free lunches during the school year .
But come summer , anyone 18 and under can pull up a chair to Uncle Sam 's table .
`` There 's no income requirement , no enrollment , no paperwork , '' said Monique Stovall , nutrition director for the San Juan Unified School District outside Sacramento . `` All children in the community in that age range can come eat with us for free . ''
Signs around the district headquarters advertise the fact that there is no eligibility requirement , and invite all kids to take advantage .
That 's why , along with a choice of sandwich , fresh fruit , and milk , these free summer lunches come with a side of controversy . Critics wonder if the `` come one , come all '' invitation could have taxpayers feeding any child , whether they 're needy or not .
Taxpayer watchdog groups say most Americans are fine helping children truly in need . But Jon Coupal with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association asks : `` If someone is coming from a family that makes a quarter-of-a-million dollars a year , and they 're not checking eligibility when they 're coming in the door , I think most people would wonder , 'Am I paying for this ? ' ''
For many low-income families , a free lunch means more money can go toward other meals or necessities . For those who can afford to feed their children , it 's an easy way to get fed and go .
`` Normally we would n't qualify for a free lunch , but we 're close and it 's convenient , and my kids like it -- that 's important , '' said mom Julie Marks , who brought her two young boys .
In many cases , charity and nonprofit groups help sponsor free meal sites in their community . According to program supporters , the summer lunch program is easier to administer when the location qualifies , as opposed to the user .
`` We do n't have to ask your income , because the overall purpose of the program is to provide a healthy meal to children , '' Stovall said .
Organizers contend after a summer of nourishing meals , these kids will do better when school resumes in the fall . Monitors are on hand to make sure that the lunch is eaten on site , and that the adults do n't mooch off the kids .
|
Every summer across the country, more than 3 million children eat for free at more than 30,000 sites, from schools to recreation centers to migrant worker camps.
It's a valuable resource for families who are struggling -- but, critics say, a convenient freebie for those who aren't.
At the "Summer Fun Cafe," which Fox News visited in northern California, and others like it, meals are funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided at least half the children in the area qualify for free lunches during the school year.
But come summer, anyone 18 and under can pull up a chair to Uncle Sam's table.
"There's no income requirement, no enrollment, no paperwork," said Monique Stovall, nutrition director for the San Juan Unified School District outside Sacramento. "All children in the community in that age range can come eat with us for free."
Signs around the district headquarters advertise the fact that there is no eligibility requirement, and invite all kids to take advantage.
That's why, along with a choice of sandwich, fresh fruit, and milk, these free summer lunches come with a side of controversy. Critics wonder if the "come one, come all" invitation could have taxpayers feeding any child, whether they're needy or not.
Taxpayer watchdog groups say most Americans are fine helping children truly in need. But Jon Coupal with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association asks: "If someone is coming from a family that makes a quarter-of-a-million dollars a year, and they're not checking eligibility when they're coming in the door, I think most people would wonder, 'Am I paying for this?'"
For many low-income families, a free lunch means more money can go toward other meals or necessities. For those who can afford to feed their children, it's an easy way to get fed and go.
"Normally we wouldn't qualify for a free lunch, but we're close and it's convenient, and my kids like it -- that's important," said mom Julie Marks, who brought her two young boys.
In many cases, charity and nonprofit groups help sponsor free meal sites in their community. According to program supporters, the summer lunch program is easier to administer when the location qualifies, as opposed to the user.
"We don't have to ask your income, because the overall purpose of the program is to provide a healthy meal to children," Stovall said.
Organizers contend after a summer of nourishing meals, these kids will do better when school resumes in the fall. Monitors are on hand to make sure that the lunch is eaten on site, and that the adults don't mooch off the kids.
|
www.foxnews.com
| 1right
|
IgcAG6z0pZQcM10a
|
politics
|
Politico
| 00
|
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/protest-movement-republicans-234863
|
Inside the protest movement that has Republicans reeling
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2017-02-10
|
Elana Schor, Rachael Bade, Eli Stokols, Josh Gerstein
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Congress Inside the protest movement that has Republicans reeling A group of former House Democratic staffers wanted to channel their post-election grief . They never imagined what would happen next .
GRAND RAPIDS , Mich — Hill Republicans are openly accusing liberal mega-donors of bankrolling the tide of local protesters storming their offices . They ’ re beefing up their physical protection from demonstrators . And they ’ re imploring out-of-state critics to stop clogging their phone lines .
“ It ’ s just yelling and criticizing . There is no substance , ” said Rep. Dave Brat ( R-Va. ) . “ It ’ s a protest against the election . ”
To which Angel Padilla , a co-founder of the group organizing the demonstrations that have spread across the country in a matter of weeks , had this to say : You 'd better get used to it .
`` We want to pressure these members of Congress for as long as we have this president , ” Padilla said .
Dubbed “ Indivisible , ” the group launched as a way for Padilla and a handful of fellow ex-Democratic aides to channel their post-election heartbreak into a manual for quashing President Donald Trump ’ s agenda . They drafted a 26-page protest guide for activists , full of pointers on how to bird dog their members of Congress in the language of Capitol insiders .
The booklet concludes with a stirring promise to fellow Trump enemies : “ Good luck — we will win . ”
The group isn ’ t planning to limit itself to the town-hall resistance to repealing Obamacare that it ’ s becoming known for . Indivisible has marshaled demonstrations against Trump ’ s Cabinet nominees and his immigration order , and it ’ s partnering with the organizers of the Jan. 21 Women ’ s March for a new action next week .
Its handful of senior leaders count about 100 contributors to their national organizing work but insist that all are working on a volunteer basis . They know conservatives are spreading unfounded rumors that their success is being driven by wealthy donors like George Soros , which they flatly deny .
“ It doesn ’ t matter who we take money from — we ’ re always going to get blamed as a Soros group , even if we don ’ t take money from Soros , ” said Padilla , now an analyst with the National Immigration Law Center . “ That ’ s one of the attacks and that ’ s fine . ”
The group began when Ezra Levin , a former aide to Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett , commiserated over the election in late November with his wife Leah Greenberg , a longtime aide to ex-Virginia Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello . The couple was “ going through the stages of grief , like a lot of progressives , ” Levin recalled in an interview , “ and wanted to do what we could to help . ”
They got to work on what became the `` Indivisible Guide , '' billed as a set of “ best practices for making Congress listen. ” The manual borrows openly from the early tactics of the Tea Party , which sprouted on the strength of local conservative resistance to former President Barack Obama ’ s hefty government stimulus bill and health care reform plan .
“ Trump is not popular , ” the guide states . “ He does not have a mandate . He does not have large congressional majorities . If a small minority in the Tea Party could stop President Obama , then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump . ”
The Indivisible manual is often blunt about what it says members of Congress really tick — and how protesters might use it to their advantage . One chart compares what `` your MoC cares a lot about '' ( an example : `` an interest group 's endorsement '' ) vs. what a lawmaker `` does n't care much about '' ( for one , `` your thoughtful analysis of the proposed bill '' ) .
Levin , Greenberg , Padilla , and another former Doggett aide , Jeremy Haile , continued tweaking the guide even as their burgeoning effort mushroomed a full-fledged movement . About two dozen veteran Hill staffers and activists contributed or edited the guide in some way since that November first draft , according to Levin .
While the millions-strong turnout for anti-Trump Women ’ s Marches captured the nation last month , the Indivisible founders were conscious of the need for protest tactics that could truly force members of Congress to pay attention — or risk losing their seats .
“ Marches are great to bring people together , but our experience as congressional staffers had taught us that energy needed to be channeled in a smart way to make a difference on Capitol Hill , ” Haile said .
Indivisible 's founders never planned or expected the groundswell of interest that resulted from their guide , which prompted them to organize as a 501 ( c ) 4 group this month . `` The last thing the progressive ecosystem really needed was yet another nonprofit , '' Levin said .
But Indivisible 's guide has spread at the grassroots level at an unpredictable speed this year , with the help of other liberal groups amplifying its message . Less than two months after the group launched its website , 225,000 interested participants have registered to learn more , according to Levin .
It helped that Doggett was one of the first Democrats targeted by the tea party in the summer of 2009 . During one of his routine Saturday morning office hours that August , hundreds of local conservative activists showed up wearing Revolutionary War costumes , Haile recalled . They chanted and jeered while carrying tombstones and coffins , and the chaotic scene caught the attention of the national media . Doggett required an escort to leave his own event that day .
Fast forward to last weekend . Police escorted Rep. Tom McClintock ( R-Calif. ) out of his own town hall meeting after a local Indivisible chapter joined other progressive groups to protest it .
When the tea party began rattling lawmakers with local disruptions , Haile explained , “ what mattered was this sense around the members that their constituents were unhappy . And what that is did is create discontent around Congress but also energized angry people who said , ' I ’ m angry ; we ’ re angry ; and if we join together we can make a difference and get members of Congress to change their positions . ' ”
That alignment of protesters galvanized by many different issues is a linchpin of Indivisible ’ s early success . The group doesn ’ t have a core policy mission : some chapters protest in defense of Obamacare ; others embrace criminal justice reform or rally against Trump ’ s controversial travel ban .
Chapters don ’ t even have to call themselves Indivisible . Levin estimated that no more than 40 percent of the 6,200 local affiliates registered on the group ’ s website use the name .
The organizers of Indivisible Grand Rapids , for example , hadn ’ t spoken to any original drafters in Washington before they helped marshal a crowd of several hundred to a Thursday night town hall meeting held by Rep. Justin Amash ( R-Mich. ) . Chapter leaders explained to ███ that they ’ d heard about the movement through friends , visited the website to register themselves , then found others registered in their area who wanted to start a group .
The Michiganders downloaded the Indivisible guide and started a Facebook group in mid-January . The group now includes more than 300 people , a third of whom are registered for a Sunday training session on how to approach lawmakers .
“ It ’ s important for us that we rise above ; we don ’ t want to be depicted in any way as only being an angry mob , and we ’ re not , ” said Claire Bode , 49 , the co-founder of Indivisible Grand Rapids . “ It ’ s a long-haul effort . ”
Indivisible is also embracing collaboration with other major anti-Trump protest outlets . Leaders of the group were in communication with Women ’ s March organizers before their main event on Jan. 21 , and that partnership will become official when the March unveils the third in its series of 10 direct actions that attendees have been asked to pursue in their communities .
In addition , MoveOn.org and the Working Families Party joined with Indivisible for its first nationwide call on Jan. 22 . Nearly 60,000 people phoned in that day , according to Levin and MoveOn organizing director Victoria Kaplan . Indivisible estimates that its second national call , on the impact of Trump ’ s immigration order with assistance from the ACLU and Padilla ’ s group , drew 35,000 people .
Kaplan said MoveOn plans to team up again with Indivisible ahead of the Presidents ' Day recess week . They want to help to major local chapters organize demonstrations while lawmakers are back home in their districts .
The White House has aggressively pushed back at any comparisons between the new Indivisible-boosted efforts and the tea party . Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told Fox News on Monday that the anti-Obama conservative opposition was “ a very organic movement ” but the rippling wave of liberal protest is “ a very paid , Astroturf-type movement . ”
Rep. Steve King ( R-Iowa ) sounded a similar note in an interview . “ I think it ’ s going to be a demonstration a week until they run out of funding , ” he said , predicting that “ they will incrementally die off . ”
It does n't look like that will happen soon . Two House Republican chairmen faced fierce pushback at town halls in their districts on Thursday night , with budget committee chairwoman Rep. Diane Black fielding tough questions on the party ’ s lack of a united plan to replace Obamacare and oversight committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz shouted down by furious boos .
Organizers at the Amash town hall said they 're in it for the long haul . At the event in Grand Rapids , Mich. , they passed out pamphlets encouraging attendees to `` boo when he falls back on regressive values . ''
And they recruited the best interrogators in the crowd to join their cause .
`` Do you mind if I grab your contact information ? '' group organizer Colin McWatters asked one Amash constituent who grilled the lawmaker about GOP plans to repeal Obamacare .
|
Congress Inside the protest movement that has Republicans reeling A group of former House Democratic staffers wanted to channel their post-election grief. They never imagined what would happen next.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — Hill Republicans are openly accusing liberal mega-donors of bankrolling the tide of local protesters storming their offices. They’re beefing up their physical protection from demonstrators. And they’re imploring out-of-state critics to stop clogging their phone lines.
“It’s just yelling and criticizing. There is no substance,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.). “It’s a protest against the election.”
Story Continued Below
To which Angel Padilla, a co-founder of the group organizing the demonstrations that have spread across the country in a matter of weeks, had this to say: You'd better get used to it.
"We want to pressure these members of Congress for as long as we have this president,” Padilla said.
Dubbed “Indivisible,” the group launched as a way for Padilla and a handful of fellow ex-Democratic aides to channel their post-election heartbreak into a manual for quashing President Donald Trump’s agenda. They drafted a 26-page protest guide for activists, full of pointers on how to bird dog their members of Congress in the language of Capitol insiders.
The booklet concludes with a stirring promise to fellow Trump enemies: “Good luck — we will win.”
The group isn’t planning to limit itself to the town-hall resistance to repealing Obamacare that it’s becoming known for. Indivisible has marshaled demonstrations against Trump’s Cabinet nominees and his immigration order, and it’s partnering with the organizers of the Jan. 21 Women’s March for a new action next week.
Its handful of senior leaders count about 100 contributors to their national organizing work but insist that all are working on a volunteer basis. They know conservatives are spreading unfounded rumors that their success is being driven by wealthy donors like George Soros, which they flatly deny.
“It doesn’t matter who we take money from — we’re always going to get blamed as a Soros group, even if we don’t take money from Soros,” said Padilla, now an analyst with the National Immigration Law Center. “That’s one of the attacks and that’s fine.”
The group began when Ezra Levin, a former aide to Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, commiserated over the election in late November with his wife Leah Greenberg, a longtime aide to ex-Virginia Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello. The couple was “going through the stages of grief, like a lot of progressives,” Levin recalled in an interview, “and wanted to do what we could to help.”
They got to work on what became the "Indivisible Guide," billed as a set of “best practices for making Congress listen.” The manual borrows openly from the early tactics of the Tea Party, which sprouted on the strength of local conservative resistance to former President Barack Obama’s hefty government stimulus bill and health care reform plan.
“Trump is not popular,” the guide states. “He does not have a mandate. He does not have large congressional majorities. If a small minority in the Tea Party could stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump.”
The Indivisible manual is often blunt about what it says members of Congress really tick — and how protesters might use it to their advantage. One chart compares what "your MoC cares a lot about" (an example: "an interest group's endorsement") vs. what a lawmaker "doesn't care much about" (for one, "your thoughtful analysis of the proposed bill").
Levin, Greenberg, Padilla, and another former Doggett aide, Jeremy Haile, continued tweaking the guide even as their burgeoning effort mushroomed a full-fledged movement. About two dozen veteran Hill staffers and activists contributed or edited the guide in some way since that November first draft, according to Levin.
While the millions-strong turnout for anti-Trump Women’s Marches captured the nation last month, the Indivisible founders were conscious of the need for protest tactics that could truly force members of Congress to pay attention — or risk losing their seats.
“Marches are great to bring people together, but our experience as congressional staffers had taught us that energy needed to be channeled in a smart way to make a difference on Capitol Hill,” Haile said.
Indivisible's founders never planned or expected the groundswell of interest that resulted from their guide, which prompted them to organize as a 501(c)4 group this month. "The last thing the progressive ecosystem really needed was yet another nonprofit," Levin said.
But Indivisible's guide has spread at the grassroots level at an unpredictable speed this year, with the help of other liberal groups amplifying its message. Less than two months after the group launched its website, 225,000 interested participants have registered to learn more, according to Levin.
It helped that Doggett was one of the first Democrats targeted by the tea party in the summer of 2009. During one of his routine Saturday morning office hours that August, hundreds of local conservative activists showed up wearing Revolutionary War costumes, Haile recalled. They chanted and jeered while carrying tombstones and coffins, and the chaotic scene caught the attention of the national media. Doggett required an escort to leave his own event that day.
Fast forward to last weekend. Police escorted Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) out of his own town hall meeting after a local Indivisible chapter joined other progressive groups to protest it.
When the tea party began rattling lawmakers with local disruptions, Haile explained, “what mattered was this sense around the members that their constituents were unhappy. And what that is did is create discontent around Congress but also energized angry people who said, 'I’m angry; we’re angry; and if we join together we can make a difference and get members of Congress to change their positions.'”
That alignment of protesters galvanized by many different issues is a linchpin of Indivisible’s early success. The group doesn’t have a core policy mission: some chapters protest in defense of Obamacare; others embrace criminal justice reform or rally against Trump’s controversial travel ban.
Chapters don’t even have to call themselves Indivisible. Levin estimated that no more than 40 percent of the 6,200 local affiliates registered on the group’s website use the name.
The organizers of Indivisible Grand Rapids, for example, hadn’t spoken to any original drafters in Washington before they helped marshal a crowd of several hundred to a Thursday night town hall meeting held by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.). Chapter leaders explained to POLITICO that they’d heard about the movement through friends, visited the website to register themselves, then found others registered in their area who wanted to start a group.
The Michiganders downloaded the Indivisible guide and started a Facebook group in mid-January. The group now includes more than 300 people, a third of whom are registered for a Sunday training session on how to approach lawmakers.
“It’s important for us that we rise above; we don’t want to be depicted in any way as only being an angry mob, and we’re not,” said Claire Bode, 49, the co-founder of Indivisible Grand Rapids. “It’s a long-haul effort.”
Indivisible is also embracing collaboration with other major anti-Trump protest outlets. Leaders of the group were in communication with Women’s March organizers before their main event on Jan. 21, and that partnership will become official when the March unveils the third in its series of 10 direct actions that attendees have been asked to pursue in their communities.
In addition, MoveOn.org and the Working Families Party joined with Indivisible for its first nationwide call on Jan. 22. Nearly 60,000 people phoned in that day, according to Levin and MoveOn organizing director Victoria Kaplan. Indivisible estimates that its second national call, on the impact of Trump’s immigration order with assistance from the ACLU and Padilla’s group, drew 35,000 people.
Kaplan said MoveOn plans to team up again with Indivisible ahead of the Presidents' Day recess week. They want to help to major local chapters organize demonstrations while lawmakers are back home in their districts.
The White House has aggressively pushed back at any comparisons between the new Indivisible-boosted efforts and the tea party. Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told Fox News on Monday that the anti-Obama conservative opposition was “a very organic movement” but the rippling wave of liberal protest is “a very paid, Astroturf-type movement.”
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) sounded a similar note in an interview. “I think it’s going to be a demonstration a week until they run out of funding,” he said, predicting that “they will incrementally die off.”
It doesn't look like that will happen soon. Two House Republican chairmen faced fierce pushback at town halls in their districts on Thursday night, with budget committee chairwoman Rep. Diane Black fielding tough questions on the party’s lack of a united plan to replace Obamacare and oversight committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz shouted down by furious boos.
Organizers at the Amash town hall said they're in it for the long haul. At the event in Grand Rapids, Mich., they passed out pamphlets encouraging attendees to "boo when he falls back on regressive values."
And they recruited the best interrogators in the crowd to join their cause.
"Do you mind if I grab your contact information?" group organizer Colin McWatters asked one Amash constituent who grilled the lawmaker about GOP plans to repeal Obamacare.
The constituent signed up.
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www.politico.com
| 0left
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U4Xq3byHnjXJKsQS
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immigration
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Politico
| 00
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/20/sessions-justice-department-staff-exit-1005559
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Immigration hawks fear DOJ staff exodus
|
2018-11-20
|
Rebecca Morin, Eliana Johnson, Darren Samuelsohn
|
The Justice Department is facing a likely senior staff exodus once President Donald Trump taps a permanent replacement for ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions , creating a leadership vacuum that has troubled hard-line immigration activists .
According to more than a half-dozen former and current administration officials , at least four top officials — mostly Sessions loyalists — have either quit or are eyeing the exit as they await Trump ’ s decision on who will succeed their former boss , who implemented and vigorously defended even Trump ’ s most controversial immigration policies .
Among those leaving are Danielle Cutrona , a senior counsel to Sessions who had been with him since his Senate days . She departed DOJ last Friday . Rachael Tucker , a senior counselor to the attorney general , could also exit “ in the next couple of months , ” citing her fidelity to Sessions , or possibly take another job within the agency , said two sources close to the situation . Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Wood , another former Sessions Senate staffer , may also soon make an exit , according to one senior administration official .
And while the White House could find another strident immigration hawk to lead DOJ and name ideologically similar aides , several of the names being floated for attorney general — such as former New Jersey Gov . Chris Christie and George H.W . Bush-era Attorney General Bill Barr — represent a more GOP establishment line on the subject .
███ Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the # 1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from ███ . You can unsubscribe at any time .
It ’ s a situation that conservatives who support reduced immigration have long feared . Even Trump ’ s critics concede that Sessions ’ staff has dutifully guided the president ’ s hard-line immigration policies , propped up the president 's most contested executive actions and added a record number of adjudicators to U.S. immigration courts . Sessions also made headlines for his defense of the administration ’ s decision to separate migrant children from parents who have crossed the border illegally .
More recently , Sessions personally guided the White House as Trump attempted to dramatically limit asylum applications , removing some language in the process and ultimately signing off on the new rule , according to two DOJ officials .
“ For better or for worse , you can not say [ Sessions ] has not had a very profound impact , ” said Leon Fresco , head of the DOJ ’ s Office of Immigration Litigation under President Barack Obama .
“ He ’ s been a guiding force in moving both the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to draft and implement some of the most restrictive rules on immigration , ” he added .
A DOJ leadership void could leave DHS to take up the immigration mantle , a prospect that worries advocates of stricter border laws , many of whom have been disappointed in current DHS chief Kirstjen Nielsen 's performance . While DHS has the power to enforce immigration policies — a topic Trump recently claimed Nielsen could be `` much tougher '' on — DOJ is the agency that can set uncompromising rules .
And DHS may soon be poised to get a more pugnacious leader on the subject , increasing the chance that the agency asserts itself more on topics like border crossings . Trump is considering replacing Nielsen with Thomas Homan , a tough-talking lawman who once recommended charging so-called sanctuary-city politicians “ with crimes . ”
“ Depending on who is named DHS secretary , some leadership may shift back over to the person in that role , ” said Jessica Vaughan , director of policy studies at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies .
Without Sessions and his cohort of aides atop the agency , immigration hard-liners are wondering whether his protégé , senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller , can stay the course on the administration 's effort to remake decades of immigration policy by boosting border enforcement and immigration prosecutions and challenging states that refuse cooperation with federal immigration authorities .
“ Everyone involved on immigration issues has witnessed a long list of things that got done '' under Sessions , said Vaughan . A fan of Sessions , Vaughan griped about the lack of an “ obvious candidate ” to take control of the agency if the president wants immigration to continue to be one of its highest-priority issues .
The uncertainty surrounding Trump ’ s pick for attorney general , combined with growing expectations that the White House won ’ t announce its nominee until mid-December at the earliest , has left some fifth-floor staffers feeling as though they ’ re in limbo , wondering whether it ’ s time to leave the administration or worth the wait to see who takes over as attorney general . Sessions has encouraged his loyalists to stick around to see who might take over for him .
Although Cutrona has already left DOJ , several other senior leaders eyeing the door are expected to stick around long enough to ensure “ a smooth transition , ” said one senior administration official , who claimed staffers who have been at the agency since Trump ’ s inauguration are `` burnt out . '' And a DOJ spokesperson said Tucker `` plans to stay [ and ] may take on a different role , '' though such a move has yet to be finalized or announced .
Matthew Whitaker , Sessions ’ former chief of staff , has taken over as acting attorney general , but multiple sources said they doubt Trump will nominate Whitaker to take over permanently . Whitaker ’ s appointment has also been challenged by Democratic lawmakers and conservative legal scholars , including George Conway , the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway , who argue that Trump illegally evaded the normal DOJ line of succession . The White House has justified its decision by pointing to the Vacancies Reform Act , which allows the president to temporarily fill most empty executive branch positions .
To replace Whitaker , the White House is looking at a slate of candidates . In addition to Christie and Barr , Trump is eyeing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar , outgoing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Solicitor General Noel Francisco . Mark Filip , a deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration , is another option . McClatchy also reported that the White House had discussed the job with Janice Rogers Brown , a retired D.C. circuit judge and former California Supreme Court justice .
“ [ Sessions ] would want them to stay there and do their job if they really enjoy it , ” said a source close to the former attorney general , adding that “ some are still going to feel that out of a sense of loyalty [ they ] need to leave . ”
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The uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general has left some Justice Department staffers feeling as though they’re in limbo. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images Justice Department Immigration hawks fear DOJ staff exodus Several Jeff Sessions loyalists have either quit or are eyeing the exit as they wait to see who will succeed their former boss.
The Justice Department is facing a likely senior staff exodus once President Donald Trump taps a permanent replacement for ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, creating a leadership vacuum that has troubled hard-line immigration activists.
According to more than a half-dozen former and current administration officials, at least four top officials — mostly Sessions loyalists — have either quit or are eyeing the exit as they await Trump’s decision on who will succeed their former boss, who implemented and vigorously defended even Trump’s most controversial immigration policies.
Story Continued Below
Among those leaving are Danielle Cutrona, a senior counsel to Sessions who had been with him since his Senate days. She departed DOJ last Friday. Rachael Tucker, a senior counselor to the attorney general, could also exit “in the next couple of months,” citing her fidelity to Sessions, or possibly take another job within the agency, said two sources close to the situation. Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Wood, another former Sessions Senate staffer, may also soon make an exit, according to one senior administration official.
And while the White House could find another strident immigration hawk to lead DOJ and name ideologically similar aides, several of the names being floated for attorney general — such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and George H.W. Bush-era Attorney General Bill Barr — represent a more GOP establishment line on the subject.
POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
It’s a situation that conservatives who support reduced immigration have long feared. Even Trump’s critics concede that Sessions’ staff has dutifully guided the president’s hard-line immigration policies, propped up the president's most contested executive actions and added a record number of adjudicators to U.S. immigration courts. Sessions also made headlines for his defense of the administration’s decision to separate migrant children from parents who have crossed the border illegally.
More recently, Sessions personally guided the White House as Trump attempted to dramatically limit asylum applications, removing some language in the process and ultimately signing off on the new rule, according to two DOJ officials.
“For better or for worse, you cannot say [Sessions] has not had a very profound impact,” said Leon Fresco, head of the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation under President Barack Obama.
“He’s been a guiding force in moving both the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to draft and implement some of the most restrictive rules on immigration,” he added.
A DOJ leadership void could leave DHS to take up the immigration mantle, a prospect that worries advocates of stricter border laws, many of whom have been disappointed in current DHS chief Kirstjen Nielsen's performance. While DHS has the power to enforce immigration policies — a topic Trump recently claimed Nielsen could be "much tougher" on — DOJ is the agency that can set uncompromising rules.
And DHS may soon be poised to get a more pugnacious leader on the subject, increasing the chance that the agency asserts itself more on topics like border crossings. Trump is considering replacing Nielsen with Thomas Homan, a tough-talking lawman who once recommended charging so-called sanctuary-city politicians “with crimes.”
“Depending on who is named DHS secretary, some leadership may shift back over to the person in that role,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.
Without Sessions and his cohort of aides atop the agency, immigration hard-liners are wondering whether his protégé, senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, can stay the course on the administration's effort to remake decades of immigration policy by boosting border enforcement and immigration prosecutions and challenging states that refuse cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
“Everyone involved on immigration issues has witnessed a long list of things that got done" under Sessions, said Vaughan. A fan of Sessions, Vaughan griped about the lack of an “obvious candidate” to take control of the agency if the president wants immigration to continue to be one of its highest-priority issues.
The uncertainty surrounding Trump’s pick for attorney general, combined with growing expectations that the White House won’t announce its nominee until mid-December at the earliest, has left some fifth-floor staffers feeling as though they’re in limbo, wondering whether it’s time to leave the administration or worth the wait to see who takes over as attorney general. Sessions has encouraged his loyalists to stick around to see who might take over for him.
Although Cutrona has already left DOJ, several other senior leaders eyeing the door are expected to stick around long enough to ensure “a smooth transition,” said one senior administration official, who claimed staffers who have been at the agency since Trump’s inauguration are "burnt out." And a DOJ spokesperson said Tucker "plans to stay [and] may take on a different role," though such a move has yet to be finalized or announced.
Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’ former chief of staff, has taken over as acting attorney general, but multiple sources said they doubt Trump will nominate Whitaker to take over permanently. Whitaker’s appointment has also been challenged by Democratic lawmakers and conservative legal scholars, including George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who argue that Trump illegally evaded the normal DOJ line of succession. The White House has justified its decision by pointing to the Vacancies Reform Act, which allows the president to temporarily fill most empty executive branch positions.
To replace Whitaker, the White House is looking at a slate of candidates. In addition to Christie and Barr, Trump is eyeing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, outgoing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Solicitor General Noel Francisco. Mark Filip, a deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, is another option. McClatchy also reported that the White House had discussed the job with Janice Rogers Brown, a retired D.C. circuit judge and former California Supreme Court justice.
“[Sessions] would want them to stay there and do their job if they really enjoy it,” said a source close to the former attorney general, adding that “some are still going to feel that out of a sense of loyalty [they] need to leave.”
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The Flip Side
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https://www.theflipside.io/archives/trump-on-foreign-intelligence
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Trump on Foreign Intelligence
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Some suggest that Congress “ remove Trump from office , so that he can not abuse incumbency to subvert the electoral process , but let the American people make the judgment on whether or not he gets a second term… Removing Trump from office for the remainder of his term would disable him from abusing presidential power again and protect the integrity of the electoral process from inappropriate interference . At the same time , letting him run for a second term would permit the American electorate to decide whether Trump , despite his attempt to subvert the system , should have another chance… Decoupling removal from disqualification lowers the stakes and changes the constitutional calculus . As long as Trump can run again , Republicans can not hide behind a claim that they are [ the ] ones protecting voter choice by opposing impeachment. ” Edward B. Foley , Politico
“ In the absence of an explicit quid pro quo over restarting aid , the context and circumstances are what will become the focus of the investigation . There is enough here to support impeachment . Whether it is also enough to convince Republicans and lead to removal is another matter. ” Noah Feldman , Bloomberg
“ Trump ’ s defenders will say this evidence is all circumstantial . But circumstantial evidence is not weak evidence : it ’ s simply evidence based on the circumstances in which an act of wrongdoing is committed — such as the license plate of a car that speeds away from a bank just after that bank is robbed . Criminals are convicted on such evidence all the time . They will also say that there ’ s no explicit quid pro quo proposal here . But… ‘ even when a corrupt deal is struck implicitly , the government can still prosecute extortion on a quid pro quo basis . Circumstantial evidence can be enough to prove a criminal exchange. ’ …
“ Here is what a presidential president might have said : If there is one thing the past three years have shown , the only good answer to a foreign country offering dirt on your political opponent is to decline and immediately report the offer to the FBI . Our country is still enduring the fallout from Russian interference in 2016 . It has cast a pall on my presidency and led to the indictment of former senior government and campaign officials . The last thing any president should do is encourage foreign meddling in our next presidential election… “ It is important for me to be clear on this , because it is not only a question of me or my campaign potentially breaking the law . It is also a matter of principle . Our political differences matter less than our commitment to one another as citizens loyal to the same constitutional order and committed to defending it in a world in which other states , friendly or unfriendly , pursue their own national interests . As president , I will defend this principle from the same erosion of other norms we have seen as our politics have gotten sharper. ” Editorial Board , Washington Post
“ Foreign dirt wouldn ’ t come from Norway or other stable democratic allies like Ireland , France , and England . It would come from corrupt authoritarian regimes that want to manipulate American democracy for their own ends . In 2016 , the Russian government favored Trump because he appeared open to relieving U.S. sanctions on the country . What if Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies try to repay Trump ’ s support as president by meddling in 2020 ? ... What if Chinese leaders try to push the election in his opponents ’ favor , in hopes of ending the trade war ? … Thanks to Trump ’ s actions , Americans risk inheriting a democracy where elections are playgrounds for foreign powers rather than an expression of citizens ’ wishes. ” Matt Ford , New Republic
Regarding Christopher Steele , a foreign national hired by the Clinton campaign in 2016 , “ ‘ You can pay a foreign national to provide you with services , so a campaign , for instance , could have a campaign attorney who is a Canadian citizen ’ … If this kind of seems like a loophole , experts pointed out that it would be really hard to run a campaign otherwise . It would mean having to worry if the campaign signs you printed came from a foreign company , or if the catering firm you hired had foreign workers . If a campaign is paying someone for work or services , they ’ re being compensated . But where that doesn ’ t happen , and a campaign is accepting a contribution — or ‘ thing of value ’ — from a foreign government , the question then is what ’ s in it for them ? ” Jen Kirby , Vox
“ When [ White House senior advisor Jared ] Kushner was asked whether he would call the FBI if he received an email offering the Trump campaign help from the Russian government , he refused to answer , saying it was a hypothetical question . Besides , he added , he never received the information he was promised the last time that offer was made . This is like asking someone who stole silverware from your house whether he would steal from you again and him responding it was a hypothetical question and , besides , the silverware he stole the first time turned out to be worthless . It 's unlikely you would invite him over again . However , Donald Trump is running for re-election in 2020. ” Larry Noble , CNN
“ Mueller opted not to charge Trump Jr. for accepting a meeting in which he expected to receive opposition research on Clinton and the Democrats from a Russian lawyer in 2016 . But it was not because there was nothing potentially wrong with this ; it was because Mueller decided it was unlikely that it could be proven Trump Jr. knew that it was illegal and/or that the information was something ‘ of value ’ ... [ but ] even if Trump Jr. was ignorant of the law , that defense doesn ’ t really fly with his father today — not after a two-year investigation probing exactly that issue. ” Aaron Blake , Washington Post
The right argues that the FBI should be notified , but accuses Democrats of double standards regarding foreign contributions to elections .
The right argues that the FBI should be notified , but accuses Democrats of double standards regarding foreign contributions to elections .
“ The good thing you can say for President Trump in this interaction is… that President Trump is the most honest president that we 've ever had . He is . Call him honest Donald . You have Honest Abe and now you can have honest Donald . Why is he the most honest president ? Because President Trump brags about doing all the bad things and thinking all the bad things that all the other presidents have also done but they 've hidden . He 's open about it . He 's honest about it…
“ However , what this also means is then we need to articulate that it 's bad . You do n't want to incentivize foreign governments to spy on American citizens… You do n't want it to seem like the President of the United States is encouraging you to do that or offering you something in return . That 's not a good idea . It 's refreshing to hear a guy speak honestly but then it 's incumbent on all the rest of us to say right that 's true and that is honest , but we should n't do that . ”
Sen. Lindsey Graham ( R-SC ) tweeted , “ I believe that it should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to their campaign – either directly or indirectly – to inform the FBI and reject the offer… the outrage some of my Democratic colleagues are raising about President Trump ’ s comments will hopefully be met with equal outrage that their own party hired a foreign national to do opposition research on President Trump ’ s campaign and that information , unverified , was apparently used by the FBI to obtain a warrant against an American citizen . ”
“ You see , it ’ s perfectly fine to pay a foreign spy to use Russian government sources ( including FSB agents ) to put together opposition research on Trump . It ’ s also completely acceptable for the DNC to seek out help from Ukraine to come up with dirt on Paul Manafort in order to hurt Trump . But Trump answers a hypothetical honestly instead of choosing to lie like every other politician and it ’ s time to clutch the pearls…
“ There ’ s no moral , nor legal imperative that if a German ( for example ) offers documented wrongdoing by your opponent , you must immediately turn it over to the FBI and not use it . We live in a global society . Negative information about political candidates comes from all corners and travels far and wide via the internet . This is especially true given how internationally connected and active many Presidential candidates are . If someone does something untoward in a foreign country , it ’ s logical that a foreign source would be the one to find out . ”
“ If Russia is calling to give the president information about a political opponent , odds are it is making mischief . But what if the call relaying such information comes from , say , Canada ? While it is possible that this could be nefarious , it is more likely that , like a good neighbor , Canada would be trying to warn the president about some peril to American interests…
“ In the 2016 election , Estonia did call President Obama ’ s administration to provide opposition research — specifically , to convey unverified intelligence that Russia might be channeling money into the Trump campaign . The Brits provided information too . So did the Aussies . So , according to former CIA director John Brennan , did a number of European governments . To be sure , these countries are our allies . But that hardly means they were concerned only for our well-being . Like Brennan , they had their own anti-Trump agendas . The foreign-affairs component of Trump ’ s populist platform seemed to be : better relations with Putin , NATO bashing , skepticism about American interventions and military commitments , and halting the U.S. taxpayer-funded gravy train for European security . Europeans did not like this , not one little bit . ”
It ’ s worth noting that “ conservative ideas were much more popular when not associated with the Republican party . In Washington State , voters narrowly rejected bringing affirmative action back to state contracting and university admissions… “ In Seattle , the self-proclaimed socialist city-council member appears to have lost her seat to a pro-business challenger . In Colorado , voters gave fiscal conservatives a big win by rejecting letting the state keep any tax revenues above the state spending cap , money that the state Taxpayer ’ s Bill of Rights currently guarantees as refunds to taxpayers . In Sussex County , N.J. , voters approved , by a 2-to-1 margin , a referendum directing the local freeholder board to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement . ( Washington , Colorado , New Jersey — notice these are places where Republican candidates have had no luck lately . ) ”
“ If a dozen drones or missiles can do the kind of damage to the world economy as did those fired on Saturday—shutting down about 6 percent of world oil production—imagine what a U.S.-Iran-Saudi war would do to the world economy . In recent decades , the U.S. has sold the Saudis hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment . Did our weapons sales carry a guarantee that we will also come and fight alongside the kingdom if it gets into a war with its neighbors ? … the nation does not want another war . How we avoid it , however , is becoming difficult to see . John Bolton may be gone from the West Wing , but his soul is marching on . ”
Others note , “ I ’ d hate to be a Democratic member of Congress trying to convince Joe Sixpack that this is a whole new ballgame . The transcript shows Trump being Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky trying to ingratiate himself with the big dog by , for instance , mentioning that he stays at Trump hotels . Trump ’ s conversation is typically scattershot , wandering all over the field , leaving a reasonable listener puzzled about what the takeaways are supposed to be… “ I think Joe Sixpack ’ s response is going to be a hearty shrug . After all that has emerged about Trump so far , his approval rating is closely tracking Obama ’ s approval at the same point in his presidency . To get Mr. Sixpack ’ s attention you are going to have to do better than this . ”
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Some suggest that Congress “remove Trump from office, so that he cannot abuse incumbency to subvert the electoral process, but let the American people make the judgment on whether or not he gets a second term… Removing Trump from office for the remainder of his term would disable him from abusing presidential power again and protect the integrity of the electoral process from inappropriate interference. At the same time, letting him run for a second term would permit the American electorate to decide whether Trump, despite his attempt to subvert the system, should have another chance… Decoupling removal from disqualification lowers the stakes and changes the constitutional calculus . As long as Trump can run again, Republicans cannot hide behind a claim that they are [the] ones protecting voter choice by opposing impeachment.” Edward B. Foley, Politico
“In the absence of an explicit quid pro quo over restarting aid, the context and circumstances are what will become the focus of the investigation. There is enough here to support impeachment. Whether it is also enough to convince Republicans and lead to removal is another matter.” Noah Feldman, Bloomberg
“Trump’s defenders will say this evidence is all circumstantial. But circumstantial evidence is not weak evidence: it’s simply evidence based on the circumstances in which an act of wrongdoing is committed — such as the license plate of a car that speeds away from a bank just after that bank is robbed. Criminals are convicted on such evidence all the time . They will also say that there’s no explicit quid pro quo proposal here. But… ‘even when a corrupt deal is struck implicitly, the government can still prosecute extortion on a quid pro quo basis. Circumstantial evidence can be enough to prove a criminal exchange.’…
“ Here is what a presidential president might have said : If there is one thing the past three years have shown, the only good answer to a foreign country offering dirt on your political opponent is to decline and immediately report the offer to the FBI. Our country is still enduring the fallout from Russian interference in 2016. It has cast a pall on my presidency and led to the indictment of former senior government and campaign officials. The last thing any president should do is encourage foreign meddling in our next presidential election… “It is important for me to be clear on this, because it is not only a question of me or my campaign potentially breaking the law. It is also a matter of principle. Our political differences matter less than our commitment to one another as citizens loyal to the same constitutional order and committed to defending it in a world in which other states, friendly or unfriendly, pursue their own national interests. As president, I will defend this principle from the same erosion of other norms we have seen as our politics have gotten sharper.” Editorial Board, Washington Post
“Foreign dirt wouldn’t come from Norway or other stable democratic allies like Ireland, France, and England. It would come from corrupt authoritarian regimes that want to manipulate American democracy for their own ends. In 2016, the Russian government favored Trump because he appeared open to relieving U.S. sanctions on the country. What if Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies try to repay Trump’s support as president by meddling in 2020?... What if Chinese leaders try to push the election in his opponents’ favor, in hopes of ending the trade war?… Thanks to Trump’s actions, Americans risk inheriting a democracy where elections are playgrounds for foreign powers rather than an expression of citizens’ wishes.” Matt Ford, New Republic
Regarding Christopher Steele, a foreign national hired by the Clinton campaign in 2016, “‘You can pay a foreign national to provide you with services, so a campaign, for instance, could have a campaign attorney who is a Canadian citizen’… If this kind of seems like a loophole, experts pointed out that it would be really hard to run a campaign otherwise. It would mean having to worry if the campaign signs you printed came from a foreign company, or if the catering firm you hired had foreign workers. If a campaign is paying someone for work or services, they’re being compensated. But where that doesn’t happen, and a campaign is accepting a contribution — or ‘thing of value’ — from a foreign government, the question then is what’s in it for them? ” Jen Kirby, Vox
“When [White House senior advisor Jared] Kushner was asked whether he would call the FBI if he received an email offering the Trump campaign help from the Russian government, he refused to answer, saying it was a hypothetical question. Besides, he added, he never received the information he was promised the last time that offer was made. This is like asking someone who stole silverware from your house whether he would steal from you again and him responding it was a hypothetical question and, besides, the silverware he stole the first time turned out to be worthless. It's unlikely you would invite him over again . However, Donald Trump is running for re-election in 2020.” Larry Noble, CNN
“Mueller opted not to charge Trump Jr. for accepting a meeting in which he expected to receive opposition research on Clinton and the Democrats from a Russian lawyer in 2016. But it was not because there was nothing potentially wrong with this; it was because Mueller decided it was unlikely that it could be proven Trump Jr. knew that it was illegal and/or that the information was something ‘of value’... [but] even if Trump Jr. was ignorant of the law, that defense doesn’t really fly with his father today — not after a two-year investigation probing exactly that issue.” Aaron Blake, Washington Post
From the Right
The right argues that the FBI should be notified, but accuses Democrats of double standards regarding foreign contributions to elections.
From the Right
The right argues that the FBI should be notified, but accuses Democrats of double standards regarding foreign contributions to elections.
“The good thing you can say for President Trump in this interaction is… that President Trump is the most honest president that we've ever had. He is. Call him honest Donald. You have Honest Abe and now you can have honest Donald. Why is he the most honest president? Because President Trump brags about doing all the bad things and thinking all the bad things that all the other presidents have also done but they've hidden. He's open about it. He's honest about it…
“However, what this also means is then we need to articulate that it's bad. You don't want to incentivize foreign governments to spy on American citizens… You don't want it to seem like the President of the United States is encouraging you to do that or offering you something in return. That's not a good idea. It's refreshing to hear a guy speak honestly but then it's incumbent on all the rest of us to say right that's true and that is honest, but we shouldn't do that.”
Michael Knowles, Daily Wire
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tweeted, “I believe that it should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to their campaign – either directly or indirectly – to inform the FBI and reject the offer… the outrage some of my Democratic colleagues are raising about President Trump’s comments will hopefully be met with equal outrage that their own party hired a foreign national to do opposition research on President Trump’s campaign and that information, unverified, was apparently used by the FBI to obtain a warrant against an American citizen.”
Lindsey Graham, Twitter
“You see, it’s perfectly fine to pay a foreign spy to use Russian government sources (including FSB agents) to put together opposition research on Trump. It’s also completely acceptable for the DNC to seek out help from Ukraine to come up with dirt on Paul Manafort in order to hurt Trump. But Trump answers a hypothetical honestly instead of choosing to lie like every other politician and it’s time to clutch the pearls…
“There’s no moral, nor legal imperative that if a German (for example) offers documented wrongdoing by your opponent, you must immediately turn it over to the FBI and not use it. We live in a global society. Negative information about political candidates comes from all corners and travels far and wide via the internet. This is especially true given how internationally connected and active many Presidential candidates are. If someone does something untoward in a foreign country, it’s logical that a foreign source would be the one to find out.”
Bonchie, RedState
“If Russia is calling to give the president information about a political opponent, odds are it is making mischief. But what if the call relaying such information comes from, say, Canada? While it is possible that this could be nefarious, it is more likely that, like a good neighbor, Canada would be trying to warn the president about some peril to American interests…
“In the 2016 election, Estonia did call President Obama’s administration to provide opposition research — specifically, to convey unverified intelligence that Russia might be channeling money into the Trump campaign. The Brits provided information too. So did the Aussies. So, according to former CIA director John Brennan, did a number of European governments. To be sure, these countries are our allies. But that hardly means they were concerned only for our well-being. Like Brennan, they had their own anti-Trump agendas. The foreign-affairs component of Trump’s populist platform seemed to be: better relations with Putin, NATO bashing, skepticism about American interventions and military commitments, and halting the U.S. taxpayer-funded gravy train for European security. Europeans did not like this, not one little bit.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
It’s worth noting that “conservative ideas were much more popular when not associated with the Republican party. In Washington State, voters narrowly rejected bringing affirmative action back to state contracting and university admissions… “In Seattle, the self-proclaimed socialist city-council member appears to have lost her seat to a pro-business challenger. In Colorado, voters gave fiscal conservatives a big win by rejecting letting the state keep any tax revenues above the state spending cap, money that the state Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights currently guarantees as refunds to taxpayers. In Sussex County, N.J., voters approved, by a 2-to-1 margin, a referendum directing the local freeholder board to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Washington, Colorado, New Jersey — notice these are places where Republican candidates have had no luck lately.)”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
“If a dozen drones or missiles can do the kind of damage to the world economy as did those fired on Saturday—shutting down about 6 percent of world oil production—imagine what a U.S.-Iran-Saudi war would do to the world economy. In recent decades, the U.S. has sold the Saudis hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment. Did our weapons sales carry a guarantee that we will also come and fight alongside the kingdom if it gets into a war with its neighbors?… the nation does not want another war. How we avoid it, however, is becoming difficult to see. John Bolton may be gone from the West Wing, but his soul is marching on.”
Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative
Others note, “I’d hate to be a Democratic member of Congress trying to convince Joe Sixpack that this is a whole new ballgame. The transcript shows Trump being Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky trying to ingratiate himself with the big dog by, for instance, mentioning that he stays at Trump hotels. Trump’s conversation is typically scattershot, wandering all over the field, leaving a reasonable listener puzzled about what the takeaways are supposed to be… “I think Joe Sixpack’s response is going to be a hearty shrug. After all that has emerged about Trump so far, his approval rating is closely tracking Obama’s approval at the same point in his presidency. To get Mr. Sixpack’s attention you are going to have to do better than this.”
Kyle Smith, National Review
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Fox Online News
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/29/obama-touts-clout-in-bid-to-calm-anxious-dems/
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Obama touts clout in bid to calm anxious Dems
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2013-07-29
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Chris Stirewalt, In July Of
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“ I ’ m not concerned about their opinions . Very few of them , by the way , are lawyers , much less constitutional lawyers . ”
-- President Obama talking to the New York Times about those in Congress who believe he is overstepping his bounds by refusing to enforce parts of his 2010 health law at the behest of large businesses .
Why is President Obama so eager to tout his executive authority and one-man policy clout when it comes to the economy while simultaneously talking down said economy ?
Heading into the coming clash over debt and spending , Obama and House Republicans want you to know that they both think the economy stinks . A lot .
The only question in Washington now is who ’ s to blame for the odor .
Since there is a mix of good and bad news on the economy , one might expect that we would hear an argument from someone that we need to maintain or accelerate the current course . But since the motley and somewhat scrofulous American economy goes hardest against the middle class , there ’ s not much sense in doing as the president formerly did and emphasizing the progress already made .
`` Alive , '' as in “ General Motors is alive… , ” isn ’ t cutting it anymore . And if the president wants to cement his legacy ( or a legacy more than his current one : a demographically different president who spent his two terms passing and then defending an unpopular heath law ) he will have to actually win the argument and convince people of the need for higher taxes and more government spending .
And to do that , Obama has to explain the need . Which means talking down his own economy . So what the president does is say that his 2009 stimulus spending package and other outlays helped end a short-term spiral and suggest that his two other big laws , the aforementioned health law and new bank regulations , will help shape a “ sustainable ” economy in the future .
Obama says that if Republicans had been willing to increase taxes and spending more than they did in the previous five years , the country would be farther down the road to economic security .
When we see headlines like “ 4 in 5 in USA face near-poverty , no work ” or hear that AARP is trying to recruit its members to sign up for food stamps , we understand why the president ’ s message about long-term economic insecurity finds a ready audience . While conservatives see these stories as evidence of a welfare state run amok , liberals and those in marginal economic groups are likely to see them as evidence of the need for more federal spending .
Obama Democrats argue that the collapsing core of the American economy and increasing reliance on welfare programs is exactly why this would be very bad to maintain current caps on automatic increases to federal spending , known in Washington as “ sequestration ” or any other limits on spending . By their thinking , elevated federal spending , combined with help from Uncle Ben at the Federal Reserve , is the only thing keeping the economy from going back down the chute .
Republicans , meanwhile , argue that the Obama effort to create “ sustainability ” is itself unsustainable . They blame higher taxes , deficit spending and expensive new regulations for not only stifling the recovery but further corroding the nation ’ s economic core . When Obama says that the country is transitioning to a new economy , conservatives agree . They just think that the transition is to a necrotic private sector and a nation of cat-food connoisseurs .
So heading into a massive battle over debt and spending , scheduled to begin against the backdrop of the opening of Obama ’ s new health-insurance entitlement program , Obama is determined to not let the Republicans cut anything . Republicans are determined to not let Obama spend or tax any more .
And in all likelihood , they ’ re both right . Obama ’ s round of attacks and campaigning ahead of the negotiations suggests he isn ’ t looking to make any concessions to the GOP . And the very fact that Republicans are debating whether to make the debt limit increase contingent on a delay of Obamacare – something the president would surely never allow – hints at the reality in Washington : We will again go to the brink and again continue to amble along it .
The antagonistic hybrid economics of the Obama era -- tax hikes but spending caps , more regulations but no stimulus subsidies – seem certain to continue . And what does that foretell for the next year ? As the Obama bundlers at Google might say : Garbage in , garbage out .
But the president still talks up his executive clout , placing himself on the hook for the problems . Recall that last year the president said “ we can ’ t wait ” and then proceeded to show not the expanse of executive power but rather its limits .
It can ’ t just be what his conservative critics claim that this is a narcissistic enterprise . Yes , as his New York Times interview shows , he has Gingrichian levels of intellectual self-regard . But there ’ s a practical consideration here . We ’ ll likely see the answer Wednesday when Obama goes to the Hill to try to corral anxious Democrats .
The president wants a unified blue team ahead of the big budget fight and needs a way to convince them to stay with him as they face difficult re-election cycles . Getting red-state Democrats geared up for another round of brinksmanship for the sake of breaking the back of the GOP is not easy task . With the president ’ s popularity slumping and scandals stills sapping his strength , Obama isn ’ t offering much to keep his fellow Democrats in line .
But if he can promise to use and expand his power – as he did with the decision to unilaterally delay an economically damaging provision of his health law – in ways to help the economy ahead of midterms , he might convince some Democrats to go cliff jumping with him one more time .
Executives can be expected to love expanded executive authority . But for Obama , creating at least the appearance of awesome economic powers has real-time consequences . There ’ s a chance Democrats will take a chance on a president with autocratic tendencies , but none that they would risk their re-elections for a lame duck .
Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News , and his POWER PLAY column appears Monday-Friday on FoxNews.com . Catch Chris Live online daily at 11:30amET at http : live.foxnews.com .
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“I’m not concerned about their opinions. Very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.”
-- President Obama talking to the New York Times about those in Congress who believe he is overstepping his bounds by refusing to enforce parts of his 2010 health law at the behest of large businesses.
Why is President Obama so eager to tout his executive authority and one-man policy clout when it comes to the economy while simultaneously talking down said economy?
Heading into the coming clash over debt and spending, Obama and House Republicans want you to know that they both think the economy stinks. A lot.
The only question in Washington now is who’s to blame for the odor.
Since there is a mix of good and bad news on the economy, one might expect that we would hear an argument from someone that we need to maintain or accelerate the current course. But since the motley and somewhat scrofulous American economy goes hardest against the middle class, there’s not much sense in doing as the president formerly did and emphasizing the progress already made.
"Alive," as in “General Motors is alive…,” isn’t cutting it anymore. And if the president wants to cement his legacy (or a legacy more than his current one: a demographically different president who spent his two terms passing and then defending an unpopular heath law) he will have to actually win the argument and convince people of the need for higher taxes and more government spending.
And to do that, Obama has to explain the need. Which means talking down his own economy. So what the president does is say that his 2009 stimulus spending package and other outlays helped end a short-term spiral and suggest that his two other big laws, the aforementioned health law and new bank regulations, will help shape a “sustainable” economy in the future.
Obama says that if Republicans had been willing to increase taxes and spending more than they did in the previous five years, the country would be farther down the road to economic security.
When we see headlines like “4 in 5 in USA face near-poverty, no work” or hear that AARP is trying to recruit its members to sign up for food stamps, we understand why the president’s message about long-term economic insecurity finds a ready audience. While conservatives see these stories as evidence of a welfare state run amok, liberals and those in marginal economic groups are likely to see them as evidence of the need for more federal spending.
Obama Democrats argue that the collapsing core of the American economy and increasing reliance on welfare programs is exactly why this would be very bad to maintain current caps on automatic increases to federal spending, known in Washington as “sequestration” or any other limits on spending. By their thinking, elevated federal spending, combined with help from Uncle Ben at the Federal Reserve, is the only thing keeping the economy from going back down the chute.
Republicans, meanwhile, argue that the Obama effort to create “sustainability” is itself unsustainable. They blame higher taxes, deficit spending and expensive new regulations for not only stifling the recovery but further corroding the nation’s economic core. When Obama says that the country is transitioning to a new economy, conservatives agree. They just think that the transition is to a necrotic private sector and a nation of cat-food connoisseurs.
[pullquote]
So heading into a massive battle over debt and spending, scheduled to begin against the backdrop of the opening of Obama’s new health-insurance entitlement program, Obama is determined to not let the Republicans cut anything. Republicans are determined to not let Obama spend or tax any more.
And in all likelihood, they’re both right. Obama’s round of attacks and campaigning ahead of the negotiations suggests he isn’t looking to make any concessions to the GOP. And the very fact that Republicans are debating whether to make the debt limit increase contingent on a delay of Obamacare – something the president would surely never allow – hints at the reality in Washington: We will again go to the brink and again continue to amble along it.
The antagonistic hybrid economics of the Obama era -- tax hikes but spending caps, more regulations but no stimulus subsidies – seem certain to continue. And what does that foretell for the next year? As the Obama bundlers at Google might say: Garbage in, garbage out.
But the president still talks up his executive clout, placing himself on the hook for the problems. Recall that last year the president said “we can’t wait” and then proceeded to show not the expanse of executive power but rather its limits.
It can’t just be what his conservative critics claim that this is a narcissistic enterprise. Yes, as his New York Times interview shows, he has Gingrichian levels of intellectual self-regard. But there’s a practical consideration here. We’ll likely see the answer Wednesday when Obama goes to the Hill to try to corral anxious Democrats.
The president wants a unified blue team ahead of the big budget fight and needs a way to convince them to stay with him as they face difficult re-election cycles. Getting red-state Democrats geared up for another round of brinksmanship for the sake of breaking the back of the GOP is not easy task. With the president’s popularity slumping and scandals stills sapping his strength, Obama isn’t offering much to keep his fellow Democrats in line.
But if he can promise to use and expand his power – as he did with the decision to unilaterally delay an economically damaging provision of his health law – in ways to help the economy ahead of midterms, he might convince some Democrats to go cliff jumping with him one more time.
Executives can be expected to love expanded executive authority. But for Obama, creating at least the appearance of awesome economic powers has real-time consequences. There’s a chance Democrats will take a chance on a president with autocratic tendencies, but none that they would risk their re-elections for a lame duck.
Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News, and his POWER PLAY column appears Monday-Friday on FoxNews.com. Catch Chris Live online daily at 11:30amET at http:live.foxnews.com.
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https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/health/chloroquine-hydroxycholoroquine-drugs-explained/index.html
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Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine: what to know about the potential coronavirus drugs
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2020-03-23
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Eliott C. Mclaughlin
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( CNN ) As the world 's heath experts race to find treatments -- and eventually , a cure -- for the novel coronavirus , two drugs have jumped to the front of the conversation : chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine .
President Donald Trump has called the drugs , which are used to treat malaria and other conditions , game changers , and a rush to procure the pharmaceuticals spurred several US states to take measures to prevent shortages amid the Covid-19 pandemic
New York moved to begin trials Tuesday , procuring 70,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine and 750,000 doses of chloroquine , Gov . Andrew Cuomo said . In addition , Bayer , the drug maker , has donated 3 million doses of Resochin , its brand name for chloroquine , to the federal government .
Perhaps demonstrating why health officials are urging caution -- saying chloroquine requires further clinical study and might not be the panacea it 's billed to be -- officials in Nigeria 's Lagos state have reported three overdoses in the days since the drug entered the conversation surrounding the pandemic .
In Arizona , a man died after reportedly taking a nonmedical form of chloroquine used to fight parasites in aquariums .
So , what exactly are these drugs , and what promise do they hold ?
Chloroquine is used to treat malaria , as well as in chemoprophylaxis , which is the administering of drugs to prevent the development of disease , according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Since 2006 , it has not been recommended for use in severe malaria because of problems with resistance , particularly in the Oceania region , according to the World Health Organization .
WHO includes it on its list of `` essential medicines , '' meaning it should be kept affordable and accessible at all times .
JUST WATCHED Dr. Fauci : There is no 'magic drug ' for coronavirus Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Dr. Fauci : There is no 'magic drug ' for coronavirus 01:52
According to the Swiss-registered organization , Medicines for Malaria Venture , chloroquine is a derivative of quinine , which French chemists in 1820 isolated from the bark of the cinchona tree found in South America , employing it as a treatment for fevers .
German scientists created the synthetic chloroquine in 1934 as part of a class of anti-malarials , MMV said , and chloroquine and DDT became `` the two principal weapons in WHO 's global eradication malaria campaign '' following World War II , the organization said .
Hydroxychloroquine is what 's known as an analog of chloroquine , meaning the two have similar structures but different chemical and biological properties . The former is considered the less toxic derivative , according to studies .
It 's given to patients with rheumatoid arthritis , lupus and the blood disorder porphyria cutanea tarda , the CDC said .
The reason Trump lauds the drugs is because they 've been shown , in labs , to be effective against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses -- including the SARS strain that causes Covid-19 -- as well as other coronaviruses , the CDC said .
Hydroxychloroquine is being studied to determine if it can prevent the onset of Covid-19 before or after a patient is infected with the SARS coronavirus strain that causes it , and if it can be used to treat Covid-19 sufferers , the CDC said .
Because the drug has been in use for years , Trump said , it potentially poses fewer risks than a newly developed drug .
JUST WATCHED Inside Oxford lab developing 30 minute coronavirus test Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Inside Oxford lab developing 30 minute coronavirus test 02:05
`` The nice part is , '' he said last week , `` it 's been around for a long time , so we know that if things do n't go as planned , it 's not going to kill anybody . ''
The CDC cited a study , documented in the journal Bioscience Trends this month , that chloroquine phosphate has demonstrated `` apparent efficacy and acceptable safety against COVID-19-associated pneumonia '' in trials in China .
It is thus considered a recommended antiviral for Covid-19 treatment in China , and several countries are recommending both drugs for hospitalized Covid-19 patients , the CDC said .
Chloroquine also appears to have `` broad-spectrum antiviral properties '' and effects on immune response , Bayer said in its statement announcing the drug donations .
`` New data from initial preclinical and evolving clinical research conducted in China , while limited , shows potential for the use of Resochin in treating patients with COVID-19 infection , '' the statement said .
Regarding the combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin -- which Trump tweeted could be `` one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine '' -- a single `` small study '' shows the combination helped against the SARS strain that causes Covid-19 , the CDC said , but `` did not assess clinical benefits . ''
The CDC said the combination can disrupt the heart 's electrical activity and warns against prescribing the paired drugs to anyone with chronic medical conditions , such as renal failure or hepatic disease .
Chloroquine 's side effects include seizures , nausea , vomiting , deafness , vision changes and low blood pressure . Both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine , however , are reportedly well-tolerated in Covid-19 patients , according to the CDC .
JUST WATCHED Loss of smell and taste could be coronavirus symptoms Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Loss of smell and taste could be coronavirus symptoms 01:35
All that said , Dr. Anthony Fauci , the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has appeared alongside Trump at several news conferences , has said evidence of the drugs ' effectiveness is only anecdotal .
With respect to the SARS strain , the drugs ' effectiveness was never vetted in a clinical trial , he said .
The drugs may be effective against the novel coronavirus , Fauci said , but more data is needed to `` show it is truly safe and effective under the conditions of Covid-19 . ''
For these reasons , the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drugs for coronavirus treatment , despite Trump claiming Thursday the agency had done so
In a Thursday statement , the FDA said it had been working with government agencies and universities to learn whether chloroquine can reduce symptoms and stem the spread of Covid-19 in those with mild to moderate cases of the virus .
`` We also must ensure these products are effective ; otherwise we risk treating patients with a product that might not work when they could have pursued other , more appropriate treatments , '' FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in the statement .
During a meeting of the coronavirus task force , Hahn called for `` a large , pragmatic clinical trial to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered -- asked and answered . ''
JUST WATCHED Inside Italian hospital on frontline of coronavirus fight Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Inside Italian hospital on frontline of coronavirus fight 01:28
The FDA is also talking with drug manufacturers about ramping up production of the drugs to handle a spike in demand and to ensure that people with life-threatening conditions such as lupus can still obtain it .
Dr. Deborah Birx , Vice President Mike Pence 's coronavirus response coordinator and another regular at Trump 's news conferences , said in a Fox News interview last week that people should not confuse the drugs showing `` promise '' in other countries with actual efficacy .
`` That does n't mean that it will show promise in Americans , '' she told the news outlet . `` It showed promise in the test tubes . We are very interested in making sure we have eliminated red tape to make the drug available through their physicians , and study it at the same time . At the same time , we are doing clinical trials on other products we think also will show promise . ''
One drug , lopinavir-ritonavir , did not show promise for treating Covid-19-related pneumonia in China , the CDC said . Another medication mentioned by Trump , remdesivir , has `` broad antiviral activity , '' the CDC said , but requires further study .
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(CNN) As the world's heath experts race to find treatments -- and eventually, a cure -- for the novel coronavirus , two drugs have jumped to the front of the conversation: chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
President Donald Trump has called the drugs, which are used to treat malaria and other conditions, game changers, and a rush to procure the pharmaceuticals spurred several US states to take measures to prevent shortages amid the Covid-19 pandemic
New York moved to begin trials Tuesday, procuring 70,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine and 750,000 doses of chloroquine, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. In addition, Bayer, the drug maker, has donated 3 million doses of Resochin, its brand name for chloroquine, to the federal government.
Perhaps demonstrating why health officials are urging caution -- saying chloroquine requires further clinical study and might not be the panacea it's billed to be -- officials in Nigeria's Lagos state have reported three overdoses in the days since the drug entered the conversation surrounding the pandemic.
In Arizona, a man died after reportedly taking a nonmedical form of chloroquine used to fight parasites in aquariums.
So, what exactly are these drugs, and what promise do they hold?
Vital to battle against malaria
Chloroquine is used to treat malaria, as well as in chemoprophylaxis, which is the administering of drugs to prevent the development of disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Since 2006, it has not been recommended for use in severe malaria because of problems with resistance, particularly in the Oceania region, according to the World Health Organization.
WHO includes it on its list of "essential medicines," meaning it should be kept affordable and accessible at all times.
JUST WATCHED Dr. Fauci: There is no 'magic drug' for coronavirus Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Dr. Fauci: There is no 'magic drug' for coronavirus 01:52
According to the Swiss-registered organization, Medicines for Malaria Venture , chloroquine is a derivative of quinine, which French chemists in 1820 isolated from the bark of the cinchona tree found in South America, employing it as a treatment for fevers.
German scientists created the synthetic chloroquine in 1934 as part of a class of anti-malarials, MMV said, and chloroquine and DDT became "the two principal weapons in WHO's global eradication malaria campaign" following World War II, the organization said.
Hydroxychloroquine is what's known as an analog of chloroquine, meaning the two have similar structures but different chemical and biological properties. The former is considered the less toxic derivative , according to studies.
It's given to patients with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and the blood disorder porphyria cutanea tarda, the CDC said.
'It's not going to kill anybody'
The reason Trump lauds the drugs is because they've been shown, in labs, to be effective against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses -- including the SARS strain that causes Covid-19 -- as well as other coronaviruses, the CDC said.
Hydroxychloroquine is being studied to determine if it can prevent the onset of Covid-19 before or after a patient is infected with the SARS coronavirus strain that causes it, and if it can be used to treat Covid-19 sufferers, the CDC said.
Because the drug has been in use for years, Trump said, it potentially poses fewer risks than a newly developed drug.
JUST WATCHED Inside Oxford lab developing 30 minute coronavirus test Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Inside Oxford lab developing 30 minute coronavirus test 02:05
"The nice part is," he said last week, "it's been around for a long time, so we know that if things don't go as planned, it's not going to kill anybody."
The CDC cited a study, documented in the journal Bioscience Trends this month , that chloroquine phosphate has demonstrated "apparent efficacy and acceptable safety against COVID-19-associated pneumonia" in trials in China.
It is thus considered a recommended antiviral for Covid-19 treatment in China, and several countries are recommending both drugs for hospitalized Covid-19 patients, the CDC said.
Chloroquine also appears to have "broad-spectrum antiviral properties" and effects on immune response, Bayer said in its statement announcing the drug donations.
"New data from initial preclinical and evolving clinical research conducted in China, while limited, shows potential for the use of Resochin in treating patients with COVID-19 infection," the statement said.
Evidence only anecdotal, expert said
Regarding the combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin -- which Trump tweeted could be "one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" -- a single "small study" shows the combination helped against the SARS strain that causes Covid-19, the CDC said, but "did not assess clinical benefits."
The CDC said the combination can disrupt the heart's electrical activity and warns against prescribing the paired drugs to anyone with chronic medical conditions, such as renal failure or hepatic disease.
Chloroquine's side effects include seizures, nausea, vomiting, deafness, vision changes and low blood pressure. Both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, however, are reportedly well-tolerated in Covid-19 patients, according to the CDC.
JUST WATCHED Loss of smell and taste could be coronavirus symptoms Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Loss of smell and taste could be coronavirus symptoms 01:35
All that said, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has appeared alongside Trump at several news conferences, has said evidence of the drugs' effectiveness is only anecdotal.
With respect to the SARS strain, the drugs' effectiveness was never vetted in a clinical trial, he said.
The drugs may be effective against the novel coronavirus, Fauci said, but more data is needed to "show it is truly safe and effective under the conditions of Covid-19."
For these reasons, the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drugs for coronavirus treatment, despite Trump claiming Thursday the agency had done so
'It showed promise in the test tubes'
In a Thursday statement, the FDA said it had been working with government agencies and universities to learn whether chloroquine can reduce symptoms and stem the spread of Covid-19 in those with mild to moderate cases of the virus.
"We also must ensure these products are effective; otherwise we risk treating patients with a product that might not work when they could have pursued other, more appropriate treatments," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in the statement.
During a meeting of the coronavirus task force, Hahn called for "a large, pragmatic clinical trial to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered -- asked and answered."
JUST WATCHED Inside Italian hospital on frontline of coronavirus fight Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Inside Italian hospital on frontline of coronavirus fight 01:28
The FDA is also talking with drug manufacturers about ramping up production of the drugs to handle a spike in demand and to ensure that people with life-threatening conditions such as lupus can still obtain it.
Dr. Deborah Birx, Vice President Mike Pence's coronavirus response coordinator and another regular at Trump's news conferences, said in a Fox News interview last week that people should not confuse the drugs showing "promise" in other countries with actual efficacy.
"That doesn't mean that it will show promise in Americans," she told the news outlet. "It showed promise in the test tubes. We are very interested in making sure we have eliminated red tape to make the drug available through their physicians, and study it at the same time. At the same time, we are doing clinical trials on other products we think also will show promise."
One drug, lopinavir-ritonavir, did not show promise for treating Covid-19-related pneumonia in China, the CDC said. Another medication mentioned by Trump, remdesivir, has "broad antiviral activity," the CDC said, but requires further study.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/5/preserving-the-scouts-anchor-to-noble-values-prese/
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STAVER: A Christian approach to immigration reform
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2013-02-05
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Mathew Staver
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Americans are ready for just immigration reform that keeps our borders secure , respects the rule of law and creates a pathway to earned legal status for our hardworking neighbors who lack documentation . This earned legal status should include temporary worker visas and citizenship .
As an evangelical leader , I applaud leaders in Congress for recognizing that a better immigration process is urgent . Republicans in particular are showing leadership by prioritizing the debate .
As the House of Representatives holds a hearing Tuesday to take up the challenge of creating a better immigration process , evangelical Christians across the country are participating in their own challenge : to reflect on what the Bible has to say about how we treat our immigrant neighbors .
My own contemplation has led me to conclude that we must unite behind an immigration process that is fair , that respects every human being ’ s God-given dignity , that protects the unity of our families and that preserves our standing as the world ’ s standard-bearer for freedom .
As members of the Evangelical Immigration Table affirmed in June , just immigration reform will strengthen our economy and our communities . Policy that reflects our shared principles — accountability , fairness , dignity and hard work — will strengthen us .
The principles that a bipartisan group of Senate leaders announced last week represent a solid start . Now is the time for our legislators to move beyond partisan rancor and come to consensus that honors our heritage .
Immigrants always have contributed to our country . Both our history and our legacy call on us to enable American immigrants to come out of the shadows and participate fully as American taxpayers , voters , workers and leaders .
Establishing a challenging but achievable path to citizenship is key . There are only three options for addressing undocumented immigrants : deportation , amnesty and a middle , more reasonable alternative that provides an opportunity for earned legal status . Mass deportation would be impossible and morally wrong . Amnesty would flout the law . Let me be clear : I oppose amnesty . What I do support is providing an opportunity for earned legal status that allows people to come out of the shadows and participate in the American dream .
It should include appropriate penalties , waiting periods , background checks , evidence of moral character and a commitment to full participation in American society through learning English . Yet for our hardworking , undocumented neighbors who aspire to be fully American , it must end with citizenship — not a permanent second-class status .
Such a path also reconciles the rule of law in Matthew 25 , where the Bible teaches us that by welcoming a stranger , we may be welcoming Jesus : “ I was a stranger and you invited me in. ” Whatever we do for the least among us , he teaches , we do for him .
In hundreds of evangelical churches across more than 40 states , evangelicals are considering how these words apply to our relationship with our immigrant neighbors by participating in the “ I Was a Stranger ” challenge . Each day for 40 days , we are reading a different short passage of Scripture that speaks to God ’ s compassion toward immigrants , and we are praying for our immigrant neighbors .
The Bible presents a stark choice between two paths : welcoming the stranger leads to eternal bliss ; not welcoming the stranger leads to eternal punishment .
These teachings speak to us in our lives . They help us see that no matter how we got here , we are all created in God ’ s image and all worthy of God ’ s love and of one another ’ s respect .
As we take God ’ s Word to heart and honor it in our lives , we must acknowledge that as a beacon of freedom , the United States has attracted immigrants who move here to improve life for themselves and their families — today , as throughout our history . Nearly all of us have ancestors who came here from somewhere else to build a better life .
That is the promise of America , and that is our pride . We are a nation of hope for people of courage who leave behind lives they know because they believe in the opportunity for better lives on our shores .
We must continue to prove that the American dream we idealize is more than a mirage — that people from diverse backgrounds can come here , and that all of us can live in peace with our neighbors , pursue our dreams and succeed .
As Congress embarks on the difficult challenge of creating a just immigration process , we support their efforts to have a respectful debate , and we rededicate ourselves to a process that shines freedom ’ s light more brightly .
In so doing , we will honor God ’ s will and bring God ’ s blessing on our country and its inhabitants , each created in God ’ s image — no matter where we were born .
Mathew Staver is chairman of Liberty Counsel and chief counsel of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference .
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Americans are ready for just immigration reform that keeps our borders secure, respects the rule of law and creates a pathway to earned legal status for our hardworking neighbors who lack documentation. This earned legal status should include temporary worker visas and citizenship.
As an evangelical leader, I applaud leaders in Congress for recognizing that a better immigration process is urgent. Republicans in particular are showing leadership by prioritizing the debate.
As the House of Representatives holds a hearing Tuesday to take up the challenge of creating a better immigration process, evangelical Christians across the country are participating in their own challenge: to reflect on what the Bible has to say about how we treat our immigrant neighbors.
My own contemplation has led me to conclude that we must unite behind an immigration process that is fair, that respects every human being’s God-given dignity, that protects the unity of our families and that preserves our standing as the world’s standard-bearer for freedom.
As members of the Evangelical Immigration Table affirmed in June, just immigration reform will strengthen our economy and our communities. Policy that reflects our shared principles — accountability, fairness, dignity and hard work — will strengthen us.
The principles that a bipartisan group of Senate leaders announced last week represent a solid start. Now is the time for our legislators to move beyond partisan rancor and come to consensus that honors our heritage.
Immigrants always have contributed to our country. Both our history and our legacy call on us to enable American immigrants to come out of the shadows and participate fully as American taxpayers, voters, workers and leaders.
Establishing a challenging but achievable path to citizenship is key. There are only three options for addressing undocumented immigrants: deportation, amnesty and a middle, more reasonable alternative that provides an opportunity for earned legal status. Mass deportation would be impossible and morally wrong. Amnesty would flout the law. Let me be clear: I oppose amnesty. What I do support is providing an opportunity for earned legal status that allows people to come out of the shadows and participate in the American dream.
It should include appropriate penalties, waiting periods, background checks, evidence of moral character and a commitment to full participation in American society through learning English. Yet for our hardworking, undocumented neighbors who aspire to be fully American, it must end with citizenship — not a permanent second-class status.
Such a path also reconciles the rule of law in Matthew 25, where the Bible teaches us that by welcoming a stranger, we may be welcoming Jesus: “I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Whatever we do for the least among us, he teaches, we do for him.
In hundreds of evangelical churches across more than 40 states, evangelicals are considering how these words apply to our relationship with our immigrant neighbors by participating in the “I Was a Stranger” challenge. Each day for 40 days, we are reading a different short passage of Scripture that speaks to God’s compassion toward immigrants, and we are praying for our immigrant neighbors.
The Bible presents a stark choice between two paths: welcoming the stranger leads to eternal bliss; not welcoming the stranger leads to eternal punishment.
These teachings speak to us in our lives. They help us see that no matter how we got here, we are all created in God’s image and all worthy of God’s love and of one another’s respect.
As we take God’s Word to heart and honor it in our lives, we must acknowledge that as a beacon of freedom, the United States has attracted immigrants who move here to improve life for themselves and their families — today, as throughout our history. Nearly all of us have ancestors who came here from somewhere else to build a better life.
That is the promise of America, and that is our pride. We are a nation of hope for people of courage who leave behind lives they know because they believe in the opportunity for better lives on our shores.
We must continue to prove that the American dream we idealize is more than a mirage — that people from diverse backgrounds can come here, and that all of us can live in peace with our neighbors, pursue our dreams and succeed.
As Congress embarks on the difficult challenge of creating a just immigration process, we support their efforts to have a respectful debate, and we rededicate ourselves to a process that shines freedom’s light more brightly.
In so doing, we will honor God’s will and bring God’s blessing on our country and its inhabitants, each created in God’s image — no matter where we were born.
Mathew Staver is chairman of Liberty Counsel and chief counsel of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.
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http://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13168418/mike-pence-defend-trump
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Mike Pence won the debate by throwing Donald Trump under the bus
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2016-10-04
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Matthew Yglesias, Julia Belluz, Terry Nguyen, Theodore Schleifer, Aaron Rupar, Jen Kirby, Constance Grady
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Republican Party elected officials in contested races around the country have been grappling with a basic but profound issue all year — how do you stand up for the GOP and conservative principles and against Hillary Clinton without getting sucked into defending every crazy , offensive , or weird thing Donald Trump has said ? It can be a tough line to walk , as New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte learned this week .
Debating Tim Kaine Tuesday night , Mike Pence taught a master class in how it ’ s done . Every time Kaine attacked , Pence parried and deftly shifted the conversation to something else entirely .
Pence has amazing discipline in not defending @ realDonaldTrump # VPDebate — Ben White ( @ morningmoneyben ) October 5 , 2016
When Kaine demanded that Pence defend Trump ’ s secrecy on his taxes , Pence ducked and talked about how low taxes are good for economic growth . When Kaine offered an extended list of Trump insults that he said he couldn ’ t believe Pence would defend , Pence didn ’ t defend them — he pivoted to complaining about Clinton and the “ basket of deplorables. ” Pence was tight , disciplined , and focused on his talking points . He never took the bait , never let himself get dragged into unfavorable terrain , and simply ignored subjects he didn ’ t want to discuss .
It was a genuinely bravura performance , one that a passel of GOP senators and Congress members running in tough races ought to study . The problem is Trump is at the top of the ticket .
The crowning moment of the debate came at around 9:45 pm , when Kaine launched into a devastating foreign policy attack on Donald Trump :
Donald Trump can not start a Twitter war with Miss Universe without shooting himself in the foot . He does not have a plan . He said `` I have a secret plan , '' and then he said , `` I know more than all the generals about ISIL , '' and finally he said , `` I am going to fire all the generals . '' He does not have a plan . He trash talks the military , John McCain is no hero , the generals need to be fired , I know more than them . NATO is obsolete . And third , he loves dictators . He has a personal Mount Rushmore of Vladimir Putin , Kim Jong Un , and Saddam Hussein . He believes — Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons . He said Saudi Arabia should get them , Japan should get them , and Korea should get them . When he was confronted with this , he said , `` Go ahead , folks , enjoy yourselves . '' I would like Gov . Pence to say what is so enjoyable or comical about nuclear war .
Pence simply could not and would not defend any of this . Instead , he tried to deflect , saying , “ That had a lot of creative lines in it . ”
Kaine pressed again : “ See if you can defend any of it ? ”
Pence pivoted into a generic conservative attack on Obama ’ s foreign policy :
I want to give this president credit for bringing Osama bin Laden to justice , but the truth is , Osama bin Laden led al-Qaeda . The primary threat today is ISIS . Because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a forces agreement that would have allowed some American combat troops to remain in Iraq and secure the hard-fought gains that the American soldier has won , ISIS was able to be literally conjured up out of the desert , and it has overrun vast areas . My heart breaks for the likes of Corporal Lebowski . He fought hard , through some of the most difficult days of Operation Iraqi Freedom , and paid the ultimate sacrifice to secure the nation . That nation was secured in 2009 . Because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama failed to provide a status of forces agreement and leave sufficient forces , we are back at war . We are back at war in Iraq . [ ... ]
It was a deftly executed move . And while the substance of the critique is somewhat unfair , it ’ s not crazy . The Obama administration ’ s attempted withdrawal from Iraq pretty clearly has not worked out nearly as well as it hoped .
But Pence utterly failed to take up Kaine ’ s challenge to defend Trump ’ s affection for Putin , dislike of NATO , or willingness to entertain nuclear proliferation . Pence simply shrugged off the entire reality of Trump ’ s 2016 campaign and slammed Obama , Clinton , and Kaine as soft on Russia — a smooth extension of the foreign policy messages of John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 .
Kaine is running for VP ; Pence is running for 2020
If Kaine and Pence had been debating for an Ohio Senate seat , any fair-minded person would have to conclude that Pence won in a landslide . He was focused on his key points , while Kaine was focused on dragging the conversation into personal attacks on a man who wasn ’ t even standing on the stage .
The problem , obviously , is that they aren ’ t running for an Ohio Senate seat .
They ’ re running for vice president . Or at least Tim Kaine is . That ’ s why he loyally defended Clinton when Pence hit the Clinton Foundation issue instead of pivoting away to his own talking points . He played the somewhat awkward role of loyal number two . Pence , by contrast , focused on making Mike Pence look good and happily left Trump ’ s eccentricities on the cutting board .
Tim Kaine is running for Vice President in 2016 . Mike Pence is running for president in 2020 . — Jon Lovett ( @ jonlovett ) October 5 , 2016
For Republicans sitting at home , Pence ’ s largely effective performance should serve as a powerful reminder that a generic Republican candidate would probably win the 2016 election . Trump , by contrast , is losing currently , has been losing from the beginning , and probably will lose in the end .
When he does , Republicans will be searching for their next nominee . When they do , they ’ ll see that Pence — the guy I used to think they would pick for 2016 — doesn ’ t quite have the pizzazz or superstar quality of a Donald Trump , but he ’ s also a much better , more focused , more disciplined , less crazy politician . The kind of guy who could actually win .
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Republican Party elected officials in contested races around the country have been grappling with a basic but profound issue all year — how do you stand up for the GOP and conservative principles and against Hillary Clinton without getting sucked into defending every crazy, offensive, or weird thing Donald Trump has said? It can be a tough line to walk, as New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte learned this week.
Debating Tim Kaine Tuesday night, Mike Pence taught a master class in how it’s done. Every time Kaine attacked, Pence parried and deftly shifted the conversation to something else entirely.
Pence has amazing discipline in not defending @realDonaldTrump #VPDebate — Ben White (@morningmoneyben) October 5, 2016
When Kaine demanded that Pence defend Trump’s secrecy on his taxes, Pence ducked and talked about how low taxes are good for economic growth. When Kaine offered an extended list of Trump insults that he said he couldn’t believe Pence would defend, Pence didn’t defend them — he pivoted to complaining about Clinton and the “basket of deplorables.” Pence was tight, disciplined, and focused on his talking points. He never took the bait, never let himself get dragged into unfavorable terrain, and simply ignored subjects he didn’t want to discuss.
It was a genuinely bravura performance, one that a passel of GOP senators and Congress members running in tough races ought to study. The problem is Trump is at the top of the ticket.
Pence simply couldn’t defend Trump
The crowning moment of the debate came at around 9:45 pm, when Kaine launched into a devastating foreign policy attack on Donald Trump:
Donald Trump cannot start a Twitter war with Miss Universe without shooting himself in the foot. He does not have a plan. He said "I have a secret plan," and then he said, "I know more than all the generals about ISIL," and finally he said, "I am going to fire all the generals." He does not have a plan. He trash talks the military, John McCain is no hero, the generals need to be fired, I know more than them. NATO is obsolete. And third, he loves dictators. He has a personal Mount Rushmore of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Saddam Hussein. He believes — Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. He said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, and Korea should get them. When he was confronted with this, he said, "Go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves." I would like Gov. Pence to say what is so enjoyable or comical about nuclear war.
Pence simply could not and would not defend any of this. Instead, he tried to deflect, saying, “That had a lot of creative lines in it.”
Kaine pressed again: “See if you can defend any of it?”
Pence pivoted into a generic conservative attack on Obama’s foreign policy:
I want to give this president credit for bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, but the truth is, Osama bin Laden led al-Qaeda. The primary threat today is ISIS. Because Hillary Clinton failed to renegotiate a forces agreement that would have allowed some American combat troops to remain in Iraq and secure the hard-fought gains that the American soldier has won, ISIS was able to be literally conjured up out of the desert, and it has overrun vast areas. My heart breaks for the likes of Corporal Lebowski. He fought hard, through some of the most difficult days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and paid the ultimate sacrifice to secure the nation. That nation was secured in 2009. Because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama failed to provide a status of forces agreement and leave sufficient forces, we are back at war. We are back at war in Iraq. [...]
It was a deftly executed move. And while the substance of the critique is somewhat unfair, it’s not crazy. The Obama administration’s attempted withdrawal from Iraq pretty clearly has not worked out nearly as well as it hoped.
But Pence utterly failed to take up Kaine’s challenge to defend Trump’s affection for Putin, dislike of NATO, or willingness to entertain nuclear proliferation. Pence simply shrugged off the entire reality of Trump’s 2016 campaign and slammed Obama, Clinton, and Kaine as soft on Russia — a smooth extension of the foreign policy messages of John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
Kaine is running for VP; Pence is running for 2020
If Kaine and Pence had been debating for an Ohio Senate seat, any fair-minded person would have to conclude that Pence won in a landslide. He was focused on his key points, while Kaine was focused on dragging the conversation into personal attacks on a man who wasn’t even standing on the stage.
The problem, obviously, is that they aren’t running for an Ohio Senate seat.
They’re running for vice president. Or at least Tim Kaine is. That’s why he loyally defended Clinton when Pence hit the Clinton Foundation issue instead of pivoting away to his own talking points. He played the somewhat awkward role of loyal number two. Pence, by contrast, focused on making Mike Pence look good and happily left Trump’s eccentricities on the cutting board.
Tim Kaine is running for Vice President in 2016. Mike Pence is running for president in 2020. — Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) October 5, 2016
For Republicans sitting at home, Pence’s largely effective performance should serve as a powerful reminder that a generic Republican candidate would probably win the 2016 election. Trump, by contrast, is losing currently, has been losing from the beginning, and probably will lose in the end.
When he does, Republicans will be searching for their next nominee. When they do, they’ll see that Pence — the guy I used to think they would pick for 2016 — doesn’t quite have the pizzazz or superstar quality of a Donald Trump, but he’s also a much better, more focused, more disciplined, less crazy politician. The kind of guy who could actually win.
Watch: This election is about normal vs. abnormal
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/18/politics/budget-congress-stability/index.html
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Budget deal: Progress or pragmatism?
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2013-12-18
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Leigh Ann Caldwell
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Story highlights Bipartisan budget deal first to pass divided Congress since 1986
But contentious issues and an election year could hamper progress
When Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray held a news conference -- together -- to announce that they reached a deal on the federal budget , the ideological opposites received immediate praise for their cooperation .
And they reached their agreement that would avert a potential government shutdown in January just two days before the Congressionally imposed deadline for doing so .
The proposal that was heading for final congressional approval in the Senate on Wednesday is being held up for all to see as a rare illustration of bipartisanship in a deeply divided Washington that could lead to greater Congressional comity .
It 's `` an important step in helping to heal some of the wounds here in Congress , '' Murray said when she announced the agreement with Ryan .
JUST WATCHED Murray : Budget deal was a compromise Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Murray : Budget deal was a compromise 04:48
JUST WATCHED Roundtable : Obama 's low approval ratings Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Roundtable : Obama 's low approval ratings 06:11
JUST WATCHED GOP divided over budget deal Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH GOP divided over budget deal 04:11
While she suggested the act of working together has the potential to influence the mood in Congress to be more agreeable , the deal removes a significant obstacle that has led to legislative gridlock so far this decade . For the next two years , Congress has a binding restriction on the amount of money it can spend .
The deal split the difference between the amount that Republicans and Democrats wanted to spend -- $ 1.012 trillion for 2014 and $ 1.014 trillion for 2015 .
`` This means we can fund the operations of government through regular , annual appropriations bills , instead of through last-minute , stop-gap bills that put the government on autopilot , '' said Sen. Barbara Mikulski , who sits at the head of the Appropriations Committee .
That 's a big deal . It 's the first time that a budget agreement has passed a divided House and the Senate since 1986 , according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid .
`` Gridlock has got to end and it is ending , '' Reid told reporters . `` It 's really a step forward . ''
`` No , '' Congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution said .
`` I do n't expect it to have any lasting consequences , '' Mann said .
The budget agreement only solves part of the problem . While it sets spending levels , it does n't actually allocate the money and does n't specify how the money can be spent .
Appropriations Committee members must agree before January 15 -- the deadline set by Congress in October for a new spending plan to be in place -- on how to divvy up the money .
For instance , Republicans will want more money for the military . Democrats will want more money for Head Start programs .
`` We may not even be through with this , '' Mann said .
And that 's not the only issue of contention to be worked out in January alone .
Extended unemployment insurance benefits are set to expire December 28 , which will leave 1.3 million people without benefits and hit another 800,000 in the coming weeks .
Despite the looming deadline , the issue was shelved in order to reach a budget deal .
Reid vowed to address the issue immediately upon the Senate 's return in January . Republicans , however , are not keen on the extending the already expanded program .
Before the budget deal even becomes law , signs of serious strife are already emerging around the debt ceiling , the nation 's borrowing limit , which is expected to be tapped in February .
Since 2010 , the debt limit has sparked partisan fights and near-government shutdowns as Republicans want an increase in the debt ceiling tied to spending cuts .
`` I ca n't imagine the Republicans want another fight on debt ceiling , '' Reid told reporters Tuesday .
But they are . And the foundation is being laid for a major battle in the new year .
`` We do n't want nothing out of this debt limit , '' Ryan said Sunday on Fox News .
Over in the Senate , the sentiment is similar . A top Republican indicated that he expects his caucus to push for concessions related to reducing government spending .
`` Every time the President asks us to raise the debt ceiling is a good time to try to achieve something important for the country , '' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday .
Further complicating this so-called season of bipartisanship is that 2014 is an election year , historically a time when less gets accomplished in Congress as lawmakers become even more risk averse and spend even more time fund-raising and campaigning .
Lawmakers up for re-election are reluctant to take risky votes . And a decent indicator of how Congress deals with next year 's prickly battles is that all seven Republican Senators facing primary challengers in 2014 were opponents of the budget deal .
And in the House , where all members are up for reelection , primary challengers are also common , forcing lawmakers to appeal to party activists often by shunning compromise .
Even though House Speaker John Boehner surprisingly criticized conservative groups publicly last week , no one on Capitol Hill expects the Ohio Republican to become the champion of bipartisanship .
A host of issues still need to be worked out , including the Farm Bill , which affects the price consumers pay for groceries , payments to doctors who see Medicare patients , and immigration .
And even the budget deal were to be reworked post-passage . Some lawmakers , including South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham , vow to reverse a provision that reduces retirement benefits for military families .
Mann said the budget deal is a singular instance of cooperation because it played into both parties best interests . Both parties avoided being labeled obstructionists and extremists .
`` This is n't about good feelings among members but strategic behavior by two parties , '' Mann said .
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Story highlights Bipartisan budget deal first to pass divided Congress since 1986
It could pave the way for future bipartisanship
But contentious issues and an election year could hamper progress
When Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray held a news conference -- together -- to announce that they reached a deal on the federal budget, the ideological opposites received immediate praise for their cooperation.
And they reached their agreement that would avert a potential government shutdown in January just two days before the Congressionally imposed deadline for doing so.
The proposal that was heading for final congressional approval in the Senate on Wednesday is being held up for all to see as a rare illustration of bipartisanship in a deeply divided Washington that could lead to greater Congressional comity.
It's "an important step in helping to heal some of the wounds here in Congress," Murray said when she announced the agreement with Ryan.
JUST WATCHED Murray: Budget deal was a compromise Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Murray: Budget deal was a compromise 04:48
JUST WATCHED Roundtable: Obama's low approval ratings Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Roundtable: Obama's low approval ratings 06:11
JUST WATCHED GOP divided over budget deal Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH GOP divided over budget deal 04:11
While she suggested the act of working together has the potential to influence the mood in Congress to be more agreeable, the deal removes a significant obstacle that has led to legislative gridlock so far this decade. For the next two years, Congress has a binding restriction on the amount of money it can spend.
The deal split the difference between the amount that Republicans and Democrats wanted to spend -- $1.012 trillion for 2014 and $1.014 trillion for 2015.
"This means we can fund the operations of government through regular, annual appropriations bills, instead of through last-minute, stop-gap bills that put the government on autopilot," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who sits at the head of the Appropriations Committee.
A big deal
That's a big deal. It's the first time that a budget agreement has passed a divided House and the Senate since 1986, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
"Gridlock has got to end and it is ending," Reid told reporters. "It's really a step forward."
But will it end gridlock?
"No," Congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution said.
"I don't expect it to have any lasting consequences," Mann said.
The budget agreement only solves part of the problem. While it sets spending levels, it doesn't actually allocate the money and doesn't specify how the money can be spent.
That battle will begin immediately.
Appropriations Committee members must agree before January 15 -- the deadline set by Congress in October for a new spending plan to be in place -- on how to divvy up the money.
For instance, Republicans will want more money for the military. Democrats will want more money for Head Start programs.
"We may not even be through with this," Mann said.
And that's not the only issue of contention to be worked out in January alone.
Extended unemployment insurance benefits are set to expire December 28, which will leave 1.3 million people without benefits and hit another 800,000 in the coming weeks.
Despite the looming deadline, the issue was shelved in order to reach a budget deal.
Reid vowed to address the issue immediately upon the Senate's return in January. Republicans, however, are not keen on the extending the already expanded program.
Again?
Before the budget deal even becomes law, signs of serious strife are already emerging around the debt ceiling, the nation's borrowing limit, which is expected to be tapped in February.
Since 2010, the debt limit has sparked partisan fights and near-government shutdowns as Republicans want an increase in the debt ceiling tied to spending cuts.
"I can't imagine the Republicans want another fight on debt ceiling," Reid told reporters Tuesday.
But they are. And the foundation is being laid for a major battle in the new year.
"We don't want nothing out of this debt limit," Ryan said Sunday on Fox News.
Over in the Senate, the sentiment is similar. A top Republican indicated that he expects his caucus to push for concessions related to reducing government spending.
"Every time the President asks us to raise the debt ceiling is a good time to try to achieve something important for the country," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.
An election year
Further complicating this so-called season of bipartisanship is that 2014 is an election year, historically a time when less gets accomplished in Congress as lawmakers become even more risk averse and spend even more time fund-raising and campaigning.
Lawmakers up for re-election are reluctant to take risky votes. And a decent indicator of how Congress deals with next year's prickly battles is that all seven Republican Senators facing primary challengers in 2014 were opponents of the budget deal.
And in the House, where all members are up for reelection, primary challengers are also common, forcing lawmakers to appeal to party activists often by shunning compromise.
And that is unlikely to subside.
Even though House Speaker John Boehner surprisingly criticized conservative groups publicly last week, no one on Capitol Hill expects the Ohio Republican to become the champion of bipartisanship.
To be determined
A host of issues still need to be worked out, including the Farm Bill, which affects the price consumers pay for groceries, payments to doctors who see Medicare patients, and immigration.
And even the budget deal were to be reworked post-passage. Some lawmakers, including South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, vow to reverse a provision that reduces retirement benefits for military families.
Mann said the budget deal is a singular instance of cooperation because it played into both parties best interests. Both parties avoided being labeled obstructionists and extremists.
"This isn't about good feelings among members but strategic behavior by two parties," Mann said.
Bipartisanship is, ultimately, a partisan play.
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The Hill
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http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/370577-six-months-in-kelly-emerges-as-policy-force
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Six months in, Kelly emerges as policy force
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2018-01-25
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When John Kelly John Francis KellyMORE was brought in six months ago to be President Trump Donald John TrumpGOP senators balk at lengthy impeachment trial Warren goes local in race to build 2020 movement 2020 Democrats make play for veterans ' votes MORE ’ s second chief of staff , his mission was clear : bring order to a White House plagued by infighting and leaks .
The four-star Marine general quickly established a new way of doing business in the West Wing , positioning himself as the chief gatekeeper to Trump .
But in the ensuing months , Kelly ’ s influence has grown beyond deciding who gets access to the president . Lawmakers say he ’ s also a force behind the scenes , pushing Trump to stick to his campaign vows — particularly on immigration , his signature campaign issue .
Democrats in Congress increasingly see Kelly as working to steer Trump away from an agreement that would protect undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children , the very issue that precipitated the three-day government shutdown .
“ I would call this the Kelly shutdown , ” Rep. Mark Takano Mark Allan TakanoHillicon Valley : Google buying Fitbit for .1B | US launches national security review of TikTok | Twitter shakes up fight over political ads | Dems push committee on 'revenge porn ' law Progressives urge end to mass phone data collection program Overnight Defense — Presented by Huntington Ingalls Industries — Impeachment inquiry overshadows Trump at UN | Veterans push VA to follow through on reforms | Iranian leader open to changes in nuke deal MORE ( D-Calif. ) said . “ He ’ s a pretty disciplined gatekeeper . I would say he had a big hand , and I believe that Kelly ’ s leaning fully to the right and is the enforcer on this issue . ”
Before becoming chief of staff , Kelly was Trump ’ s secretary of Homeland Security , where he worked to ramp up immigration enforcement and put in place the controversial travel ban — and he 's brought that mindset with him into the White House .
As Trump weighed striking a deal with Democrats on immigration last week , Kelly pushed his boss to demand more concessions .
He told the president a deal offered by a group of Senate negotiators would not be good for his agenda and should be rejected . Shortly thereafter , Trump grew confrontational in a private meeting with lawmakers where he referred to some places sending immigrants to the United States as “ shithole countries . ”
The influence of staffers like Kelly on Trump ’ s immigration stance have angered Democrats and some Republicans , who say it ’ s made it harder to get deal on immigration .
“ Their staff has been unreliable to work with on this issue , ” Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamGOP senators balk at lengthy impeachment trial Graham : Senate trial 'must expose the whistleblower ' Graham says Schiff should be a witness in Trump impeachment trial MORE ( R-S.C. ) , who pushed back at Trump ’ s “ shithole ” remarks during the White House meeting , told reporters on Capitol Hill . “ We need a reliable partner . ''
Graham said White House policy adviser and vocal immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller was more to blame than Kelly , whom he called “ a wonderful man. ” Still , he acknowledged that Kelly , like other members of Trump ’ s team , has a “ tough position ” on the issue .
The shutdown fight also underlined the internal dangers facing Kelly , who risks falling out of favor with the president — much like former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon — if he is portrayed in the press as a puppet master pulling Trump ’ s strings .
Kelly angered Trump by telling Democrats during immigration talks on Capitol Hill that the president ’ s campaign promises were “ uninformed ” and by publicly saying that Trump ’ s position on the wall on the Mexican border had “ evolved . ”
Trump rebuked Kelly the next day on Twitter without mentioning him by name .
People close to the White House were divided on how much Kelly ’ s standing was damaged by his dust-up with Trump .
One former Trump transition adviser described the president ’ s anger level as “ maybe a half-Sessions , ” referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson ( Jeff ) Beauregard SessionsSanford : 'It carries real weight ' to speak against Trump 'while in office ' Medill dean 'deeply troubled by the vicious bullying and badgering ' of student journalists Trump has considered firing official who reported whistleblower complaint to Congress : report MORE , who has been stuck in Trump ’ s doghouse since recusing himself from the Justice Department 's investigation into Russian election meddling .
Trump was “ annoyed and angry ” and “ felt it was an unforced error but also felt it wasn ’ t going to jeopardize their relationship , ” the former adviser said .
Multiple White House officials also knocked down a Vanity Fair report that said Trump is actively discussing replacements for Kelly , with the help of his elder daughter and senior adviser , Ivanka Trump Ivana ( Ivanka ) Marie TrumpOn The Money : Appeals court clears way for Congress to seek Trump financial records | Fed chief urges Congress to boost US workforce | Federal deficit hits 4 billion in one month | China talks hit snag over agricultural purchases Trump falsely claims Ivanka 'created 14 million jobs ' Overnight Defense : Families sue over safety hazards at Army base | Lawmakers , NBA 's Enes Kanter speak out ahead of Erdoğan visit | Washington braces for public impeachment hearings MORE .
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she would not use the publication “ for much other than a coaster , ” adding that Kelly and President Trump “ have a great relationship . ”
Few hold the position of White House chief of staff for long , given the long hours and stress it involves . While President Obama ’ s last chief of staff served four years in the position , his previous four chiefs served about a year each .
A former administration official claimed the Vanity Fair report had a ring of truth , saying that Trump and others have grown frustrated with Kelly ’ s image as a “ nanny ” who is seeking too much control .
“ He is not going to be gone tomorrow , or next week , or next month . It 's more like a slow burn toward an eventual demise , ” the former administration official said .
While Trump became frustrated with how Kelly ’ s remarks were portrayed in the media , Trump and Kelly spoke about the situation later and cleared up any disagreement , a source familiar with the situation said .
On Tuesday , the first day the government reopened , the president gave a vote of confidence to Kelly on Twitter .
Trump repeated his message Wednesday during an impromptu question-and-answer session with reporters in the West Wing .
“ He ’ s doing great . He ’ s doing great , ” Trump said of Kelly as the chief of staff stood nearby . “ Fake news yesterday , or two days ago . We put out a tweet praising somebody , but only when they get a false story . ”
Trump appeared to be referring to the Vanity Fair piece .
The president made his unexpected appearance during an immigration briefing with a senior administration official . Trump outlined his immigration plan , which pre-empted remarks from the official and ensured he — and not his staff — delivered his message .
While Kelly has his detractors , he has also brought stability to the White House and is widely respected , even by those frustrated that some of their access to the president is more limited .
Virtually everyone in Trump World agrees Kelly continues to garner more respect than nearly anyone on Trump ’ s staff .
“ There ’ s not the same level of anxiety under Kelly than there was under [ former chief of staff Reince ] Priebus , ” said the transition aide .
“ There was a sense among the president ’ s supporters that Priebus was steering the ship in the wrong direction . You don ’ t get that same feeling with Kelly . There ’ s criticism he is too rigid and too strict , but it ’ s not chaotic and disorganized . ”
And while Kelly has strong views on immigration , his defenders dispute the notion he is pulling the president to the right , saying Trump ’ s immigration views have been consistent since the campaign .
“ The president is not as familiar with D.C. and the history of the immigration battle , and I think chief of staff Kelly helps add texture to the immigration debate , ” the transition adviser said .
Kelly ’ s efforts to help Trump stake out a hard line on immigration is surprising to some .
Jeh Johnson , Obama 's final Homeland Security secretary , had a good relationship with Kelly when the general helmed U.S. Southern Command and did not think he held the kinds of views on immigration he has shown , according to a former Obama administration official .
Kelly ’ s role in talks over the next month is expected to be paramount as the White House and Congress seek a new government-funding deal by a Feb. 8 deadline , and to write legislation to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrants that will begin to wind down on March 5 .
The top aide will forgo traveling with Trump to the World Economic Forum in Davos , Switzerland , to remain in Washington to work on an immigration “ framework ” the White House will release Monday .
Sen. Dick Durbin Richard ( Dick ) Joseph DurbinPentagon watchdog declines to investigate hold on Ukraine aid Schumer blocks drug pricing measure during Senate fight , seeking larger action Five things to watch at Supreme Court 's DACA hearings MORE ( D-Ill. ) , who co-authored a bipartisan immigration bill with Graham that was shot down by the White House , said he expects Kelly to play a constructive role in the talks .
“ He can be [ a positive force ] and I hope he will in the future , ” he said this week .
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When John Kelly John Francis KellyMORE was brought in six months ago to be President Trump Donald John TrumpGOP senators balk at lengthy impeachment trial Warren goes local in race to build 2020 movement 2020 Democrats make play for veterans' votes MORE’s second chief of staff, his mission was clear: bring order to a White House plagued by infighting and leaks.
The four-star Marine general quickly established a new way of doing business in the West Wing, positioning himself as the chief gatekeeper to Trump.
But in the ensuing months, Kelly’s influence has grown beyond deciding who gets access to the president. Lawmakers say he’s also a force behind the scenes, pushing Trump to stick to his campaign vows — particularly on immigration, his signature campaign issue.
ADVERTISEMENT
Democrats in Congress increasingly see Kelly as working to steer Trump away from an agreement that would protect undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, the very issue that precipitated the three-day government shutdown.
“I would call this the Kelly shutdown,” Rep. Mark Takano Mark Allan TakanoHillicon Valley: Google buying Fitbit for .1B | US launches national security review of TikTok | Twitter shakes up fight over political ads | Dems push committee on 'revenge porn' law Progressives urge end to mass phone data collection program Overnight Defense — Presented by Huntington Ingalls Industries — Impeachment inquiry overshadows Trump at UN | Veterans push VA to follow through on reforms | Iranian leader open to changes in nuke deal MORE (D-Calif.) said. “He’s a pretty disciplined gatekeeper. I would say he had a big hand, and I believe that Kelly’s leaning fully to the right and is the enforcer on this issue.”
Before becoming chief of staff, Kelly was Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, where he worked to ramp up immigration enforcement and put in place the controversial travel ban — and he's brought that mindset with him into the White House.
As Trump weighed striking a deal with Democrats on immigration last week, Kelly pushed his boss to demand more concessions.
He told the president a deal offered by a group of Senate negotiators would not be good for his agenda and should be rejected. Shortly thereafter, Trump grew confrontational in a private meeting with lawmakers where he referred to some places sending immigrants to the United States as “shithole countries.”
The influence of staffers like Kelly on Trump’s immigration stance have angered Democrats and some Republicans, who say it’s made it harder to get deal on immigration.
“Their staff has been unreliable to work with on this issue,” Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamGOP senators balk at lengthy impeachment trial Graham: Senate trial 'must expose the whistleblower' Graham says Schiff should be a witness in Trump impeachment trial MORE (R-S.C.), who pushed back at Trump’s “shithole” remarks during the White House meeting, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We need a reliable partner."
Graham said White House policy adviser and vocal immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller was more to blame than Kelly, whom he called “a wonderful man.” Still, he acknowledged that Kelly, like other members of Trump’s team, has a “tough position” on the issue.
The shutdown fight also underlined the internal dangers facing Kelly, who risks falling out of favor with the president — much like former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon — if he is portrayed in the press as a puppet master pulling Trump’s strings.
Kelly angered Trump by telling Democrats during immigration talks on Capitol Hill that the president’s campaign promises were “uninformed” and by publicly saying that Trump’s position on the wall on the Mexican border had “evolved.”
Trump rebuked Kelly the next day on Twitter without mentioning him by name.
People close to the White House were divided on how much Kelly’s standing was damaged by his dust-up with Trump.
One former Trump transition adviser described the president’s anger level as “maybe a half-Sessions,” referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsSanford: 'It carries real weight' to speak against Trump 'while in office' Medill dean 'deeply troubled by the vicious bullying and badgering' of student journalists Trump has considered firing official who reported whistleblower complaint to Congress: report MORE, who has been stuck in Trump’s doghouse since recusing himself from the Justice Department's investigation into Russian election meddling.
Trump was “annoyed and angry” and “felt it was an unforced error but also felt it wasn’t going to jeopardize their relationship,” the former adviser said.
Multiple White House officials also knocked down a Vanity Fair report that said Trump is actively discussing replacements for Kelly, with the help of his elder daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump Ivana (Ivanka) Marie TrumpOn The Money: Appeals court clears way for Congress to seek Trump financial records | Fed chief urges Congress to boost US workforce | Federal deficit hits 4 billion in one month | China talks hit snag over agricultural purchases Trump falsely claims Ivanka 'created 14 million jobs' Overnight Defense: Families sue over safety hazards at Army base | Lawmakers, NBA's Enes Kanter speak out ahead of Erdoğan visit | Washington braces for public impeachment hearings MORE.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she would not use the publication “for much other than a coaster,” adding that Kelly and President Trump “have a great relationship.”
Few hold the position of White House chief of staff for long, given the long hours and stress it involves. While President Obama’s last chief of staff served four years in the position, his previous four chiefs served about a year each.
A former administration official claimed the Vanity Fair report had a ring of truth, saying that Trump and others have grown frustrated with Kelly’s image as a “nanny” who is seeking too much control.
“He is not going to be gone tomorrow, or next week, or next month. It's more like a slow burn toward an eventual demise,” the former administration official said.
While Trump became frustrated with how Kelly’s remarks were portrayed in the media, Trump and Kelly spoke about the situation later and cleared up any disagreement, a source familiar with the situation said.
On Tuesday, the first day the government reopened, the president gave a vote of confidence to Kelly on Twitter.
Trump repeated his message Wednesday during an impromptu question-and-answer session with reporters in the West Wing.
“He’s doing great. He’s doing great,” Trump said of Kelly as the chief of staff stood nearby. “Fake news yesterday, or two days ago. We put out a tweet praising somebody, but only when they get a false story.”
Trump appeared to be referring to the Vanity Fair piece.
The president made his unexpected appearance during an immigration briefing with a senior administration official. Trump outlined his immigration plan , which pre-empted remarks from the official and ensured he — and not his staff — delivered his message.
While Kelly has his detractors, he has also brought stability to the White House and is widely respected, even by those frustrated that some of their access to the president is more limited.
Virtually everyone in Trump World agrees Kelly continues to garner more respect than nearly anyone on Trump’s staff.
“There’s not the same level of anxiety under Kelly than there was under [former chief of staff Reince] Priebus,” said the transition aide.
“There was a sense among the president’s supporters that Priebus was steering the ship in the wrong direction. You don’t get that same feeling with Kelly. There’s criticism he is too rigid and too strict, but it’s not chaotic and disorganized.”
And while Kelly has strong views on immigration, his defenders dispute the notion he is pulling the president to the right, saying Trump’s immigration views have been consistent since the campaign.
“The president is not as familiar with D.C. and the history of the immigration battle, and I think chief of staff Kelly helps add texture to the immigration debate,” the transition adviser said.
Kelly’s efforts to help Trump stake out a hard line on immigration is surprising to some.
Jeh Johnson, Obama's final Homeland Security secretary, had a good relationship with Kelly when the general helmed U.S. Southern Command and did not think he held the kinds of views on immigration he has shown, according to a former Obama administration official.
Kelly’s role in talks over the next month is expected to be paramount as the White House and Congress seek a new government-funding deal by a Feb. 8 deadline, and to write legislation to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrants that will begin to wind down on March 5.
The top aide will forgo traveling with Trump to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to remain in Washington to work on an immigration “framework” the White House will release Monday.
Sen. Dick Durbin Richard (Dick) Joseph DurbinPentagon watchdog declines to investigate hold on Ukraine aid Schumer blocks drug pricing measure during Senate fight, seeking larger action Five things to watch at Supreme Court's DACA hearings MORE (D-Ill.), who co-authored a bipartisan immigration bill with Graham that was shot down by the White House, said he expects Kelly to play a constructive role in the talks.
“He can be [a positive force] and I hope he will in the future,” he said this week.
Jordain Carney and Mike Lillis contributed to this story.
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Hurricane Irma: Florida reopens storm-ravaged Keys
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Parts of the Florida Keys , the low-lying islands which bore the brunt of Hurricane Irma when the category-four storm struck on Sunday , have reopened .
Entry is being restricted to residents and business owners as work continues to clear roads and check the state of bridges linking the islands .
Nearly 6.9 million homes were without power in Florida , Georgia , North Carolina , South Carolina and Alabama .
Irma , which has since rapidly weakened , is being linked to 11 deaths in the US .
Seven people died in Florida , three in Georgia and one in South Carolina , according to US media .
The storm also left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean , where nearly 40 people were killed .
Interactive See how Road Town , Tortola has been damaged by Hurricane Irma 9 Sep 2017 31 Mar 2015
Interactive See how Providenciales , Turks and Caicos , has been damaged by Hurricane Irma 10 Sep 2017 1 Jan 2016
French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in the region and is to visit devastated French islands , while UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is heading to the British Virgin Islands .
Both France and Britain have been criticised for not doing enough to help their nationals in overseas territories affected by the hurricane .
Dutch King Willem-Alexander spent Monday night on the Dutch side of St Martin , an island shared between France and the Netherlands .
He told the NOS public newscaster : `` I have seen proper war as well as natural disasters before , but I 've never seen anything like this . ''
Florida Governor Rick Scott used the same word - `` devastation '' - after flying over the Keys on Monday .
`` I just hope everybody survived , '' he said . `` It 's horrible what we saw . ''
`` We saw a lot of boats washed ashore and we saw any , basically , any trailer park there overturned . ''
The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates one in four homes in the Keys has been destroyed and that 60 % were damaged .
Thousands of people ignored calls to evacuate last week , and clung on in the dangerously exposed islands during the storm .
However , Governor Scott added : `` I did n't see the damage I thought I would see . '' Storm surges had turned out to be `` not as bad as we thought '' , he said .
Teams are still working to clear Highway 1 , the road connecting most of the inhabited islands , and bridge inspections are continuing .
Some residents were allowed into the towns of Key Largo , Tavernier and Islamorada on Tuesday morning , authorities in Monroe Country said .
They were warned that services on the islands were limited : most areas were still without power and water , mobile phone signals were patchy and most petrol stations were still closed .
The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has arrived off Florida and other navy ships were in the area on Tuesday to help distribute food to the Keys and evacuate residents .
In Jacksonville , Mayor Lenny Curry said 356 people had to be rescued amid record-high storm surges and flooding , the Florida Times-Union reported .
A Jacksonville Pizza Hut sparked online backlash after a manager threatened to punish employees who evacuated too early for Irma .
`` You can not evacuate Friday for a Tuesday storm event ! '' the restaurant 's manager told employees in a notice , which was shared online .
Jacksonville officials began ordering a mandatory evacuation for parts of the city on Friday .
In a statement , Pizza Hut said the manager who posted the notice did not follow company guidelines .
Other parts of the state escaped the storm lightly compared to the Caribbean islands .
`` The storm surge flooding in Miami is a mere fraction of what would have happened if the core of the storm had been further east , '' Rick Knabb , former director of the National Hurricane Center , said in a tweet .
The storm was downgraded as it moved north towards Atlanta , Georgia , with maximum sustained winds of 35mph ( 56km/h ) , the National Hurricane Center ( NHC ) said in a statement .
Another hurricane , Jose , has been weakening over the western Atlantic , with swells due to affect parts of Hispaniola ( the island split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic ) , the Bahamas , and the Turks and Caicos Islands , later this week .
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Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Florida Keys was one of the US areas hit hardest by Irma
Parts of the Florida Keys, the low-lying islands which bore the brunt of Hurricane Irma when the category-four storm struck on Sunday, have reopened.
Entry is being restricted to residents and business owners as work continues to clear roads and check the state of bridges linking the islands.
Nearly 6.9 million homes were without power in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama.
Irma, which has since rapidly weakened, is being linked to 11 deaths in the US.
Why was Florida spared worst of Irma?
Europe steps up response to Irma
Seven people died in Florida, three in Georgia and one in South Carolina, according to US media.
The storm also left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean, where nearly 40 people were killed.
Interactive See how Road Town, Tortola has been damaged by Hurricane Irma 9 Sep 2017 31 Mar 2015
Interactive See how Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, has been damaged by Hurricane Irma 10 Sep 2017 1 Jan 2016
French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in the region and is to visit devastated French islands, while UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is heading to the British Virgin Islands.
Both France and Britain have been criticised for not doing enough to help their nationals in overseas territories affected by the hurricane.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander spent Monday night on the Dutch side of St Martin, an island shared between France and the Netherlands.
He told the NOS public newscaster: "I have seen proper war as well as natural disasters before, but I've never seen anything like this."
Florida Governor Rick Scott used the same word - "devastation" - after flying over the Keys on Monday.
"I just hope everybody survived," he said. "It's horrible what we saw."
"We saw a lot of boats washed ashore and we saw any, basically, any trailer park there overturned."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's correspondents in the region chart Irma's path of destruction
The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates one in four homes in the Keys has been destroyed and that 60% were damaged.
Thousands of people ignored calls to evacuate last week, and clung on in the dangerously exposed islands during the storm.
However, Governor Scott added: "I didn't see the damage I thought I would see." Storm surges had turned out to be "not as bad as we thought", he said.
Teams are still working to clear Highway 1, the road connecting most of the inhabited islands, and bridge inspections are continuing.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Patrick Spoon videoed his walk around Charleston as Irma hit
Some residents were allowed into the towns of Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada on Tuesday morning, authorities in Monroe Country said.
They were warned that services on the islands were limited: most areas were still without power and water, mobile phone signals were patchy and most petrol stations were still closed.
The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has arrived off Florida and other navy ships were in the area on Tuesday to help distribute food to the Keys and evacuate residents.
In Jacksonville, Mayor Lenny Curry said 356 people had to be rescued amid record-high storm surges and flooding, the Florida Times-Union reported.
A Jacksonville Pizza Hut sparked online backlash after a manager threatened to punish employees who evacuated too early for Irma.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Aerial footage shows the damage to homes in Orlando, Florida
"You cannot evacuate Friday for a Tuesday storm event!" the restaurant's manager told employees in a notice, which was shared online.
Jacksonville officials began ordering a mandatory evacuation for parts of the city on Friday.
In a statement, Pizza Hut said the manager who posted the notice did not follow company guidelines.
Other parts of the state escaped the storm lightly compared to the Caribbean islands.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption A local resident looks inside a collapsed coastal house after Hurricane Irma passed the area in Vilano Beach, Florida
"The storm surge flooding in Miami is a mere fraction of what would have happened if the core of the storm had been further east," Rick Knabb, former director of the National Hurricane Center, said in a tweet.
The storm was downgraded as it moved north towards Atlanta, Georgia, with maximum sustained winds of 35mph (56km/h), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement.
Another hurricane, Jose, has been weakening over the western Atlantic, with swells due to affect parts of Hispaniola (the island split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, later this week.
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http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/06/opinion/francona-gaza-hamas-on-the-ropes/index.html?hpt=op_t1
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OPINION: In Gaza, Hamas is on the ropes
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2014-08-06
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Rick Francona
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( CNN ) -- There is optimism , and hope , that the Egyptian-brokered three-day `` humanitarian cease-fire '' between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas will turn into a longer-term cessation of hostilities -- with good reason .
Why ? Militarily speaking , Hamas is on the ropes . Although the group has survived an IDF aerial , naval and ground onslaught , it has suffered a severe blow . Despite its somewhat successful attempts to portray itself and all Gaza as victims of a disproportionate Israeli military campaign , in the end it failed to prevent the IDF from achieving almost all its military goals , while achieving very little on its part .
The Israelis stated early on in the campaign that their objectives were to find and destroy Hamas ' networks of tunnels constructed under the Gaza border with Israel , tunnels designed to be used for offensive attacks on Israeli cities and kibbutzim in southern Israel .
At the outset of hostilities , the IDF believed there were over 20 tunnels . At the end of the fighting , they had destroyed 32 tunnels , some almost 2 miles in length and demonstrating surprising engineering capabilities . Granted , it is impossible to know if the IDF has found all the tunnels .
Let 's look at the situation as it appeared on the day after the last rockets were fired , the last bombs were dropped and the last tunnels were destroyed .
Hamas has lost most if not all its offensive tunnels . These tunnels were constructed over several years at great expense , not only in terms of resources expended , but in terms of diversion of those resources from the construction of infrastructure projects , including schools , hospitals , mosques and housing .
As for casualties , the overwhelming numbers of dead and wounded were Palestinians . The death toll among the Gazans reached almost 1,900 , according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights .
There are differing claims by human rights organizations and the Israeli government about how many of the dead were Hamas fighters versus innocent civilians . The human rights groups say 80 % of the dead were civilians , while the Israelis counter with a figure of just under 50 % .
Assuming the human rights groups are correct , Hamas has lost fewer than 400 fighters ; if we are to accept the Israeli figure , Hamas losses would be over 900 . Given its suspected strength of more than 10,000 fighters , Hamas can absorb this level of manpower losses .
If past conflicts are a guide , Hamas recruitment will soar in the wake of the fighting as young men are drawn to the organization that , at least in their own minds , successfully stood up to the vaunted Israel Defense Forces . Personnel losses will not affect the ability of Hamas to survive .
That said , in addition to the loss of the tunnels , much of Hamas ' rocket inventory has been depleted or destroyed . According to a spokesman for the Israeli military , Hamas started the conflict with an arsenal of about 10,000 rockets . One-third of those were fired at Israel , albeit with limited effect , and another third were destroyed in Israeli strikes .
If those figures are accurate , that leaves Hamas with over 3,000 rockets . The numbers can be deceiving , since we do not have a breakdown of how many of which type remain in the inventory -- do they have a large number of the more capable Syrian-made M-302 ( 100 mile range ) or locally made M-75 ( 50 mile range ) rockets , or more of the less capable , locally made short-range al-Qassam rockets ? In any case , Hamas still has thousands of rockets .
However , of the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas ( as well as some launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad ) at Israel , few caused significant damage . There have been three civilian deaths in Israel thus far in the conflict .
The primary reason for the low number of deaths and injuries in Israel , aside from the inherent inaccuracy of the rockets , is the effectiveness of Israel 's Iron Dome anti-rocket/missile system .
After similar conflicts in the past , Hamas has been re-armed and resupplied by its supporters , primarily Iran and to some extent Syria . The most efficient method for the re-arming and resupply effort has been via the large number of smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt 's Sinai Peninsula .
That is not likely to be the case this time -- another blow to Hamas , which it must factor in to its assessment of this conflict as well as its future planning .
The new government in Egypt under former defense chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is not a friend of Hamas . Al-Sisi considers Hamas to be nothing more than a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood , which he has outlawed in Egypt . He has increased the Egyptian military and police presence on the Gaza border and destroyed many of the smuggling tunnels formerly used to import weapons into Gaza . Hamas can not expect to be fully re-armed and resupplied via Sinai as it has in the past .
This conflict ended , at least for a while , as most of the past wars have . Israel dominated the battlefield , possessing complete control of the air and sea , and took the ground fighting deep into Gaza , Hamas ' home turf . The much more powerful Israeli armed forces did enormous damage to the public and civilian infrastructure while mostly achieving its military objectives .
I said earlier in this conflict that Israel would pursue its objectives despite the inevitable world condemnation of its so-called disproportionate use of military force , and would stop its operations when it had achieved those objectives . We appear to be at that point .
There has been far too much loss of life in Gaza . It is time to stop the fighting and seek a solution to this current crisis and establish a framework for a long-term solution . We have a chance to do just that . In this particular instance , the catalyst for that search may just be the serious military defeat suffered by Hamas .
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Editor's note: Rick Francona is a retired U.S. Air Force intelligence officer and CNN military analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- There is optimism, and hope, that the Egyptian-brokered three-day "humanitarian cease-fire" between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas will turn into a longer-term cessation of hostilities -- with good reason.
Why? Militarily speaking, Hamas is on the ropes. Although the group has survived an IDF aerial, naval and ground onslaught, it has suffered a severe blow. Despite its somewhat successful attempts to portray itself and all Gaza as victims of a disproportionate Israeli military campaign, in the end it failed to prevent the IDF from achieving almost all its military goals, while achieving very little on its part.
The Israelis stated early on in the campaign that their objectives were to find and destroy Hamas' networks of tunnels constructed under the Gaza border with Israel, tunnels designed to be used for offensive attacks on Israeli cities and kibbutzim in southern Israel.
At the outset of hostilities, the IDF believed there were over 20 tunnels. At the end of the fighting, they had destroyed 32 tunnels, some almost 2 miles in length and demonstrating surprising engineering capabilities. Granted, it is impossible to know if the IDF has found all the tunnels.
Opinion: Bring Hamas to the table
Let's look at the situation as it appeared on the day after the last rockets were fired, the last bombs were dropped and the last tunnels were destroyed.
Hamas has lost most if not all its offensive tunnels. These tunnels were constructed over several years at great expense, not only in terms of resources expended, but in terms of diversion of those resources from the construction of infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals, mosques and housing.
As for casualties, the overwhelming numbers of dead and wounded were Palestinians. The death toll among the Gazans reached almost 1,900, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
There are differing claims by human rights organizations and the Israeli government about how many of the dead were Hamas fighters versus innocent civilians. The human rights groups say 80% of the dead were civilians, while the Israelis counter with a figure of just under 50%.
Assuming the human rights groups are correct, Hamas has lost fewer than 400 fighters; if we are to accept the Israeli figure, Hamas losses would be over 900. Given its suspected strength of more than 10,000 fighters, Hamas can absorb this level of manpower losses.
If past conflicts are a guide, Hamas recruitment will soar in the wake of the fighting as young men are drawn to the organization that, at least in their own minds, successfully stood up to the vaunted Israel Defense Forces. Personnel losses will not affect the ability of Hamas to survive.
That said, in addition to the loss of the tunnels, much of Hamas' rocket inventory has been depleted or destroyed. According to a spokesman for the Israeli military, Hamas started the conflict with an arsenal of about 10,000 rockets. One-third of those were fired at Israel, albeit with limited effect, and another third were destroyed in Israeli strikes.
If those figures are accurate, that leaves Hamas with over 3,000 rockets. The numbers can be deceiving, since we do not have a breakdown of how many of which type remain in the inventory -- do they have a large number of the more capable Syrian-made M-302 (100 mile range) or locally made M-75 (50 mile range) rockets, or more of the less capable, locally made short-range al-Qassam rockets? In any case, Hamas still has thousands of rockets.
However, of the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas (as well as some launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad) at Israel, few caused significant damage. There have been three civilian deaths in Israel thus far in the conflict.
The primary reason for the low number of deaths and injuries in Israel, aside from the inherent inaccuracy of the rockets, is the effectiveness of Israel's Iron Dome anti-rocket/missile system.
After similar conflicts in the past, Hamas has been re-armed and resupplied by its supporters, primarily Iran and to some extent Syria. The most efficient method for the re-arming and resupply effort has been via the large number of smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
That is not likely to be the case this time -- another blow to Hamas, which it must factor in to its assessment of this conflict as well as its future planning.
The new government in Egypt under former defense chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is not a friend of Hamas. Al-Sisi considers Hamas to be nothing more than a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he has outlawed in Egypt. He has increased the Egyptian military and police presence on the Gaza border and destroyed many of the smuggling tunnels formerly used to import weapons into Gaza. Hamas cannot expect to be fully re-armed and resupplied via Sinai as it has in the past.
This conflict ended, at least for a while, as most of the past wars have. Israel dominated the battlefield, possessing complete control of the air and sea, and took the ground fighting deep into Gaza, Hamas' home turf. The much more powerful Israeli armed forces did enormous damage to the public and civilian infrastructure while mostly achieving its military objectives.
I said earlier in this conflict that Israel would pursue its objectives despite the inevitable world condemnation of its so-called disproportionate use of military force, and would stop its operations when it had achieved those objectives. We appear to be at that point.
There has been far too much loss of life in Gaza. It is time to stop the fighting and seek a solution to this current crisis and establish a framework for a long-term solution. We have a chance to do just that. In this particular instance, the catalyst for that search may just be the serious military defeat suffered by Hamas.
Fearing daughter's Gaza border wedding
Palestinian-American: 'Living in occupation felt normal'
Read CNNOpinion's new Flipboard magazine.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.
Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion.
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http://www.npr.org/2012/11/12/164987802/conservative-media-caught-in-the-blame-game
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Conservative Media Caught in the Blame Game
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2012-11-12
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David Folkenflik
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Hear More of David Folkenflik 's Reporting Conservative Media Caught in the Blame Game Listen
In the wake of last Tuesday 's elections , a lively debate has erupted into the open over whether conservatives and the Republican Party were well-served by their favorite media outlets .
Former Gov . Mitt Romney was reported to have been so certain of a victory on Tuesday night that he cast aside tradition and did not draft a concession speech . But conservatives now say his misplaced confidence — and theirs — were bolstered by the predictions of many like-minded pundits , which were broadcast and posted online around the clock by sympathetic news outlets .
`` You had this kind of mutually reinforcing phenomenon going on between the Romney campaign [ and ] some influential commentators — and then a lot of that commentary gets repeated in the media at large , '' said Byron York , chief political correspondent for the conservative Washington Examiner .
York said that stunned Republicans at Romney 's Boston headquarters told him they were influenced by the results of surveys conducted by the campaign 's pollster , Neil Newhouse , and by what they heard on the air and saw in print .
Similarly , conservative columnist John Podhoretz of the New York Post had argued before the election that many pollsters were ignoring the high turnout by Republicans in the 2010 elections that swept the GOP into control of the U.S. House . The 2012 race would be the same , proving Obama 's 2008 win to be an anomaly , Podhoretz argued — quite mistakenly , as he conceded afterward .
`` Because I had a rooting interest in the other side , that view was strengthened and amplified by what I wanted to happen , which I freely confess , '' said Podhoretz , also the editor of the conservative Commentary magazine and a cultural critic for the conservative Weekly Standard . `` People do n't ordinarily cast a skeptical eye on data and information that supports their opinions . They 're happy to take it . ''
The noted conservative political analyst Michael Barone and conservative columnist George Will were among those predicting a landslide in the electoral college for Romney . But they were far from alone . Viewers consumed a steady diet of such punditry on Fox News for weeks ahead of the election . Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ambidextrous political consultant Dick Morris ( a consultant to a Democratic president , Bill Clinton , and a Republican Senate Majority Leader , Trent Lott ) additionally promised landslides in the popular vote for Romney . Former chief George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove , who is now a top analyst for Fox and a top fundraiser for a political action committee that spent $ 300 million against President Obama and his fellow Democrats , predicted a comfortable but closer win for Romney .
Many conservatives argued the polls themselves were skewed — because they showed a Democratic edge nationally and a strong advantage in key battleground states . And indeed , Podhoretz and other conservatives contended that liberals and their sympathizers in the press corps clicked on Nate Silver 's 538 blog in the New York Times hour after hour not because of their fascination with the mathematical probabilities but out of a desperate need for reassurance that President Obama would win re-election .
But in the days after Obama cruised to victory , former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum accused right-of-center media outlets and partisan pundits of failing their audiences by cheerleading for the GOP rather than reflecting what was actually happening in the race or in the nation at large .
`` The conservative followership has been fleeced , exploited and lied to by the conservative entertainment complex , '' Frum said on MSNBC 's Morning Joe .
Pressed to name names , Frum demurred , though he has pointed to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh in the past . Frum argued the conservative media have failed their audiences by cheerleading rather reflecting what was actually happening in the race or in the nation at large .
`` The activists are so mistaken about the nature of the problems the country faces , '' Frum said . `` I went to Tea Party rallies , and I would ask this question : Have taxes gone up or down in the past four years ? They could not answer that question correctly . ''
Host Joe Scarborough — a former Republican congressman — seconded Frum 's critique and said he was reminded of what happened when the German army overtook France in 1940 . `` The French generals [ were ] reassuring [ British Prime Minister Winston ] Churchill day after day , week after week that the French were putting up a brave defense , when they knew the war was already lost . ''
On election night , Rove was in constant contact with Romney 's people and proved so flustered by the results that he vigorously disputed the conclusion of Fox News ' decision desk that Obama had won Ohio — and thereby won the election . A nonplused Megyn Kelly responded : `` Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better , or is this real ? ''
The backlash has only strengthened in the days since the election . Younger political right-of-center operatives and pundits told Politico 's Jonathan Martin that the reliance on clearly conservative media outlets and pundits — such as Newsmax , Rush Limbaugh 's radio program , and the opinion shows on Fox News — had undermined their understanding of where the campaign stood .
`` Unfortunately , for us Republicans who want to rebuild this party , the echo chamber [ now ] is louder and more difficult to overcome , '' former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson , who unsuccessfully ran against Rand Paul two years ago for the Republican nomination for Senate , told Martin .
Martin reported that Grayson 's mentor , Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell , unsuccessfully pleaded with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to give his candidate as much time on the air as Paul , a firebrand conservative libertarian popular among Tea Party fans and many Fox viewers . Sorry , Ailes is said to have responded : Paul is better TV .
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Conservative Media Caught in the Blame Game
Hear More of David Folkenflik's Reporting Conservative Media Caught in the Blame Game Listen
In the wake of last Tuesday's elections, a lively debate has erupted into the open over whether conservatives and the Republican Party were well-served by their favorite media outlets.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney was reported to have been so certain of a victory on Tuesday night that he cast aside tradition and did not draft a concession speech. But conservatives now say his misplaced confidence — and theirs — were bolstered by the predictions of many like-minded pundits, which were broadcast and posted online around the clock by sympathetic news outlets.
"You had this kind of mutually reinforcing phenomenon going on between the Romney campaign [and] some influential commentators — and then a lot of that commentary gets repeated in the media at large," said Byron York, chief political correspondent for the conservative Washington Examiner.
York said that stunned Republicans at Romney's Boston headquarters told him they were influenced by the results of surveys conducted by the campaign's pollster, Neil Newhouse, and by what they heard on the air and saw in print.
Similarly, conservative columnist John Podhoretz of the New York Post had argued before the election that many pollsters were ignoring the high turnout by Republicans in the 2010 elections that swept the GOP into control of the U.S. House. The 2012 race would be the same, proving Obama's 2008 win to be an anomaly, Podhoretz argued — quite mistakenly, as he conceded afterward.
"Because I had a rooting interest in the other side, that view was strengthened and amplified by what I wanted to happen, which I freely confess," said Podhoretz, also the editor of the conservative Commentary magazine and a cultural critic for the conservative Weekly Standard. "People don't ordinarily cast a skeptical eye on data and information that supports their opinions. They're happy to take it."
The noted conservative political analyst Michael Barone and conservative columnist George Will were among those predicting a landslide in the electoral college for Romney. But they were far from alone. Viewers consumed a steady diet of such punditry on Fox News for weeks ahead of the election. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ambidextrous political consultant Dick Morris (a consultant to a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and a Republican Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott) additionally promised landslides in the popular vote for Romney. Former chief George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove, who is now a top analyst for Fox and a top fundraiser for a political action committee that spent $300 million against President Obama and his fellow Democrats, predicted a comfortable but closer win for Romney.
Many conservatives argued the polls themselves were skewed — because they showed a Democratic edge nationally and a strong advantage in key battleground states. And indeed, Podhoretz and other conservatives contended that liberals and their sympathizers in the press corps clicked on Nate Silver's 538 blog in the New York Times hour after hour not because of their fascination with the mathematical probabilities but out of a desperate need for reassurance that President Obama would win re-election.
But in the days after Obama cruised to victory, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum accused right-of-center media outlets and partisan pundits of failing their audiences by cheerleading for the GOP rather than reflecting what was actually happening in the race or in the nation at large.
"The conservative followership has been fleeced, exploited and lied to by the conservative entertainment complex," Frum said on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Pressed to name names, Frum demurred, though he has pointed to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh in the past. Frum argued the conservative media have failed their audiences by cheerleading rather reflecting what was actually happening in the race or in the nation at large.
"The activists are so mistaken about the nature of the problems the country faces," Frum said. "I went to Tea Party rallies, and I would ask this question: Have taxes gone up or down in the past four years? They could not answer that question correctly."
Host Joe Scarborough — a former Republican congressman — seconded Frum's critique and said he was reminded of what happened when the German army overtook France in 1940. "The French generals [were] reassuring [British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill day after day, week after week that the French were putting up a brave defense, when they knew the war was already lost."
On election night, Rove was in constant contact with Romney's people and proved so flustered by the results that he vigorously disputed the conclusion of Fox News' decision desk that Obama had won Ohio — and thereby won the election. A nonplused Megyn Kelly responded: "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?"
The backlash has only strengthened in the days since the election. Younger political right-of-center operatives and pundits told Politico's Jonathan Martin that the reliance on clearly conservative media outlets and pundits — such as Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh's radio program, and the opinion shows on Fox News — had undermined their understanding of where the campaign stood.
"Unfortunately, for us Republicans who want to rebuild this party, the echo chamber [now] is louder and more difficult to overcome," former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who unsuccessfully ran against Rand Paul two years ago for the Republican nomination for Senate, told Martin.
Martin reported that Grayson's mentor, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, unsuccessfully pleaded with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to give his candidate as much time on the air as Paul, a firebrand conservative libertarian popular among Tea Party fans and many Fox viewers. Sorry, Ailes is said to have responded: Paul is better TV.
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https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-protests-armed-guards-local-businesses-extortion
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Seattle 'autonomous zone' has armed guards, local businesses being threatened with extortion, police say
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Vandana Rambaran
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Seattle police say they have received reports of armed guards and potential extortion in a self-declared autonomous zone that spans several blocks and includes a now-closed precinct .
“ We ’ ve heard , anecdotally , reports of citizens and businesses being asked to pay a fee to operate within this area . This is the crime of extortion . If anyone has been subjected to this , we need them to call 911 , ” Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette said on Wednesday .
SEATTLE PROTESTERS STORM CITY HALL , DEMAND MAYOR RESIGN AFTER DRIVING POLICE OUT OF AREA , DECLARING AUTONOMOUS ZONE
Protesters calling to defund the police and make sweeping reforms to law enforcement tactics have declared a six-block region -- spanning 13th Avenue past 11th Avenue , near Cal Anderson Park , and from East Olive Street to East Pike Street -- the “ Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone ” ( CHAZ ) .
The region encompasses the SPD 's East Precinct , which was abandoned by cops on Monday following days of violent clashes between law enforcement and protesters in the wake of George Floyd 's death , as well as parts of Capitol Hill .
Officers retreated from the area in an effort to quell the violence -- which included multiple shootings , one that was sparked after a man rammed his vehicle into a crowd of protesters . Police officers have deployed tear gas and pepper spray to disperse large groups of people .
“ We wanted to be able to facilitate and support peaceful demonstrations , ” Nollette said .
Demonstrations within the autonomous zone have been mostly peaceful , with no reports of violence , but police say armed guards have been surrounding the perimeter of the region and residents who live within the boundaries are `` forced to show ID to prove you “ belong ” there , '' a law enforcement official told Fox News .
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the unfolding situation , the official told Fox News some people living in the area -- which includes numerous bars , restaurants , businesses and private residences -- have been `` begging for help because they are not being allowed into their homes without ID . ''
Police have been told to stay away from the region unless there is a call to 911 for help .
TRUMP BLASTS 'RADICAL LEFT ' DEMS IN SEATTLE , SAYS 'DOMESTIC TERRORISTS ' TAKE HOLD OF CITY
The official also added that leaders in the anti-cop zone are `` starting to extort money from the local businesses within the border for 'protection . ' ''
Mckenzie Diamond , who lives in the “ Autonomous Zone , '' told Kiro 7 the experience has been `` a bit stressful . ''
`` It ’ s like checking in with somebody to get into your own home , ” Diamond told the news outlet . “ Just making it so people can get into their buildings . Keep the zone however they want , and move the fencing so people can go home . ''
“ No one at these checkpoints has the legal authority to demand identification from anyone . We ask if anyone is subjected to these demands to call 911 and report the incident , ” Nollette said .
“ While Washington is an open-carry state , there is no legal right for those arms to be used to intimidate community members , '' she told Komo News .
Nollette also added that they are aware of threats to burn down the East Precinct , which she said `` would endanger residents , firefighters and businesses . ”
The police department is looking to start negotiations with the leaders of the protest movement to gain access to the police precinct but are unsure of who is leading the demonstrations .
“ It ’ s just a matter of establishing this dialogue . We ’ d love nothing more than to be able to open our precinct buildings , ” Nollette said . “ What we want to do is give an opportunity for everyone ’ s tempers to calm , and for us to approach the table with a view towards equality . ''
Supporters of the movement have posted photos on social media depicting a large , but peaceful scene .
Within the blockaded region , occupiers have set up tents , painted murals , and have music playing from speakers throughout the night .
One resident in the area told police that there were `` tents lining my streets , barricades littered throughout the intersection by protestors , and civilians walking around with AR15s , '' an official told Fox News . `` And the noise has not stopped . ''
Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins , whose firehouse is a few blocks from the region , has been one of the only city officials seen in the area working alongside demonstrators , according to Komo News .
“ Well , we got a team , we are working through this and there is some trust built and I do n't want to compromise the trust , '' Scoggins told the news outlet .
On Wednesday , President Trump demanded `` LAW & ORDER ! '' in Seattle as the scene unfolded .
`` Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle , run by Radical Left Democrats , of course , '' he said on Twitter .
Trump lambasted Democratic Gov . Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan , urging them to take control of the situation .
`` Radical Left Governor @ JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before . Take back your city NOW . If you don ’ t do it , I will , '' Trump wrote . `` This is not a game . These ugly Anarchists must be stooped IMMEDIATELY . MOVE FAST ! ''
One of the perceived leaders of the movement , Raz Simone , tweeted a response to Trump on Wednesday decrying that he is `` not a Terrorist Warlord . ''
`` The President really put a hit on my head . I ’ m not a Terrorist Warlord . Quit spreading that false narrative , '' Simone tweeted . `` The world has NEVER been ready for a strong black man . We have been peaceful and nothing else . If I die don ’ t let it be in vain . ''
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Editor’s Note: A FoxNews.com home page photo collage which originally accompanied this story included multiple scenes from Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” and of wreckage following recent riots. The collage did not clearly delineate between these images, and has since been replaced. In addition, a recent slideshow depicting scenes from Seattle mistakenly included a picture from St. Paul, Minnesota. Fox News regrets these errors.
Seattle police say they have received reports of armed guards and potential extortion in a self-declared autonomous zone that spans several blocks and includes a now-closed precinct.
“We’ve heard, anecdotally, reports of citizens and businesses being asked to pay a fee to operate within this area. This is the crime of extortion. If anyone has been subjected to this, we need them to call 911,” Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette said on Wednesday.
SEATTLE PROTESTERS STORM CITY HALL, DEMAND MAYOR RESIGN AFTER DRIVING POLICE OUT OF AREA, DECLARING AUTONOMOUS ZONE
Protesters calling to defund the police and make sweeping reforms to law enforcement tactics have declared a six-block region -- spanning 13th Avenue past 11th Avenue, near Cal Anderson Park, and from East Olive Street to East Pike Street -- the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ).
The region encompasses the SPD's East Precinct, which was abandoned by cops on Monday following days of violent clashes between law enforcement and protesters in the wake of George Floyd's death, as well as parts of Capitol Hill.
Officers retreated from the area in an effort to quell the violence-- which included multiple shootings, one that was sparked after a man rammed his vehicle into a crowd of protesters. Police officers have deployed tear gas and pepper spray to disperse large groups of people.
“We wanted to be able to facilitate and support peaceful demonstrations,” Nollette said.
Demonstrations within the autonomous zone have been mostly peaceful, with no reports of violence, but police say armed guards have been surrounding the perimeter of the region and residents who live within the boundaries are "forced to show ID to prove you “belong” there," a law enforcement official told Fox News.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the unfolding situation, the official told Fox News some people living in the area -- which includes numerous bars, restaurants, businesses and private residences -- have been "begging for help because they are not being allowed into their homes without ID."
Police have been told to stay away from the region unless there is a call to 911 for help.
TRUMP BLASTS 'RADICAL LEFT' DEMS IN SEATTLE, SAYS 'DOMESTIC TERRORISTS' TAKE HOLD OF CITY
The official also added that leaders in the anti-cop zone are "starting to extort money from the local businesses within the border for 'protection.'"
Mckenzie Diamond, who lives in the “Autonomous Zone," told Kiro 7 the experience has been "a bit stressful."
"It’s like checking in with somebody to get into your own home,” Diamond told the news outlet. “Just making it so people can get into their buildings. Keep the zone however they want, and move the fencing so people can go home."
“No one at these checkpoints has the legal authority to demand identification from anyone. We ask if anyone is subjected to these demands to call 911 and report the incident,” Nollette said.
“While Washington is an open-carry state, there is no legal right for those arms to be used to intimidate community members," she told Komo News.
Nollette also added that they are aware of threats to burn down the East Precinct, which she said "would endanger residents, firefighters and businesses.”
The police department is looking to start negotiations with the leaders of the protest movement to gain access to the police precinct but are unsure of who is leading the demonstrations.
“It’s just a matter of establishing this dialogue. We’d love nothing more than to be able to open our precinct buildings,” Nollette said. “What we want to do is give an opportunity for everyone’s tempers to calm, and for us to approach the table with a view towards equality."
Supporters of the movement have posted photos on social media depicting a large, but peaceful scene.
Within the blockaded region, occupiers have set up tents, painted murals, and have music playing from speakers throughout the night.
One resident in the area told police that there were "tents lining my streets, barricades littered throughout the intersection by protestors, and civilians walking around with AR15s," an official told Fox News. "And the noise has not stopped."
Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, whose firehouse is a few blocks from the region, has been one of the only city officials seen in the area working alongside demonstrators, according to Komo News.
“Well, we got a team, we are working through this and there is some trust built and I don't want to compromise the trust," Scoggins told the news outlet.
On Wednesday, President Trump demanded "LAW & ORDER!" in Seattle as the scene unfolded.
"Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle, run by Radical Left Democrats, of course," he said on Twitter.
Trump lambasted Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, urging them to take control of the situation.
"Radical Left Governor @JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will," Trump wrote. "This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!"
One of the perceived leaders of the movement, Raz Simone, tweeted a response to Trump on Wednesday decrying that he is "not a Terrorist Warlord."
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
"The President really put a hit on my head. I’m not a Terrorist Warlord. Quit spreading that false narrative," Simone tweeted. "The world has NEVER been ready for a strong black man. We have been peaceful and nothing else. If I die don’t let it be in vain."
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/25/pence-vows-trump-will-continue-obamacare-fight-calls-out-democrats-and-republicans.html
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Pence vows Trump will continue ObamaCare fight, calls out Democrats and Republicans
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2017-03-25
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Vice President Pence tried Saturday to deliver a pep-talk to Americans after fellow Republicans ’ failed effort to overhaul ObamaCare -- admitting that members are “ back to the drawing board ” but vowing that President Trump will “ keep fighting . ”
Pence spoke in the aftermath of House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday cancelling the final vote for the ObamaCare replacement bill , upon concluding he didn ’ t have enough votes despite the chamber ’ s GOP majority .
Republicans Ryan and Trump after announcing the cancellation , sounded as if efforts to fulfill campaign promises to repeal and replace the 2010 health care law were essentially finished .
Ryan publicly said Americans would be living with ObamaCare for the “ foreseeable future , ” while Trump simply told The New York Times , “ It ’ s enough already . ”
However , Trump and Pence on Saturday seemed to come back fighting .
“ ObamaCare will explode , and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE , ” Trump tweeted . “ Do not worry ! ”
Pence later said at a business event in Charleston , West Virginia , that small-business owners in the state repeatedly tell him about the need to dismantle ObamaCare because it “ stifles growth ” and slows job creation .
“ President Trump is never going to stop fighting to keep his promises to the American people , ” he said
He also argued those who claimed victory in Republicans ’ failure Friday are merely championing the status quo and said , “ I promise you , that victory won ’ t last for long . ”
Pence also put pressure on West Virginia Sens . Shelley Moore Capito , a Republican , and Joe Manchin , a Democrat , to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch as the next Supreme Court justice .
However , he also made clear that Gorsuch , Trump ’ s pick , would be confirmed “ one way or another , ” implying that Senate Republican leaders would invoke parliamentary tactics to win confirmation with a simple , 51-vote majority .
Pence was joined at the first event by Small Business Administration leader Linda McMahon , who helped start and run World Wrestling Entertainment .
“ Maybe we could have used a couple of WWE superstars on Capitol Hill yesterday , ” Pence , who did his share of arm-twisting for ObamaCare reform , said jokingly .
On Friday , after the vote was cancelled , Trump appeared to already be focusing on tax reform and returning to his plan to allow ObamaCare to continue -- with the expectation that the 2010 health care law would implode amid increasing costs and dwindling options for Americans .
Still , his tweet Saturday suggested a potential willingness to work on a bipartisan plan on overhauling the law -- albeit a scenario in which Democrats come to the GOP-controlled Congress to work together on improvements .
Late Friday , Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker also suggested the fight to replace ObamaCare was not finished .
“ At some point , on behalf of the American people , we have to resolve the issues that are driving up costs , limiting choices , and causing the individual market to spiral downward , ” he said . “ I stand ready to work with the administration and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in order to fix our broken health care system . ”
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Vice President Pence tried Saturday to deliver a pep-talk to Americans after fellow Republicans’ failed effort to overhaul ObamaCare -- admitting that members are “back to the drawing board” but vowing that President Trump will “keep fighting.”
Pence spoke in the aftermath of House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday cancelling the final vote for the ObamaCare replacement bill, upon concluding he didn’t have enough votes despite the chamber’s GOP majority.
Republicans Ryan and Trump after announcing the cancellation, sounded as if efforts to fulfill campaign promises to repeal and replace the 2010 health care law were essentially finished.
Ryan publicly said Americans would be living with ObamaCare for the “foreseeable future,” while Trump simply told The New York Times, “It’s enough already.”
However, Trump and Pence on Saturday seemed to come back fighting.
“ObamaCare will explode, and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE,” Trump tweeted. “Do not worry!”
Pence later said at a business event in Charleston, West Virginia, that small-business owners in the state repeatedly tell him about the need to dismantle ObamaCare because it “stifles growth” and slows job creation.
“President Trump is never going to stop fighting to keep his promises to the American people,” he said
He also argued those who claimed victory in Republicans’ failure Friday are merely championing the status quo and said, “I promise you, that victory won’t last for long.”
Pence also put pressure on West Virginia Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat, to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch as the next Supreme Court justice.
However, he also made clear that Gorsuch, Trump’s pick, would be confirmed “one way or another,” implying that Senate Republican leaders would invoke parliamentary tactics to win confirmation with a simple, 51-vote majority.
Pence was joined at the first event by Small Business Administration leader Linda McMahon, who helped start and run World Wrestling Entertainment.
“Maybe we could have used a couple of WWE superstars on Capitol Hill yesterday,” Pence, who did his share of arm-twisting for ObamaCare reform, said jokingly.
On Friday, after the vote was cancelled, Trump appeared to already be focusing on tax reform and returning to his plan to allow ObamaCare to continue -- with the expectation that the 2010 health care law would implode amid increasing costs and dwindling options for Americans.
Still, his tweet Saturday suggested a potential willingness to work on a bipartisan plan on overhauling the law -- albeit a scenario in which Democrats come to the GOP-controlled Congress to work together on improvements.
Late Friday, Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker also suggested the fight to replace ObamaCare was not finished.
“At some point, on behalf of the American people, we have to resolve the issues that are driving up costs, limiting choices, and causing the individual market to spiral downward,” he said. “I stand ready to work with the administration and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in order to fix our broken health care system.”
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www.foxnews.com
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wvTmUjfZpwmODrOY
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politics
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Bloomberg
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-20/everyone-knew-of-quid-pro-quo-sondland-testimony-takeaways
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Everyone Knew of ‘Quid Pro Quo’: Sondland Testimony Takeaways
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2019-11-20
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Ryan Teague Beckwith
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LISTEN TO ARTICLE 6:52 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email
Gordon Sondland , the U.S. ambassador to the European Union , delivered the most explosive testimony yet in the House impeachment hearings on Wednesday , saying President Donald Trump effectively directed him to broker a quid pro quo with Ukraine to investigate a chief political rival .
Sondland , an Oregon hotelier who gave $ 1 million to Trump ’ s inaugural fund after his 2016 election , also pointed to Vice President Mike Pence , Secretary of State Michael Pompeo , Energy Secretary Rick Perry and several other administration officials who , he said , were aware of the efforts .
Here ’ s a look at some of the most compelling moments from Wednesday ’ s testimony .
Sondland confirmed that he was involved in a quid pro quo : Trump would host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in exchange for a public statement that Ukraine would launch investigations into the 2016 election and Burisma , the company linked to former Vice President Joe Biden ’ s son , Hunter .
Sondland testified that Rudy Giuliani , the president ’ s personal lawyer , was generally the conduit for Trump ’ s efforts . “ Mr . Giuliani ’ s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelenskiy , ” he said .
Sondland , though , said he never learned why nearly $ 400 million in aid to Ukraine was held up . He said he “ came to believe ” that it was also tied to Trump ’ s desire for the investigations because , using an analogy , “ two plus two is four . ”
“ I tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended , but I never received a clear answer , ” he told Congress .
Sondland , 61 , fought back against allegations that his diplomatic efforts with Kyiv were part of an irregular policymaking process , saying that all of the “ relevant decision-makers ” at the National Security Council and State Department knew about efforts to push Ukraine for investigations in exchange for a White House visit .
“ Everyone was in the loop , ” Sondland said after reading aloud text-message exchanges with Pompeo . “ It was no secret . ”
In a July 19 email , Sondland wrote to Pompeo , Perry , acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney , and other officials that Zelenskiy had promised to run “ a fully transparent investigation ” as a precondition to the two leaders having a call on July 25 .
Sondland said he also discussed with Pence on Sept. 1 in Warsaw the public statement Trump was demanding from Zelenskiy . He said Pence nodded his head , acknowledging that he ’ d heard Sondland say that the freezing of aid to Ukraine would probably only be fixed once Zelenskiy makes a public statement about the investigations .
Trump , Pence and Perry attempted to distance themselves from Sondland after he said they all knew about Trump ’ s demand for investigations in exchange for a White House invitation .
“ This is not a man I know well , ” Trump told reporters .
Pence has maintained that he wasn ’ t involved in Trump ’ s alleged effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rivals . Pence met with Zelenskiy on Sept. 1 in Warsaw , as Giuliani was working with Sondland and other officials to secure an announcement by Zelenskiy of the investigations . Sondland said he told Pence about the negotiations .
Pence ’ s chief of staff claimed that Sondland had lied to Congress , saying the conversation “ never happened . ”
Perry ’ s press secretary said Sondland “ misrepresented ” the energy secretary ’ s interactions with Giuliani and instructions from Trump .
While Trump claimed not to know Sondland well , his ambassador to the EU painted a different picture on Capitol Hill , suggesting they had numerous chummy -- and profane-laced -- conversations .
“ That ’ s how President Trump and I communicate – a lot of four-letter words , ” Sondland added .
Sondland made the comments after being questioned about David Holmes , a top diplomat in Ukraine , who testified last week that he overheard Sondland ’ s phone call with Trump at an open-air restaurant in Kyiv . According to Holmes , Sondland told Trump over the phone that Zelenskiy “ loves your ass . ”
“ Sounds like something I would say , ” Sondland said to laughter .
Later , under questioning from Republican counsel , Sondland added another time in which he used colorful language with Trump – a conversation in which he tried to get the president to say what it would take for him to work with Ukraine .
“ I just said ‘ What do you want from Ukraine ? ’ ” he testified . “ I may have used a four-letter word . ”
Sondland referenced first-hand conversations with Trump , but his clearest evidence of the quid pro quo came through his interactions with Giuliani .
Sondland and former U.S. envoy to Ukraine , Kurt Volker , both begrudgingly engaged with Giuliani on Ukraine policy because Trump told them to do so . “ Talk with Rudy , ” said Sondland , recounting what Trump had told him .
“ Mr . Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma , ” Sondland said in his opening statement . “ Mr . Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States , and we knew that these investigations were important to the president . ”
Sondland has emerged as a key witness tying Trump directly to a quid pro quo , but just weeks ago , Trump thought Sondland would exonerate him .
“ I would love to send Ambassador Sondland , a really good man and great American , to testify , but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court , where Republican ’ s rights have been taken away , and true facts are not allowed out for the public , ” Trump tweeted on Oct. 8 .
He added that Sondland ’ s text message , which he mistakenly described as a tweet , would clear him : “ ’ I believe you are incorrect about President Trump ’ s intentions . The President has been crystal clear : no quid pro quo ’ s of any kind. ’ That says it ALL ! ”
In his testimony , Sondland claimed that the text message was “ simply to relay I ’ ve gone as far as I can go , this is the final word that I ’ ve heard from the president of the United States . ”
Devin Nunes , the ranking Republican on the committee , blasted the impeachment inquiry in his opening remarks and dismissed the allegations that Trump acted improperly as little more than “ conspiracy theories . ”
Nunes said the inquiry was part of a series of attacks on the president by Democrats , including everything from theories floated from the controversial Steele dossier to questions about Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner ’ s security clearance . Nunes also labeled as a conspiracy theory reports that Trump “ had a diabolical plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. ” But Trump said in 2018 he had sought to build a tower in Russia during his campaign .
“ I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool , talked about it on the campaign trail , ” Trump tweeted last year . “ Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia . Put up zero money , zero guarantees and didn ’ t do the project . ”
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LISTEN TO ARTICLE 6:52 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, delivered the most explosive testimony yet in the House impeachment hearings on Wednesday, saying President Donald Trump effectively directed him to broker a quid pro quo with Ukraine to investigate a chief political rival.
Sondland, an Oregon hotelier who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund after his 2016 election, also pointed to Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and several other administration officials who, he said, were aware of the efforts.
Here’s a look at some of the most compelling moments from Wednesday’s testimony.
Sondland confirms ‘quid pro quo’ for White House visit
Sondland confirmed that he was involved in a quid pro quo: Trump would host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in exchange for a public statement that Ukraine would launch investigations into the 2016 election and Burisma, the company linked to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Sondland testified that Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, was generally the conduit for Trump’s efforts. “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelenskiy,” he said.
Sondland, though, said he never learned why nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine was held up. He said he “came to believe” that it was also tied to Trump’s desire for the investigations because, using an analogy, “two plus two is four.”
“I tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but I never received a clear answer,” he told Congress.
Pence, Pompeo, Perry, Bolton, Mulvaney were ‘in the loop’
Sondland, 61, fought back against allegations that his diplomatic efforts with Kyiv were part of an irregular policymaking process, saying that all of the “relevant decision-makers” at the National Security Council and State Department knew about efforts to push Ukraine for investigations in exchange for a White House visit.
“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said after reading aloud text-message exchanges with Pompeo. “It was no secret.”
In a July 19 email, Sondland wrote to Pompeo, Perry, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and other officials that Zelenskiy had promised to run “a fully transparent investigation” as a precondition to the two leaders having a call on July 25.
Mick Mulvaney Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Sondland said he also discussed with Pence on Sept. 1 in Warsaw the public statement Trump was demanding from Zelenskiy. He said Pence nodded his head, acknowledging that he’d heard Sondland say that the freezing of aid to Ukraine would probably only be fixed once Zelenskiy makes a public statement about the investigations.
Trump, Pence, Perry distance themselves from Sondland
Trump, Pence and Perry attempted to distance themselves from Sondland after he said they all knew about Trump’s demand for investigations in exchange for a White House invitation.
“This is not a man I know well,” Trump told reporters.
Pence has maintained that he wasn’t involved in Trump’s alleged effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rivals. Pence met with Zelenskiy on Sept. 1 in Warsaw, as Giuliani was working with Sondland and other officials to secure an announcement by Zelenskiy of the investigations. Sondland said he told Pence about the negotiations.
Pence’s chief of staff claimed that Sondland had lied to Congress, saying the conversation “never happened.”
Perry’s press secretary said Sondland “misrepresented” the energy secretary’s interactions with Giuliani and instructions from Trump.
Sondland’s salty conversations with Trump
While Trump claimed not to know Sondland well, his ambassador to the EU painted a different picture on Capitol Hill, suggesting they had numerous chummy -- and profane-laced -- conversations.
“That’s how President Trump and I communicate – a lot of four-letter words,” Sondland added.
Sondland made the comments after being questioned about David Holmes, a top diplomat in Ukraine, who testified last week that he overheard Sondland’s phone call with Trump at an open-air restaurant in Kyiv. According to Holmes, Sondland told Trump over the phone that Zelenskiy “loves your ass.”
“Sounds like something I would say,” Sondland said to laughter.
Later, under questioning from Republican counsel, Sondland added another time in which he used colorful language with Trump – a conversation in which he tried to get the president to say what it would take for him to work with Ukraine.
“I just said ‘What do you want from Ukraine?’” he testified. “I may have used a four-letter word.”
Sondland says Giuliani was Trump’s point person
Sondland referenced first-hand conversations with Trump, but his clearest evidence of the quid pro quo came through his interactions with Giuliani.
Sondland and former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, both begrudgingly engaged with Giuliani on Ukraine policy because Trump told them to do so. “Talk with Rudy,” said Sondland, recounting what Trump had told him.
“Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma,” Sondland said in his opening statement. “Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.”
Flashback: Trump wanted Sondland to testify
Sondland has emerged as a key witness tying Trump directly to a quid pro quo, but just weeks ago, Trump thought Sondland would exonerate him.
“I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify, but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public,” Trump tweeted on Oct. 8.
He added that Sondland’s text message, which he mistakenly described as a tweet, would clear him: “’I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind.’ That says it ALL!”
Gordon Sondland Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
In his testimony, Sondland claimed that the text message was “simply to relay I’ve gone as far as I can go, this is the final word that I’ve heard from the president of the United States.”
Nunes blasts a ‘conspiracy theory’ that isn’t
Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the committee, blasted the impeachment inquiry in his opening remarks and dismissed the allegations that Trump acted improperly as little more than “conspiracy theories.”
Nunes said the inquiry was part of a series of attacks on the president by Democrats, including everything from theories floated from the controversial Steele dossier to questions about Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance. Nunes also labeled as a conspiracy theory reports that Trump “had a diabolical plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.” But Trump said in 2018 he had sought to build a tower in Russia during his campaign.
“I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail,” Trump tweeted last year. “Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project.”
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www.bloomberg.com
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2V9jIRxhnoXe6Saw
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foreign_policy
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Washington Times
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/3/mcfarlane-plan-crushing-islamic-state/
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OPINION: A plan for crushing the Islamic State
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2014-09-03
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Robert Mcfarlane
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It is astonishing that nearly six years into the tenure of any
he has no strategy for addressing an evident , serious threat to
Last week , marauders from the so-called Islamic State overran Tabqa
air base in Syria , where MANPADS , or man-portable air-defense systems ,
are stored . These are the weapons that can bring down commercial
aircraft . Considering the pledge of this group ’ s leader to take the
war to the United States , they now have the means to do so whether
targeting the takeoff of a U.S. commercial airliner from Dubai , or in
a few weeks after penetrating the Mexican border , from Dallas-Fort
Historically , every new administration spends the first year of its
tenure enunciating goals — essentially , to keep the peace and
establish a climate at home and abroad in which American interests can
be advanced — and then developing strategies for achieving them in
specific regions of the world . The process begins with the president
stating his view of what our regional interests are , inviting the
intelligence community and the Cabinet to identify how those interests
are threatened , and then tasking these principals and staff to develop
a range of integrated political , economic and military measures for
the end of the first year , the president has evaluated the options
submitted to him and has made decisions among them . He then goes about
constituencies — the American people , the U.S. Congress and our
leadership , it ’ s not rocket science . Doing it well yields enormous
nurtures cohesion and support among our allies . Finally , it puts
adversaries on notice that we are a serious nation that has the will ,
the capability , a strategic plan and the resources to prevail against
Since World War II , U.S. presidents have engaged this strategic
process as a proven means for defining and announcing our interests
strategies designed to deter , or — if deterrence fails — to prevail in
any conflict well in advance of any such conflict . In the Reagan
administration , I had the privilege of managing that process , and in
the ensuing years , it proved invaluable not only in identifying — and
pre-empting — challenges still over the horizon , but in crisis
management as well . In the remaining years of the current
administration , there is still time for President Obama to lead in the
resolution of the plethora of crises before us — starting with the
threats posed by the Islamic State and concurrently in Ukraine , China
Modern terrorism by Islamist groups has posed a “ clear and present
danger ” to our country for more than 30 years . In Iraq , we are faced
with an especially challenging form of it . A well-financed , well-armed
alia , to conduct operations against the United States on its way to
Given the plausibility of their executing such a plan , the first
comment our president must make is that this movement of uncivilized
savages puts us all at risk — from Irbil to London , Chicago , Tokyo and
Beijing — and that there is no basis for trying to reason with
pursuit of an imperial strategy . The second is that they must be
destroyed . Mr. Obama ’ s statement from Estonia on Wednesday was a good ,
and then destroying the Islamic State is not something that will come
easily for the president , given his proclivities toward engagement and
toothless diplomacy . Yet in some respects , his task has been rendered
European states that have known this menace was coming for years —
understand that if they don ’ t join in countering this scourge in Syria
and Iraq , they will face it in their own countries before long . This
week , the president ’ s task is to forge consensus among his political
counterparts in Western Europe to direct NATO Supreme Allied Commander
Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove and the NATO military committee to work
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a plan for overcoming this
Economically , it ’ s time to lean hard on the Gulf Arabs to shut down
their formal and informal funding of radical Islamists . The diplomacy
needed to get this done ought also to be a little easier than it would
have been even five years ago . Their tenure is at risk , and they are
palpably conscious of it . Separately , our work with European allies
The U.S. military must work with Kurdish , Kuwaiti , Egyptian , United
Arab Emirates , Saudi , Jordanian and Iraqi forces to forge a strategy ,
first to contain and then to destroy the Islamic State ’ s forces . U.S .
and allied tactical aviation can help limit the enemy ’ s mobility and
supervision of ground forces from the aforementioned countries in the
struggle to regain lost territory must fall to experienced U.S .
By their brashness and brutality , the Islamists may have provided an
impetus and a window for the civilized world to come together and
Washington to oversee this battle and stay the course . That window may
As soon as we have stemmed this tide — a year from now — we must turn
to the agenda that we have for so long avoided — bringing the moderate
Arabs , Kurds and Israel into a sustained conversation on regional
security that leads toward reconciling their differences . To do so
offers a revered place in history for the American president . Yet it
will require a far better understanding of the nature of the challenge
than has thus far been apparent , together with the courage and
adviser . He is currently a senior adviser to the Foundation for
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
It is astonishing that nearly six years into the tenure of any
administration the commander-in-chief would acknowledge publicly that
he has no strategy for addressing an evident, serious threat to
American interests.
Last week, marauders from the so-called Islamic State overran Tabqa
air base in Syria, where MANPADS, or man-portable air-defense systems,
are stored. These are the weapons that can bring down commercial
aircraft. Considering the pledge of this group’s leader to take the
war to the United States, they now have the means to do so whether
targeting the takeoff of a U.S. commercial airliner from Dubai, or in
a few weeks after penetrating the Mexican border, from Dallas-Fort
Worth International Airport in Dallas.
Historically, every new administration spends the first year of its
tenure enunciating goals — essentially, to keep the peace and
establish a climate at home and abroad in which American interests can
be advanced — and then developing strategies for achieving them in
specific regions of the world. The process begins with the president
stating his view of what our regional interests are, inviting the
intelligence community and the Cabinet to identify how those interests
are threatened, and then tasking these principals and staff to develop
a range of integrated political, economic and military measures for
defending and advancing American interests throughout the world. By
the end of the first year, the president has evaluated the options
submitted to him and has made decisions among them. He then goes about
implementing them by publishing and explaining them to three
constituencies — the American people, the U.S. Congress and our
allies. While this process involves hard work and disciplined
leadership, it’s not rocket science. Doing it well yields enormous
benefits. It engenders confidence among the American people and
nurtures cohesion and support among our allies. Finally, it puts
adversaries on notice that we are a serious nation that has the will,
the capability, a strategic plan and the resources to prevail against
any challenge they might consider posing.
Since World War II, U.S. presidents have engaged this strategic
process as a proven means for defining and announcing our interests
overseas, assessing how they are threatened, and developing effective
strategies designed to deter, or — if deterrence fails — to prevail in
any conflict well in advance of any such conflict. In the Reagan
administration, I had the privilege of managing that process, and in
the ensuing years, it proved invaluable not only in identifying — and
pre-empting — challenges still over the horizon, but in crisis
management as well. In the remaining years of the current
administration, there is still time for President Obama to lead in the
resolution of the plethora of crises before us — starting with the
threats posed by the Islamic State and concurrently in Ukraine, China
and Iran.
Modern terrorism by Islamist groups has posed a “clear and present
danger” to our country for more than 30 years. In Iraq, we are faced
with an especially challenging form of it. A well-financed, well-armed
and well-trained barbarous force has declared its intention, inter
alia, to conduct operations against the United States on its way to
establishing an Islamic caliphate of global reach and jurisdiction.
Given the plausibility of their executing such a plan, the first
comment our president must make is that this movement of uncivilized
savages puts us all at risk — from Irbil to London, Chicago, Tokyo and
Beijing — and that there is no basis for trying to reason with
brainwashed, ideological, totalitarian, genocidal criminals bent on
pursuit of an imperial strategy. The second is that they must be
destroyed. Mr. Obama’s statement from Estonia on Wednesday was a good,
though belated, beginning.
Developing a political, economic and military strategy for containing
and then destroying the Islamic State is not something that will come
easily for the president, given his proclivities toward engagement and
toothless diplomacy. Yet in some respects, his task has been rendered
less onerous. Politicians in every civilized state — especially
European states that have known this menace was coming for years —
understand that if they don’t join in countering this scourge in Syria
and Iraq, they will face it in their own countries before long. This
week, the president’s task is to forge consensus among his political
counterparts in Western Europe to direct NATO Supreme Allied Commander
Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove and the NATO military committee to work
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a plan for overcoming this
menace.
Economically, it’s time to lean hard on the Gulf Arabs to shut down
their formal and informal funding of radical Islamists. The diplomacy
needed to get this done ought also to be a little easier than it would
have been even five years ago. Their tenure is at risk, and they are
palpably conscious of it. Separately, our work with European allies
should involve closing their financial institutions to Islamist
transactions.
The U.S. military must work with Kurdish, Kuwaiti, Egyptian, United
Arab Emirates, Saudi, Jordanian and Iraqi forces to forge a strategy,
first to contain and then to destroy the Islamic State’s forces. U.S.
and allied tactical aviation can help limit the enemy’s mobility and
provide fire support during engagements. However, the training and
supervision of ground forces from the aforementioned countries in the
struggle to regain lost territory must fall to experienced U.S.
special operations advisory personnel — several thousand of them.
By their brashness and brutality, the Islamists may have provided an
impetus and a window for the civilized world to come together and
reverse their gains. It will take extraordinary leadership from
Washington to oversee this battle and stay the course. That window may
not remain open for long.
As soon as we have stemmed this tide — a year from now — we must turn
to the agenda that we have for so long avoided — bringing the moderate
Arabs, Kurds and Israel into a sustained conversation on regional
security that leads toward reconciling their differences. To do so
offers a revered place in history for the American president. Yet it
will require a far better understanding of the nature of the challenge
than has thus far been apparent, together with the courage and
commitment to lead such an effort successfully.
Robert McFarlane served as President Reagan’s national-security
adviser. He is currently a senior adviser to the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies.
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Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/19/why-the-electoral-college-will-rubber-stamp-donald-trump.html
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Why the Electoral College Will Rubber-Stamp Donald Trump
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2016-12-19
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Michael Klarman
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On Monday , members of the Electoral College are meeting in state capitals throughout the nation , with the expectation that they will follow tradition and formally make Donald Trump the next president of the United States .
The divisive nature of his campaign and the fact he lost the popular vote by an unprecedented margin in modern American history has brought the Electoral College to the top of mind of many citizens who wonder whether electors are bound to the popular vote or whether they were expected by the Founding Fathers to exercise independent judgment . As I detail in my book The Framers ’ Coup , the Constitutional Convention negotiations that created the compromise of the Electoral College may shed some light on the Framers ’ original intention .
In the summer of 1787 , the delegates in Philadelphia who were writing the United States Constitution mostly agreed on the importance of establishing a very powerful president . Figuring out how to select that president proved to be a more vexing problem .
For most of the convention , the delegates had agreed that Congress would choose the president , who would be made ineligible for re-election in order to ensure his independence from the institution that selected him . Most delegates opposed the direct popular election of the president .
George Mason , an important Virginia delegate , declared that “ it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief magistrate to the people as it would be to refer a trial of colors to a blind man. ” Roger Sherman of Connecticut objected that the people would “ never be sufficiently informed ” about candidates from other states and thus would “ generally vote for some man in their own state , ” which would mean that “ the largest state will have the best chance for the appointment . ”
After endless debates , the convention eventually delegated the issue to a committee , which proposed that the president be chosen by special electors , whose appointment would be made according to a method specified by state legislatures . Because the body of electors would have no perpetual life , it would have no particular interests to defend . A president selected in this fashion would not be dependent upon the institution selecting him .
Moreover , the electors would presumably be prominent people of superior knowledge and independence , which is what inclined the delegates to consider entrusting them with a task as important as choosing the president .
The committee also specified that electors would cast ballots in their home states in order to preclude , in Gouverneur Morris ’ s words , “ the great evil of cabal. ” Requiring that electors in the different states meet simultaneously throughout the country made it “ impossible to corrupt them . ”
The issue of how to apportion presidential electors naturally provoked disagreement between large and small state delegations . The committee proposed a compromise : Each state ’ s number of presidential electors would equal its number of congressional representatives plus its two senators . Small states would fare better than if the apportionment had been based strictly upon population , yet large states still derived a substantial advantage from their greater populations , as reflected in their number of congressional representatives .
Because the number of electors depended partly on a state ’ s number of congressional representatives , the power of Southern states in the Electoral College would reflect their slave populations ( because five slaves were counted the same as three free persons for purposes of apportioning the House ) . Without such a concession , Southern delegates would never have agreed to this mechanism for selecting the president .
In addition , the committee proposed that no candidate could be elected president without securing the votes of a majority of the electors appointed . If no candidate received such a majority , then the Senate ( according to the committee ’ s proposal ) would choose the president from among the top five vote-getters .
Convention delegates mostly assumed that presidential candidates would rarely win outright majorities in the Electoral College—at least once George Washington had ceased to be a candidate . The vast geographic scope of the country—especially in an era of relatively primitive transportation and communication—would prevent presidential candidates from becoming widely known or coordinating their campaigns across states . Thus , Mason predicted that “ 19 times in 20 the president would be chosen by the Senate . ”
The choice of the Senate was a sop to the small states , whose influence would be much greater there than in the House . In essence , the Senate , in which small states would exercise equal clout , would choose the president from among the candidates “ nominated ” by the Electoral College , in which the large states would exercise greater influence .
However , several delegates then objected to the Senate being the de facto selector of the president on the grounds that the Senate and the president were slated to jointly exercise the powers of appointment and treaty making . Mason warned that “ if a coalition should be established between these two branches , they will be able to subvert the Constitution . ”
Connecticut ’ s Roger Sherman responded by suggesting instead that the House choose the president when no candidate won the votes of a majority of the electors appointed . Because his proposal , which the convention approved , prescribed that the House vote on selecting the president be by state delegation rather than individual representatives , small-state influence would be preserved .
But for the last 200 years , the Electoral College system has not worked the way the Framers intended . Many Framers anticipated that state legislatures would pick electors , rather than turning the selection over to voters .
All of the Framers anticipated that the electors , however chosen , would exercise independent judgment in selecting the president , yet they ceased to do so almost immediately ( because political parties , which the Framers were not anticipating , began running slates of electors pledged to support the parties ’ candidates ) . Finally , the Framers anticipated that candidates would rarely if ever win the votes of a majority of electors , meaning that the House would pick the president—something that , in fact , has happened only once in American history .
While the original understanding of the Constitution clearly contemplates electors ’ exercising independent judgment , unwritten norms that have evolved over more than two centuries dictate ( with only trivial exceptions ) that the electors simply rubber-stamp the result of the popular vote in their states .
Functioning democracies depend at least as much on respect for such unwritten norms as on fidelity to the Constitution ’ s written text . For that reason , for Republican electors on Dec. 19 , 2016 , to vote against Donald Trump would amount nearly to a coup against democracy .
Yet one can not fail to note the irony—and to recognize the danger—in the electors ’ choosing as president a candidate who has systematically flouted many other unwritten norms of democracy . Before the election , Trump repeatedly refused to state that he would accept the legitimacy of the outcome if he lost . He has challenged the notions of an independent judiciary and a free press . Trump has also encouraged foreign intervention in the American presidential election ( which , it turns out , actually occurred ) , threatened to have his political opponent thrown in jail if he won the election , and regularly encouraged violence at his political rallies . These are not the statements and actions of someone who respects democracy .
For Trump ’ s opponents to remain committed to the unwritten norms of democracy while he himself has regularly flouted them is not only ironic but also potentially suicidal . Unilateral disarmament rarely works out well for its practitioners . In addition , there is a nontrivial risk that Trump , under a particular set of conditions ( a major terrorist attack , a foreign war that it will be largely within his control to instigate ) , will be both inclined and able to further subvert American democracy . Were that to happen , one might well look back at the Electoral College ’ s decision as the last best chance to have stymied him .
But , of course , one never has the luxury of knowing in advance how history will turn out . In my ( uncertain ) opinion , Trump has not done enough since the election to justify the Republican electors ’ rejecting the unwritten norm that the winner of a state ’ s popular vote in a presidential election is entitled to that state ’ s electoral votes .
The fact that Trump has already systematically flouted democracy ’ s unwritten norms doesn ’ t mean that everybody else can do so without hastening the demise of our democracy . Should Trump attempt during his presidency to subvert democratic norms more than he has already done , the American people will still have ample opportunity to determine whether he succeeds in doing so .
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On Monday, members of the Electoral College are meeting in state capitals throughout the nation, with the expectation that they will follow tradition and formally make Donald Trump the next president of the United States.
The divisive nature of his campaign and the fact he lost the popular vote by an unprecedented margin in modern American history has brought the Electoral College to the top of mind of many citizens who wonder whether electors are bound to the popular vote or whether they were expected by the Founding Fathers to exercise independent judgment. As I detail in my book The Framers’ Coup, the Constitutional Convention negotiations that created the compromise of the Electoral College may shed some light on the Framers’ original intention.
In the summer of 1787, the delegates in Philadelphia who were writing the United States Constitution mostly agreed on the importance of establishing a very powerful president. Figuring out how to select that president proved to be a more vexing problem.
For most of the convention, the delegates had agreed that Congress would choose the president, who would be made ineligible for re-election in order to ensure his independence from the institution that selected him. Most delegates opposed the direct popular election of the president.
George Mason, an important Virginia delegate, declared that “it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief magistrate to the people as it would be to refer a trial of colors to a blind man.” Roger Sherman of Connecticut objected that the people would “never be sufficiently informed” about candidates from other states and thus would “generally vote for some man in their own state,” which would mean that “the largest state will have the best chance for the appointment.”
After endless debates, the convention eventually delegated the issue to a committee, which proposed that the president be chosen by special electors, whose appointment would be made according to a method specified by state legislatures. Because the body of electors would have no perpetual life, it would have no particular interests to defend. A president selected in this fashion would not be dependent upon the institution selecting him.
Moreover, the electors would presumably be prominent people of superior knowledge and independence, which is what inclined the delegates to consider entrusting them with a task as important as choosing the president.
The committee also specified that electors would cast ballots in their home states in order to preclude, in Gouverneur Morris’s words, “the great evil of cabal.” Requiring that electors in the different states meet simultaneously throughout the country made it “impossible to corrupt them.”
The issue of how to apportion presidential electors naturally provoked disagreement between large and small state delegations. The committee proposed a compromise: Each state’s number of presidential electors would equal its number of congressional representatives plus its two senators. Small states would fare better than if the apportionment had been based strictly upon population, yet large states still derived a substantial advantage from their greater populations, as reflected in their number of congressional representatives.
Because the number of electors depended partly on a state’s number of congressional representatives, the power of Southern states in the Electoral College would reflect their slave populations (because five slaves were counted the same as three free persons for purposes of apportioning the House). Without such a concession, Southern delegates would never have agreed to this mechanism for selecting the president.
In addition, the committee proposed that no candidate could be elected president without securing the votes of a majority of the electors appointed. If no candidate received such a majority, then the Senate (according to the committee’s proposal) would choose the president from among the top five vote-getters.
Convention delegates mostly assumed that presidential candidates would rarely win outright majorities in the Electoral College—at least once George Washington had ceased to be a candidate. The vast geographic scope of the country—especially in an era of relatively primitive transportation and communication—would prevent presidential candidates from becoming widely known or coordinating their campaigns across states. Thus, Mason predicted that “19 times in 20 the president would be chosen by the Senate.”
The choice of the Senate was a sop to the small states, whose influence would be much greater there than in the House. In essence, the Senate, in which small states would exercise equal clout, would choose the president from among the candidates “nominated” by the Electoral College, in which the large states would exercise greater influence.
However, several delegates then objected to the Senate being the de facto selector of the president on the grounds that the Senate and the president were slated to jointly exercise the powers of appointment and treaty making. Mason warned that “if a coalition should be established between these two branches, they will be able to subvert the Constitution.”
Connecticut’s Roger Sherman responded by suggesting instead that the House choose the president when no candidate won the votes of a majority of the electors appointed. Because his proposal, which the convention approved, prescribed that the House vote on selecting the president be by state delegation rather than individual representatives, small-state influence would be preserved.
***
But for the last 200 years, the Electoral College system has not worked the way the Framers intended. Many Framers anticipated that state legislatures would pick electors, rather than turning the selection over to voters.
All of the Framers anticipated that the electors, however chosen, would exercise independent judgment in selecting the president, yet they ceased to do so almost immediately (because political parties, which the Framers were not anticipating, began running slates of electors pledged to support the parties’ candidates). Finally, the Framers anticipated that candidates would rarely if ever win the votes of a majority of electors, meaning that the House would pick the president—something that, in fact, has happened only once in American history.
While the original understanding of the Constitution clearly contemplates electors’ exercising independent judgment, unwritten norms that have evolved over more than two centuries dictate (with only trivial exceptions) that the electors simply rubber-stamp the result of the popular vote in their states.
Functioning democracies depend at least as much on respect for such unwritten norms as on fidelity to the Constitution’s written text. For that reason, for Republican electors on Dec. 19, 2016, to vote against Donald Trump would amount nearly to a coup against democracy.
Yet one cannot fail to note the irony—and to recognize the danger—in the electors’ choosing as president a candidate who has systematically flouted many other unwritten norms of democracy. Before the election, Trump repeatedly refused to state that he would accept the legitimacy of the outcome if he lost. He has challenged the notions of an independent judiciary and a free press. Trump has also encouraged foreign intervention in the American presidential election (which, it turns out, actually occurred), threatened to have his political opponent thrown in jail if he won the election, and regularly encouraged violence at his political rallies. These are not the statements and actions of someone who respects democracy.
For Trump’s opponents to remain committed to the unwritten norms of democracy while he himself has regularly flouted them is not only ironic but also potentially suicidal. Unilateral disarmament rarely works out well for its practitioners. In addition, there is a nontrivial risk that Trump, under a particular set of conditions (a major terrorist attack, a foreign war that it will be largely within his control to instigate), will be both inclined and able to further subvert American democracy. Were that to happen, one might well look back at the Electoral College’s decision as the last best chance to have stymied him.
But, of course, one never has the luxury of knowing in advance how history will turn out. In my (uncertain) opinion, Trump has not done enough since the election to justify the Republican electors’ rejecting the unwritten norm that the winner of a state’s popular vote in a presidential election is entitled to that state’s electoral votes.
The fact that Trump has already systematically flouted democracy’s unwritten norms doesn’t mean that everybody else can do so without hastening the demise of our democracy. Should Trump attempt during his presidency to subvert democratic norms more than he has already done, the American people will still have ample opportunity to determine whether he succeeds in doing so.
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CNN (Web News)
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-dnc-suspension/index.html
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Bernie Sanders campaign accesses Hillary Clinton data, gets suspended from DNC voter files
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2015-12-18
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Catherine Treyz, Dan Merica, Jeremy Diamond, Jeff Zeleny
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Washington ( CNN ) Bernie Sanders ' campaign on Friday sued the Democratic National Committee in federal court after the party organization withheld the campaign 's access to a crucial voter database .
The internal warfare exploded after the DNC cut off Sanders from the database and said the Vermont senator 's presidential campaign exploited a software error to improperly access confidential voter information collected by Hillary Clinton 's team .
The revelation poses a setback for Sanders , who is mounting a liberal challenge to the former secretary of state . The DNC database is a goldmine of information about voters and being blocked from it could complicate Sanders ' outreach efforts . The timing is also challenging , just weeks before Clinton and Sanders are slated to compete in the Iowa caucuses .
And coming the day before a Democratic debate , the developments fueled a long-held belief in the Sanders camp and among his allies that the DNC has stacked the deck in favor of Clinton .
At a press conference in Washington on Friday , Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver accused the DNC of trying to sabotage the campaign .
`` The DNC , in an inappropriate overreaction , has denied us access to our own data , '' Weaver said . `` In other words , the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is actively trying to undermine our campaign . ''
Two senior Democrats familiar with the program and the investigation told CNN that the Sanders campaign accessed turnout projections for Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary , a key piece of strategy the Clinton campaign has been working on with modeling and analytics .
The Sanders team , which consisted of four people , ran multiple searches in Iowa , New Hampshire , Nevada , South Carolina and about 10 March states , including Florida and Colorado . In Iowa and New Hampshire , the Clinton campaign has ranked voters on a scale of 1-100 for turnout , enthusiasm and support , the senior Democrats said . The Sanders campaign ran two searches : `` Show me all the Clinton people rated higher than 60 '' and `` Show me all the people rated less than 30 . '' This would be a key way of knowing who Sanders should target in the final weeks before voting : Ignore those above 60 , while focus on those below 30 , because they are looking for a Clinton alternative and might be open to Sanders .
The investigation into what information was lifted should only take a few days as there are audit logs and trails of the activity , which took place beginning around 10:40 a.m. and lasting for about 40 minutes , the senior Democrats said .
They added that the Clinton campaign views this as a big deal but will not say so publicly because it will fan the flames of liberal groups trying to fight with the DNC .
In a statement released Friday afternoon , the Clinton campaign called for the Sanders campaign and the DNC to `` work expeditiously to ensure that our data is not in the Sanders campaign 's account and that the Sanders campaign only have access to their own data . ''
At Friday 's press conference , Weaver said , `` The DNC is clearly acting in a heavy-handed way , in an unprecendented way . I would like to see another instance where a presidential campaign had their data -- their own data -- withheld under similar circumstances . ''
The Sanders campaign sought an injunction against the DNC Friday afternoon , claiming irreparable harm and seeking immediate access to the voter file system . A campaign aide said earlier Friday that there was no expectation the DNC would grant access before the close of business Friday .
Weaver said the original problem with the database 's security , which did not involve the current database access company NGP VAN , dated back to October .
`` We were very concerned that large amounts of our own data was being downloaded and we contacted the DNC to remedy the situation , '' he said . `` We talked to them and we were assured that this was going to be taken care of . But apparently they are not competent in terms of maintaining the security of their data between the campaigns . ''
Shortly after Weaver 's press conference , DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said suspending the Sanders ' campaign 's access was the only way to ensure the voter file was properly safeguarded .
`` That is the only way that we can make sure that we can protect our significant asset that is the voter file and its integrity , '' Wasserman Schultz said on CNN .
She said `` multiple staffers '' from the Sanders campaign downloaded information that they did not have the right to collect .
`` They not only viewed it , but they exported it and they downloaded it , '' Wasserman Schultz told CNN 's Wolf Blitzer . `` We do n't know the depth of what they actually viewed and downloaded . We have to make sure that they did not manipulate the information . ''
She added , `` That is just like if you walked into someone 's home when the door was unlocked and took things that do n't belong to you in order to use them for your own benefit . That 's inappropriate . Unacceptable . ''
The DNC also sent out a strongly worded message from Wasserman Schultz to its members accusing the Sanders campaign of improper conduct .
`` Over the course of approximately 45 minutes , staffers of the Bernie Sanders campaign inappropriately accessed voter targeting data belonging to the Hillary Clinton campaign , '' Wasserman Schultz said in the message .
`` Once the DNC became aware that the Sanders campaign had inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data , and in doing so violated the agreement that all the presidential campaigns have signed with the DNC , as the agreement provides , we directed NGP VAN [ the vendor that supplies access to the database ] to suspend the Sanders campaign 's access to the system until the DNC is provided with a full accounting of whether or not this information was used and the way in which it was disposed , '' she added .
Josh Uretsky , Sanders ' national data director who was fired Thursday by the campaign for accessing the database , told CNN Friday that he was not trying to look at Clinton 's data and denied that voter file information had been downloaded .
`` We knew there was a security breach in the data , and we were just trying to understand it and what was happening , '' Uretsky said .
He said that none of the data the Sanders campaign accessed on Wednesday `` left the system that day '' and denied that he or his staff `` downloaded any individual level voter file data . ''
Uretsky said he and his team downloaded only phone numbers but did so to alert the DNC and NGP VAN that the Sanders campaign was aware the campaigns ' voter info in the DNC database was n't being properly protected .
`` We knew that what we were doing was being recorded , '' he told CNN . `` We did n't try to be sneaky at all . They can argue that we should n't have done it but we did not in any way try to deceive them . We created the records of it having been done and we did not make any attempt to use it for strategic purposes . ''
Ethan Roeder , Barack Obama 's data director in 2008 and 2012 , said the biggest problem created by being barred from the database is the fact that Sanders ' volunteers will not be able to use the voter file to make calls and knock on doors for at least the next few days .
`` I think the pain is compounded each additional day that they do n't have access to the file , '' Roeder said . `` It definitely has an impact on their operations . Especially as close as we are to caucuses and primaries , it becomes a serious problem . ''
NGP VAN , the database vendor , issued a statement Friday saying the DNC had instructed the company to remove the Sanders campaign 's access to the database .
`` We are confident at this point that no campaigns have access to or have retained any voter file data of any other clients ; with one possible exception , one of the presidential campaigns , '' the company said , adding that it was investigating the breach and would report back to the DNC .
Sanders supporters and liberal groups have reacted to the news of Sanders ' campaign being punished by questioning the neutrality of the DNC , hinting that the body is in the tank for Clinton .
`` The Democratic National Committee 's decision to attack the campaign that figured out the problem , rather than go after the vendor that made the mistake , is profoundly damaging to the party 's Democratic process , '' said Charles Chamberlain , executive director of Democracy for America , a liberal group that endorsed Sanders this week .
`` DNC leaders should immediately reverse this disturbing decision before the committee does even more to bring its neutrality in the race for President into question , '' he added .
Weaver , the Sanders campaign manager , said of the DNC , `` In this case , it looks like they are trying to help the Clinton campaign . ''
`` We are taking on the establishment and I 'm sure there are people within the Democratic establishment who are not happy about the overwhelming success that Bernie Sanders is having all across this country , '' he added . `` But we are determined to win this campaign and we 're going to win this campaign by talking about the issues that are important to the American people . To do that we are going to need our data , which has been stolen by the DNC . ''
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Washington (CNN) Bernie Sanders' campaign on Friday sued the Democratic National Committee in federal court after the party organization withheld the campaign's access to a crucial voter database.
The internal warfare exploded after the DNC cut off Sanders from the database and said the Vermont senator's presidential campaign exploited a software error to improperly access confidential voter information collected by Hillary Clinton's team.
The revelation poses a setback for Sanders, who is mounting a liberal challenge to the former secretary of state. The DNC database is a goldmine of information about voters and being blocked from it could complicate Sanders' outreach efforts. The timing is also challenging, just weeks before Clinton and Sanders are slated to compete in the Iowa caucuses.
And coming the day before a Democratic debate, the developments fueled a long-held belief in the Sanders camp and among his allies that the DNC has stacked the deck in favor of Clinton.
At a press conference in Washington on Friday, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver accused the DNC of trying to sabotage the campaign.
"The DNC, in an inappropriate overreaction, has denied us access to our own data," Weaver said. "In other words, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is actively trying to undermine our campaign."
What was accessed
Two senior Democrats familiar with the program and the investigation told CNN that the Sanders campaign accessed turnout projections for Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, a key piece of strategy the Clinton campaign has been working on with modeling and analytics.
The Sanders team, which consisted of four people, ran multiple searches in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and about 10 March states, including Florida and Colorado. In Iowa and New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign has ranked voters on a scale of 1-100 for turnout, enthusiasm and support, the senior Democrats said. The Sanders campaign ran two searches: "Show me all the Clinton people rated higher than 60" and "Show me all the people rated less than 30." This would be a key way of knowing who Sanders should target in the final weeks before voting: Ignore those above 60, while focus on those below 30, because they are looking for a Clinton alternative and might be open to Sanders.
The investigation into what information was lifted should only take a few days as there are audit logs and trails of the activity, which took place beginning around 10:40 a.m. and lasting for about 40 minutes, the senior Democrats said.
They added that the Clinton campaign views this as a big deal but will not say so publicly because it will fan the flames of liberal groups trying to fight with the DNC.
In a statement released Friday afternoon, the Clinton campaign called for the Sanders campaign and the DNC to "work expeditiously to ensure that our data is not in the Sanders campaign's account and that the Sanders campaign only have access to their own data."
'Inappropriate overreaction'
At Friday's press conference, Weaver said, "The DNC is clearly acting in a heavy-handed way, in an unprecendented way. I would like to see another instance where a presidential campaign had their data -- their own data -- withheld under similar circumstances."
The Sanders campaign sought an injunction against the DNC Friday afternoon, claiming irreparable harm and seeking immediate access to the voter file system. A campaign aide said earlier Friday that there was no expectation the DNC would grant access before the close of business Friday.
Weaver said the original problem with the database's security, which did not involve the current database access company NGP VAN, dated back to October.
"We were very concerned that large amounts of our own data was being downloaded and we contacted the DNC to remedy the situation," he said. "We talked to them and we were assured that this was going to be taken care of. But apparently they are not competent in terms of maintaining the security of their data between the campaigns."
The DNC, however, had a very different story.
Shortly after Weaver's press conference, DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said suspending the Sanders' campaign's access was the only way to ensure the voter file was properly safeguarded.
'Protect' voter file
"That is the only way that we can make sure that we can protect our significant asset that is the voter file and its integrity," Wasserman Schultz said on CNN.
She said "multiple staffers" from the Sanders campaign downloaded information that they did not have the right to collect.
"They not only viewed it, but they exported it and they downloaded it," Wasserman Schultz told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "We don't know the depth of what they actually viewed and downloaded. We have to make sure that they did not manipulate the information."
She added, "That is just like if you walked into someone's home when the door was unlocked and took things that don't belong to you in order to use them for your own benefit. That's inappropriate. Unacceptable."
The DNC also sent out a strongly worded message from Wasserman Schultz to its members accusing the Sanders campaign of improper conduct.
"Over the course of approximately 45 minutes, staffers of the Bernie Sanders campaign inappropriately accessed voter targeting data belonging to the Hillary Clinton campaign," Wasserman Schultz said in the message.
"Once the DNC became aware that the Sanders campaign had inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data, and in doing so violated the agreement that all the presidential campaigns have signed with the DNC, as the agreement provides, we directed NGP VAN [the vendor that supplies access to the database] to suspend the Sanders campaign's access to the system until the DNC is provided with a full accounting of whether or not this information was used and the way in which it was disposed," she added.
Fired Sanders staffer
Josh Uretsky, Sanders' national data director who was fired Thursday by the campaign for accessing the database, told CNN Friday that he was not trying to look at Clinton's data and denied that voter file information had been downloaded.
"We knew there was a security breach in the data, and we were just trying to understand it and what was happening," Uretsky said.
He said that none of the data the Sanders campaign accessed on Wednesday "left the system that day" and denied that he or his staff "downloaded any individual level voter file data."
Uretsky said he and his team downloaded only phone numbers but did so to alert the DNC and NGP VAN that the Sanders campaign was aware the campaigns' voter info in the DNC database wasn't being properly protected.
"We knew that what we were doing was being recorded," he told CNN. "We didn't try to be sneaky at all. They can argue that we shouldn't have done it but we did not in any way try to deceive them. We created the records of it having been done and we did not make any attempt to use it for strategic purposes."
Ethan Roeder, Barack Obama's data director in 2008 and 2012, said the biggest problem created by being barred from the database is the fact that Sanders' volunteers will not be able to use the voter file to make calls and knock on doors for at least the next few days.
"I think the pain is compounded each additional day that they don't have access to the file," Roeder said. "It definitely has an impact on their operations. Especially as close as we are to caucuses and primaries, it becomes a serious problem."
NGP VAN, the database vendor, issued a statement Friday saying the DNC had instructed the company to remove the Sanders campaign's access to the database.
"We are confident at this point that no campaigns have access to or have retained any voter file data of any other clients; with one possible exception, one of the presidential campaigns," the company said, adding that it was investigating the breach and would report back to the DNC.
Sanders supporters react
Sanders supporters and liberal groups have reacted to the news of Sanders' campaign being punished by questioning the neutrality of the DNC, hinting that the body is in the tank for Clinton.
"The Democratic National Committee's decision to attack the campaign that figured out the problem, rather than go after the vendor that made the mistake, is profoundly damaging to the party's Democratic process," said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, a liberal group that endorsed Sanders this week.
"DNC leaders should immediately reverse this disturbing decision before the committee does even more to bring its neutrality in the race for President into question," he added.
Weaver, the Sanders campaign manager, said of the DNC, "In this case, it looks like they are trying to help the Clinton campaign."
"We are taking on the establishment and I'm sure there are people within the Democratic establishment who are not happy about the overwhelming success that Bernie Sanders is having all across this country," he added. "But we are determined to win this campaign and we're going to win this campaign by talking about the issues that are important to the American people. To do that we are going to need our data, which has been stolen by the DNC."
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New York Times - News
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/no-morsel-too-minuscule-for-all-consuming-nsa.html?ref=politics&_r=0
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No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A.
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2013-11-03
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Scott Shane
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In a world of ballooning communications , the agency is sometimes simply overwhelmed . In 2008 , the N.S.A. ’ s Middle East and North Africa group set about updating its Sigint collection capabilities . The “ ambitious scrub ” of selectors — essentially search terms — cut the number of terms automatically searched from 21,177 to 7,795 and the number of messages added to the agency ’ s Pinwale database from 850,000 a day to 450,000 a day .
The reduction in volume was treated as a major achievement , opening the way for new collection on Iranian leadership and Saudi and Syrian diplomats , the report said .
And in a note that may comfort computer novices , the N.S.A . Middle East analysts discovered major glitches in their search software : The computer was searching for the names of targets but not their email addresses , a rather fundamental flaw . “ Over 500 messages in one week did not come in , ” the report said about one target .
Those are daily course corrections . Whether the Snowden disclosures will result in deeper change is uncertain . Joel F. Brenner , the agency ’ s former inspector general , says much of the criticism is unfair , reflecting a naïveté about the realpolitik of spying . “ The agency is being browbeaten for doing too well the things it ’ s supposed to do , ” he said .
But Mr. Brenner added that he believes “ technology has outrun policy ” at the N.S.A. , and that in an era in which spying may well be exposed , “ routine targeting of close allies is bad politics and is foolish . ”
Another former insider worries less about foreign leaders ’ sensitivities than the potential danger the sprawling agency poses at home . William E. Binney , a former senior N.S.A . official who has become an outspoken critic , says he has no problem with spying on foreign targets like Brazil ’ s president or the German chancellor , Angela Merkel . “ That ’ s pretty much what every government does , ” he said . “ It ’ s the foundation of diplomacy. ” But Mr. Binney said that without new leadership , new laws and top-to-bottom reform , the agency will represent a threat of “ turnkey totalitarianism ” — the capability to turn its awesome power , now directed mainly against other countries , on the American public .
“ I think it ’ s already starting to happen , ” he said . “ That ’ s what we have to stop . ”
Whatever reforms may come , Bobby R. Inman , who weathered his own turbulent period as N.S.A . director from 1977 to 1981 , offers his hyper-secret former agency a radical suggestion for right now . “ My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself , ” he said . “ It would certainly be a shock to the agency . But bad news doesn ’ t get better with age . The sooner they get it out and put it behind them , the faster they can begin to rebuild . ”
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In a world of ballooning communications, the agency is sometimes simply overwhelmed. In 2008, the N.S.A.’s Middle East and North Africa group set about updating its Sigint collection capabilities. The “ambitious scrub” of selectors — essentially search terms — cut the number of terms automatically searched from 21,177 to 7,795 and the number of messages added to the agency’s Pinwale database from 850,000 a day to 450,000 a day.
The reduction in volume was treated as a major achievement, opening the way for new collection on Iranian leadership and Saudi and Syrian diplomats, the report said.
And in a note that may comfort computer novices, the N.S.A. Middle East analysts discovered major glitches in their search software: The computer was searching for the names of targets but not their email addresses, a rather fundamental flaw. “Over 500 messages in one week did not come in,” the report said about one target.
Those are daily course corrections. Whether the Snowden disclosures will result in deeper change is uncertain. Joel F. Brenner, the agency’s former inspector general, says much of the criticism is unfair, reflecting a naïveté about the realpolitik of spying. “The agency is being browbeaten for doing too well the things it’s supposed to do,” he said.
But Mr. Brenner added that he believes “technology has outrun policy” at the N.S.A., and that in an era in which spying may well be exposed, “routine targeting of close allies is bad politics and is foolish.”
Another former insider worries less about foreign leaders’ sensitivities than the potential danger the sprawling agency poses at home. William E. Binney, a former senior N.S.A. official who has become an outspoken critic, says he has no problem with spying on foreign targets like Brazil’s president or the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. “That’s pretty much what every government does,” he said. “It’s the foundation of diplomacy.” But Mr. Binney said that without new leadership, new laws and top-to-bottom reform, the agency will represent a threat of “turnkey totalitarianism” — the capability to turn its awesome power, now directed mainly against other countries, on the American public.
“I think it’s already starting to happen,” he said. “That’s what we have to stop.”
Whatever reforms may come, Bobby R. Inman, who weathered his own turbulent period as N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981, offers his hyper-secret former agency a radical suggestion for right now. “My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself,” he said. “It would certainly be a shock to the agency. But bad news doesn’t get better with age. The sooner they get it out and put it behind them, the faster they can begin to rebuild.”
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www.nytimes.com
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pecrNGM0czMygw5u
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polarization
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Deseret News
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http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865633026/How-social-media-is-changing-the-way-Americans-talk-about-politics.html
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How social media is changing the way Americans talk about politics
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2015-07-22
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Chandra Johnson, Tad Walch, Kathleen Parker, Biofire Defense, Intermountain Live Well, Associated Press, Ethan Bauer
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Social media isn ’ t always the ideal place to stage a healthy and diverse debate on political beliefs , as U.S. presidential candidate Chris Christie learned this month on Twitter .
Announcing his run for the White House , Christie took the stage at his New Jersey high school , but his campaign slogan , “ Telling it like it is , ” unveiled on Twitter with a corresponding hashtag . The tag soon went viral , but not as Christie probably would have preferred .
Social media analytics firm Topsy indicated that in the approximately 3,000 tweets sent in the first few hours after Christie ’ s announcement , # TellingItLikeItIs had a sentiment score of just 17 out of 100 , meaning that the wording used in tweets bearing the hashtag were overwhelmingly negative .
Among the tagged tweets that didn ’ t include profanity was one from peeved New Jersey teacher Dayna Orlak , who attacked Christie ’ s weight in addition to his policies .
“ I work hard for my pension AND pay for it , ” Orlak tweeted . “ Teachers are ‘ gluttons ’ ? Look in the mirror . Liar. # TellingItLikeItIs ”
Fellow Republican hopeful Louisiana Gov . Bobby Jindal endured similar backlash in the wake of his # AskBobby hashtag in June . One user tweeted that if Jindal was foolish enough to think # AskBobby was a good idea , `` how can you consider yourself a competent 21st Century president ? ''
University of Delaware political communication researcher and associate professor Lindsay Hoffman said the backlash of # TellingItLikeItIs or # AskBobby are examples of how social media might be changing the way Americans express their political views — and not always in a good way .
Hoffman said using social media as a debate platform is part of a trend of increasing polarized political views , and that leads to more personal attacks and less-constructive debate .
“ We are creating these ideological enclaves on social media where people are more motivated by people who share their point of view , ” Hoffman said . “ The analogy I like to use is that there ’ s two sides to a coin , and social media can increase the attention and interest in one side of the coin . ”
Allegheny College assistant political science professor Andy Bloeser said the Internet and social media make it easier for people to filter out ideas they disagree with .
“ There ’ s always been a human tendency to gravitate toward people and opinions we agree with , ” Bloeser said . “ Social media can reinforce that tendency and it comes at theexpense of not hearing critiques of our ideas that we might need to hear . ”
There ’ s some evidence that social media can encourage users to surround themselves with like-minded people and opinions . A 2014 Pew Research Center study examining political polarization and social media use found self-identified conservatives were , when on social sites like Facebook , more likely than people in other ideological groups to hear public opinions like their own , and were much more likely to say their close friends share their political views .
The same study found that self-identified liberals were more likely to tailor their Facebook and social feeds around political issues rather than individual candidates and were more likely than people in other ideological groups to “ unfriend ” or block someone because of a political disagreement .
But Hoffman and Bloeser say the tendency to tailor social media feeds to reflect or reinforce a person 's views is an urge that is older than Facebook or Twitter . They say intense political polarization seen on social media is directly tied to a dramatic shift in the news industry .
“ Cable news started this . Now that we have so many more choices , news orgs are finding their niche to keep people coming back , ” Hoffman said of selective exposure . “ If I watch more of one channel because I see things I agree with , I become more polarized and aggressive against the opposing viewpoint . ”
Political scientists call this selective exposure — the idea that the plethora of niche content and content filtering tools on social media allow people to tailor the content they see to the extent that they ’ re exposed to fewer points of view on any given issue .
“ When you read a newspaper in the past , there was a sense of serendipity where you ’ d find something you weren ’ t looking for , ” Irina Raicu of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University said . “ If everything we read is so personalized online , we lose that serendipity and the likelihood of stumbling across something that makes us look at an issue in another way . ”
When people are able to select their news coverage based on worldview rather than objectivity , Bloeser said people can also become less objective about the issues .
“ Think of how differently Fox News might treat a Supreme Court decision vs. CNN . Cable news outlets and sites like The Huffington Post allow people to seek out information in a way that conforms to their beliefs and values , ” Bloeser said . “ To the extent that we want to find common ground , or find creative solutions to the issues that are important to us , we ’ re encountering an information environment where that ’ s more difficult . ”
Selective exposure can make discussions about political issues — from who should be president to what should be done about the economy — much more volatile , Hoffman said .
“ Once we become entrenched in this way of talking , people are downright brutal toward the other side , ” Hoffman said . “ When we get into pattern of behavior , it will impact you when you meet someone on the other side . ”
While social media may lead to more people talking about political issues online , Hoffman said there ’ s little evidence that it leads to action in real life .
“ People may be talking more about political issues , but they ’ re not necessarily doing more about it , ” Hoffman said . “ If you look at the last couple of presidential elections , where social media was a definite factor , voting numbers hardly shifted at all . ”
Especially in the 2012 election between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney , social media became an untested catalyst for political campaigns . The Obama and Romney camps dedicated time , money and staffers to capturing undecided , new and young voters via social media as the power of political TV spots waned .
“ It is all part of the continuing battle to appear more human and relatable . Historically , politicians did that by eating at local diners and shopping at Wal-Mart , ” The New York Times reported in a social media comparison of the campaigns . “ Now , they also share playlists of their favorite tunes ( on Spotify ) . ”
As Hoffman pointed out , voting numbers for the last three presidential elections ( from 2004 to 2012 ) , rose little with the rise in voting-age population . The 2008 election saw a swell with 132,618,580 voters turning out compared to 122,294,978 in 2004 . But that number slipped in 2012 back to 129,235,731 voters .
“ It ’ s great for ringing an alarm bell . When our interests are threatened , there ’ s now a cadre of people sharing information with other like-minded people very quickly , as we saw with the Ferguson protests , ” Bloeser said . “ But if people are clicking ‘ like ’ in place of other forms of action , that doesn ’ t have the same impact . ”
Hoffman is optimistic about the future of social media as a political organizing tool rather than simply a political sounding board , citing the recent backlash against public displays of the Confederate flag on Twitter as a big reason it was removed from the South Carolina statehouse .
“ Social media can bring us together online and offline by sending important messages to policymakers , ” Hoffman said . “ We just need to figure out what the rules of the game are . ”
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Social media isn’t always the ideal place to stage a healthy and diverse debate on political beliefs, as U.S. presidential candidate Chris Christie learned this month on Twitter.
Announcing his run for the White House, Christie took the stage at his New Jersey high school, but his campaign slogan, “Telling it like it is,” unveiled on Twitter with a corresponding hashtag. The tag soon went viral, but not as Christie probably would have preferred.
Social media analytics firm Topsy indicated that in the approximately 3,000 tweets sent in the first few hours after Christie’s announcement, #TellingItLikeItIs had a sentiment score of just 17 out of 100, meaning that the wording used in tweets bearing the hashtag were overwhelmingly negative.
Among the tagged tweets that didn’t include profanity was one from peeved New Jersey teacher Dayna Orlak, who attacked Christie’s weight in addition to his policies.
“I work hard for my pension AND pay for it,” Orlak tweeted. “Teachers are ‘gluttons’? Look in the mirror. Liar.#TellingItLikeItIs”
Fellow Republican hopeful Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal endured similar backlash in the wake of his #AskBobby hashtag in June. One user tweeted that if Jindal was foolish enough to think #AskBobby was a good idea, "how can you consider yourself a competent 21st Century president?"
University of Delaware political communication researcher and associate professor Lindsay Hoffman said the backlash of #TellingItLikeItIs or #AskBobby are examples of how social media might be changing the way Americans express their political views — and not always in a good way.
Hoffman said using social media as a debate platform is part of a trend of increasing polarized political views, and that leads to more personal attacks and less-constructive debate.
“We are creating these ideological enclaves on social media where people are more motivated by people who share their point of view,” Hoffman said. “The analogy I like to use is that there’s two sides to a coin, and social media can increase the attention and interest in one side of the coin.”
Selective exposure
Allegheny College assistant political science professor Andy Bloeser said the Internet and social media make it easier for people to filter out ideas they disagree with.
“There’s always been a human tendency to gravitate toward people and opinions we agree with,” Bloeser said. “Social media can reinforce that tendency and it comes at theexpense of not hearing critiques of our ideas that we might need to hear.”
There’s some evidence that social media can encourage users to surround themselves with like-minded people and opinions. A 2014 Pew Research Center study examining political polarization and social media use found self-identified conservatives were, when on social sites like Facebook, more likely than people in other ideological groups to hear public opinions like their own, and were much more likely to say their close friends share their political views.
The same study found that self-identified liberals were more likely to tailor their Facebook and social feeds around political issues rather than individual candidates and were more likely than people in other ideological groups to “unfriend” or block someone because of a political disagreement.
But Hoffman and Bloeser say the tendency to tailor social media feeds to reflect or reinforce a person's views is an urge that is older than Facebook or Twitter. They say intense political polarization seen on social media is directly tied to a dramatic shift in the news industry.
“Cable news started this. Now that we have so many more choices, news orgs are finding their niche to keep people coming back,” Hoffman said of selective exposure. “If I watch more of one channel because I see things I agree with, I become more polarized and aggressive against the opposing viewpoint.”
Political scientists call this selective exposure — the idea that the plethora of niche content and content filtering tools on social media allow people to tailor the content they see to the extent that they’re exposed to fewer points of view on any given issue.
“When you read a newspaper in the past, there was a sense of serendipity where you’d find something you weren’t looking for,” Irina Raicu of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University said. “If everything we read is so personalized online, we lose that serendipity and the likelihood of stumbling across something that makes us look at an issue in another way.”
When people are able to select their news coverage based on worldview rather than objectivity, Bloeser said people can also become less objective about the issues.
“Think of how differently Fox News might treat a Supreme Court decision vs. CNN. Cable news outlets and sites like The Huffington Post allow people to seek out information in a way that conforms to their beliefs and values,” Bloeser said. “To the extent that we want to find common ground, or find creative solutions to the issues that are important to us, we’re encountering an information environment where that’s more difficult.”
Selective exposure can make discussions about political issues — from who should be president to what should be done about the economy — much more volatile, Hoffman said.
“Once we become entrenched in this way of talking, people are downright brutal toward the other side,” Hoffman said. “When we get into pattern of behavior, it will impact you when you meet someone on the other side.”
More talk, less action?
While social media may lead to more people talking about political issues online, Hoffman said there’s little evidence that it leads to action in real life.
“People may be talking more about political issues, but they’re not necessarily doing more about it,” Hoffman said. “If you look at the last couple of presidential elections, where social media was a definite factor, voting numbers hardly shifted at all.”
Especially in the 2012 election between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney, social media became an untested catalyst for political campaigns. The Obama and Romney camps dedicated time, money and staffers to capturing undecided, new and young voters via social media as the power of political TV spots waned.
“It is all part of the continuing battle to appear more human and relatable. Historically, politicians did that by eating at local diners and shopping at Wal-Mart,” The New York Times reported in a social media comparison of the campaigns. “Now, they also share playlists of their favorite tunes (on Spotify).”
As Hoffman pointed out, voting numbers for the last three presidential elections (from 2004 to 2012), rose little with the rise in voting-age population. The 2008 election saw a swell with 132,618,580 voters turning out compared to 122,294,978 in 2004. But that number slipped in 2012 back to 129,235,731 voters.
“It’s great for ringing an alarm bell. When our interests are threatened, there’s now a cadre of people sharing information with other like-minded people very quickly, as we saw with the Ferguson protests,” Bloeser said. “But if people are clicking ‘like’ in place of other forms of action, that doesn’t have the same impact.”
Hoffman is optimistic about the future of social media as a political organizing tool rather than simply a political sounding board, citing the recent backlash against public displays of the Confederate flag on Twitter as a big reason it was removed from the South Carolina statehouse.
“Social media can bring us together online and offline by sending important messages to policymakers,” Hoffman said. “We just need to figure out what the rules of the game are.”
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: ChandraMJohnson
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www.deseretnews.com
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JtnGNVBPnQCwfcnu
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terrorism
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USA TODAY
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/14/charlie-hebdo-prophet-muhammad-paris-attacks/21737785/
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First 'Charlie Hebdo' issue since attack sells out
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2015-01-14
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Maya Vidon
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PARIS — The first edition of Charlie Hebdo since terror attacks in Paris last week left 17 people dead sold out at newsstands across France shortly after going on sale Wednesday .
Residents in Paris formed lines at dawn and by mid-morning kiosks sported signs that said `` No more Charlie Hebdo '' and `` Out of stock . '' Local French media reported scuffles broke out as people realized copies were selling quickly . A black market quickly developed , with copies selling on eBay for thousands of dollars . One auction ended Wednesday evening with a bid of $ 20,000 .
`` Normally they sit in a box in front of the kiosk and you just help yourself — and normally , the Charlie Hebdo box always has some copies in it , '' said Marie Dupont , 22 , who was passing through Gare du Nord train station on her way to work in Paris .
Wednesday 's 16-page issue of the satirical newspaper featured a cartoon on its cover depicting the prophet Mohammed . He is crying and holding a sign in his hands that says , `` Je suis Charlie '' ( `` I am Charlie '' ) — a reference to the slogan adopted by anti-violence and free speech campaigners in the wake of the attacks . It is forbidden under Islam to show images depicting the prophet .
Three million copies were printed — 60,000 are usually published— and that may be extended to 5 million , local French media reported . It has been translated into six languages and is being distributed internationally for the first time .
A week ago , gunmen linked to radical Islam murdered eight staff members at the newspaper along with four other people . Five more people were killed in separate attacks on a policewoman Thursday and at a kosher supermarket Friday .
Benoit Redureau , a veterinarian in Paris , called the cover `` cheeky '' and also `` very brave . '
`` Their cover is militant , they do n't let go , despite the pressure , despite the dead , they remain loyal to their ( editorial ) line , to their soul…to what we like about them , '' said Redureau .
Another Parisian , Yann Legall , 58 , called the issue funny as well as sincere but also restrained .
`` I wonder : did they refrain themselves ? Did they go half-measure on this publication ? They could have gone a lot further on this , when you have people who get executed like dogs , they could have done something more drastic , they could have been accusatory , '' Legall said .
On pages two and three of the newspaper Wednesday were drawings created by four cartoonists killed in the attack . One by Bernard `` Tignous '' Verlhac depicts two Muslim jihadists with one saying : `` We should n't attack Charlie Hebdo people . '' The other replies : `` ( yeah ) , they will become martyrs and once in paradise , will steal all our virgins . ''
CLOSE A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations , the nation 's largest Muslim civil liberties group , says 'Charlie Hebdo ' has every right to publish what they want , but Muslims have the right to peacefully object . VPC
Distributors said they would try to get more copies by Thursday or even later Wednesday . Printer Messageries Lyonnaises de Presse decided to increase the print run following the fast depletion of stock , French daily Le Figaro reported .
`` I feel very concerned over what happened ( to Charlie Hebdo ) and I want to read what the surviving journalists wrote this week , '' said Anne Brisson , 59 , trying to get a copy . `` Still , it 's the type of collective craziness in which I do n't want to take part — it 's like suddenly there is no more sugar so everyone buys 10 kilograms of sugar for the next 10 years . ''
Fabrice Perticoz , 48 , who was manning a Paris newsstand , echoed many others selling the magazine Wednesday when describing how people lined up at 6:15 a.m. for his 120 copies . `` By 6:45 , they were all sold out , '' he said .
At his stand , a woman begged . `` Please keep one for me tomorrow , I pay for it , really , '' she said . But Perticoz refused to take her money . `` It gets too complicated , I might forget , '' he said . `` One man wanted to call the cops claiming I refused to sell to him . ''
The publication of Charlie Hebdo 's controversial new cover comes as France 's government was preparing tougher anti-terror laws . The French government announced Wednesday that 54 people had been detained in a crackdown on hate speech , anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism .
Among those arrested was Dieudonne , a controversial but popular comic who defended terrorism in comments posted on Facebook earlier this week .
In Turkey , police searched trucks carrying the entire print run of the daily Cumhuriyet newspaper early Wednesday to make sure none of the newspapers reprinted cartoons from Charlie Hebdo that depicted the prophet Mohammed .
`` When the police proceed to check in advance the copies without a clear decision of the court , I think it is an alarming procedure reflecting perfectly disproportional interference in press freedom in Turkey , '' said Erol Onderoglu , a Reporters Without Borders representative in Turkey .
In a separate development , al-Qaeda in Yemen on Wednesday reiterated claims of responsibility for the attack on Charlie Hebdo .
The group released a video in which Nasr al-Ansi , a top commander of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula , or AQAP as the branch is known , said the attack by Said and Chérif Kouachi on the Paris newspaper was in retaliation for insulting the prophet Mohammed .
The video was briefly available on YouTube before being taken down . Last week , the same group released a statement to the Associated Press in which it claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo killings .
In the video , Al-Ansi says France is part of the `` party of Satan '' and warns of further `` tragedies and terror . '' Al-Ansi says Yemen 's al-Qaeda branch `` chose the target , laid out the plan and financed the operation . ''
Amedy Coulibaly , who held hostages at the Jewish supermarket , pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video released Sunday .
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A "Charlie Hebdo" newspaper is displayed at a newsstand in Nice southeastern France on Jan. 14. (Photo: Lionel Cironneau, AP)
PARIS — The first edition of Charlie Hebdo since terror attacks in Paris last week left 17 people dead sold out at newsstands across France shortly after going on sale Wednesday.
Residents in Paris formed lines at dawn and by mid-morning kiosks sported signs that said "No more Charlie Hebdo" and "Out of stock." Local French media reported scuffles broke out as people realized copies were selling quickly. A black market quickly developed, with copies selling on eBay for thousands of dollars. One auction ended Wednesday evening with a bid of $20,000.
"Normally they sit in a box in front of the kiosk and you just help yourself — and normally, the Charlie Hebdo box always has some copies in it," said Marie Dupont, 22, who was passing through Gare du Nord train station on her way to work in Paris.
Wednesday's 16-page issue of the satirical newspaper featured a cartoon on its cover depicting the prophet Mohammed. He is crying and holding a sign in his hands that says, "Je suis Charlie" ("I am Charlie") — a reference to the slogan adopted by anti-violence and free speech campaigners in the wake of the attacks. It is forbidden under Islam to show images depicting the prophet.
Three million copies were printed — 60,000 are usually published— and that may be extended to 5 million, local French media reported. It has been translated into six languages and is being distributed internationally for the first time.
A week ago, gunmen linked to radical Islam murdered eight staff members at the newspaper along with four other people. Five more people were killed in separate attacks on a policewoman Thursday and at a kosher supermarket Friday.
Benoit Redureau, a veterinarian in Paris, called the cover "cheeky" and also "very brave.'
"Their cover is militant, they don't let go, despite the pressure, despite the dead, they remain loyal to their (editorial) line, to their soul…to what we like about them," said Redureau.
Another Parisian, Yann Legall, 58, called the issue funny as well as sincere but also restrained.
"I wonder: did they refrain themselves? Did they go half-measure on this publication? They could have gone a lot further on this, when you have people who get executed like dogs, they could have done something more drastic, they could have been accusatory,'' Legall said.
On pages two and three of the newspaper Wednesday were drawings created by four cartoonists killed in the attack. One by Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac depicts two Muslim jihadists with one saying: "We shouldn't attack Charlie Hebdo people." The other replies: "(yeah), they will become martyrs and once in paradise, will steal all our virgins."
CLOSE A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil liberties group, says 'Charlie Hebdo' has every right to publish what they want, but Muslims have the right to peacefully object. VPC
Distributors said they would try to get more copies by Thursday or even later Wednesday. Printer Messageries Lyonnaises de Presse decided to increase the print run following the fast depletion of stock, French daily Le Figaro reported.
"I feel very concerned over what happened (to Charlie Hebdo) and I want to read what the surviving journalists wrote this week," said Anne Brisson, 59, trying to get a copy. "Still, it's the type of collective craziness in which I don't want to take part — it's like suddenly there is no more sugar so everyone buys 10 kilograms of sugar for the next 10 years."
Fabrice Perticoz, 48, who was manning a Paris newsstand, echoed many others selling the magazine Wednesday when describing how people lined up at 6:15 a.m. for his 120 copies. "By 6:45, they were all sold out," he said.
At his stand, a woman begged. "Please keep one for me tomorrow, I pay for it, really," she said. But Perticoz refused to take her money. "It gets too complicated, I might forget," he said. "One man wanted to call the cops claiming I refused to sell to him."
The publication of Charlie Hebdo's controversial new cover comes as France's government was preparing tougher anti-terror laws. The French government announced Wednesday that 54 people had been detained in a crackdown on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism.
Among those arrested was Dieudonne, a controversial but popular comic who defended terrorism in comments posted on Facebook earlier this week.
In Turkey, police searched trucks carrying the entire print run of the daily Cumhuriyet newspaper early Wednesday to make sure none of the newspapers reprinted cartoons from Charlie Hebdo that depicted the prophet Mohammed.
"When the police proceed to check in advance the copies without a clear decision of the court, I think it is an alarming procedure reflecting perfectly disproportional interference in press freedom in Turkey," said Erol Onderoglu, a Reporters Without Borders representative in Turkey.
In a separate development, al-Qaeda in Yemen on Wednesday reiterated claims of responsibility for the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
The group released a video in which Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP as the branch is known, said the attack by Said and Chérif Kouachi on the Paris newspaper was in retaliation for insulting the prophet Mohammed.
The video was briefly available on YouTube before being taken down. Last week, the same group released a statement to the Associated Press in which it claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo killings.
In the video, Al-Ansi says France is part of the "party of Satan" and warns of further "tragedies and terror." Al-Ansi says Yemen's al-Qaeda branch "chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation."
Amedy Coulibaly, who held hostages at the Jewish supermarket, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video released Sunday.
Contributing: Jacob Resneck in Istanbul; Kim Hjelmgaard in London
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1BZEgaJ
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/sikhs-mark-guru-nanak-550th-birth-anniversary-pakistan-191112142615985.html
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Sikhs mark Guru Nanak's 550th birth anniversary in Pakistan
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Sabrina Toppa
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Nankana Sahib , Pakistan - When Sikh devotee Gurmit Singh crossed the Indian border to visit Sikhism 's holiest sites in Pakistan this month , he set out on the journey alone . At 67 , Gurmit Singh had hoped his family in the Indian city of Chandigarh would join him , but their applications were rejected .
Nonetheless , Gurmit Singh had grown up dreaming of visiting Sikhism 's most cherished sites and was determined to fulfil his lifelong dream of seeing Kartarpur , the town where Sikhism 's founder , Guru Nanak , was believed to have spent his final years .
`` I did n't know what to expect . My goal in life was to see these holy sites , '' he told ███ .
Gurmit Singh from the Indian city of Chandigarh at Nankana Sahib , Pakistan [ Sabrina Toppa/███ ]
On Tuesday morning , Gurmit Singh , and thousands of Sikhs from around the world , poured into the eastern city of Nankana Sahib to commemorate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak at the ornate , palatial structure of the Gurdwara Janam Asthan .
Guru Nanak was born in this city in 1469 . Today , the predominantly Muslim town attracts Sikh pilgrims from around the globe .
Pakistan is officially home to 20,000 Sikhs , who number about 20 million worldwide , with the vast majority in India .
In 1947 , when India and Pakistan gained independence from the British , the state of Punjab was cleaved in half , permanently dividing Sikhism 's holiest sites between the South Asian rivals . Under a 1974 bilateral agreement , India and Pakistan opened the possibility of undertaking cross-border pilgrimages to visit each other 's religious shrines .
This year saw Guru Nanak 's birth celebrations increase in prominence due to the opening of the Kartarpur corridor , a nearly five-kilometre ( 3-mile ) long land-link that allows Sikhs from India visa-free access to one of Sikhism 's holiest shrines in Pakistan .
Prior to the construction of the corridor , thousands of Sikhs would stand on the fence along the India-Pakistan border to gaze at the gurdwara ( Sikh temple ) through a telescope , tears clouding their eyes . Now , up to 5,000 pilgrims a day have been permitted by the Pakistani government .
`` The Kartarpur corridor will promote peace and harmony between the two countries at a time when everything - including trade - is at a standstill , '' said Aamer Ahmed , chairman of the Evacuee Trust Property Board ( ETPB ) , the main government body tasked with maintaining Sikh and Hindu religious sites across Pakistan .
`` Pakistan is the land of the Sikhs , '' echoed Imran Gondal , the ETPB 's Deputy Secretary of Shrines . `` We encourage them to visit Pakistan . ''
In previous years , however , Sikh pilgrimages had been interrupted by the bitter enmity that periodically mars relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours .
Recently , the ongoing Kashmir dispute locked the rivals into a prolonged tension , with Pakistan suspending trade , downgrading diplomatic ties , and raising the issue at every international forum .
Ramesh Singh Arora , a leading Pakistani Sikh politician who introduced the country 's first Sikh marriage legislation , said that Pakistan had been committed to opening the Kartarpur corridor on time .
`` If you look at the last 10 months , there was a lot of tension between these two countries , '' said Arora . `` But the Pakistani government did n't stop the construction work at Kartarpur . It wanted to send the message that it would give the Sikhs free and open access to Kartarpur . ''
Paulkaur Singh saw her trip as a way to heal the wounds of the 1947 Partition [ Sabrina Toppa/███ ]
Other Indian Sikh pilgrims , such as 66-year-old Paulkaur Singh , saw their trip to Pakistan as a way to heal the wounds of the Partition , the violent event that saw mass displacement and population exchanges as the South Asian borders were redrawn in 1947 .
Paulkaur Singh 's husband had fled Bahawalpur , a city in Pakistan 's Punjab province , to go to Haryana on the Indian side . He never reconnected with the home that he left behind in his dash towards safety and a new country .
Someday , Paulkaur Singh hopes to have a glimpse of her late husband 's city , but she said it currently feels impossible on a government-approved travel itinerary restricted to Sikh heritage sites .
For now , Paulkaur Singh contends herself with being able to see Kartarpur in person , calling it her `` asli ghar '' ( or true home ) . Unable to reach their revered holy site for decades , many Indian Sikhs had simply watched from afar . `` Now we can do darshan openly , '' Paulkaur Singh said .
At the gurdwara 's `` sarovar '' ( or sacred pool ) where Sikhs take a ceremonial bath , the Indian Sikhs were also joined by Pakistan 's own minorities .
Muzawer Mal , a Nanakpanthi Hindu from Pakistan 's southeast Sindh province , stood beaming at the site of Guru Nanak 's birthplace . `` I came here five times to roam with my 12 children . We have such a strong connection to Guru Nanak , '' he said .
`` There is no difference between us , we are all Guru Nanak 's followers , '' echoed Esardas Punjabi , a 55-year-old Nanakpanthi Hindu who had taken a 12-hour bus from Shikarpur , Pakistan to celebrate with Indian Sikhs . `` I am extremely happy to be here . ''
Nanakpanthis are followers of Guru Nanak , though some of them may also identify themselves as Hindus . A significant number of them live in Pakistan 's Sindh province .
Among Nankana Sahib 's celebrants was a group of Sikhs from North America and Europe , who had undertaken a special `` Journey to Kartarpur '' road trip to the holy site , crisscrossing Turkey , Iran , the United Kingdom , Italy , and the rest of Europe to spread a message of peace .
The group visited gurdwaras in Europe to collect donations and eventually reached Pakistan 's Punjab province , where security officials offered steaming cups of tea and bantered in Punjabi , recalled 61-year-old Ranjit Singh Sandhu .
Sandhu , who runs a truck company in Canada , said the highlight of his trip was the number of tea invites he received . `` Every person treats us respectfully . They offered us cups of chai and wanted to show us around , but we did n't have time , '' he chuckles .
Sandhu said he believed that ordinary people want peace on both sides , and that little divides the citizens in both countries .
`` There is no difference between them . The police are the same on both sides of the border , the food and drinks are the same . The only difference is the name . We are Sikhs , they are Muslims , but we are the same people , '' he said . `` If Guru Nanak blesses us , I would love to come every year . ''
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Nankana Sahib, Pakistan - When Sikh devotee Gurmit Singh crossed the Indian border to visit Sikhism's holiest sites in Pakistan this month, he set out on the journey alone. At 67, Gurmit Singh had hoped his family in the Indian city of Chandigarh would join him, but their applications were rejected.
More:
Nonetheless, Gurmit Singh had grown up dreaming of visiting Sikhism's most cherished sites and was determined to fulfil his lifelong dream of seeing Kartarpur, the town where Sikhism's founder, Guru Nanak, was believed to have spent his final years.
"I didn't know what to expect. My goal in life was to see these holy sites," he told Al Jazeera.
Gurmit Singh from the Indian city of Chandigarh at Nankana Sahib, Pakistan [Sabrina Toppa/Al Jazeera]
191111074455149
On Tuesday morning, Gurmit Singh, and thousands of Sikhs from around the world, poured into the eastern city of Nankana Sahib to commemorate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak at the ornate, palatial structure of the Gurdwara Janam Asthan.
Guru Nanak was born in this city in 1469. Today, the predominantly Muslim town attracts Sikh pilgrims from around the globe.
Pakistan is officially home to 20,000 Sikhs, who number about 20 million worldwide, with the vast majority in India.
Opening of Kartarpur corridor
In 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence from the British, the state of Punjab was cleaved in half, permanently dividing Sikhism's holiest sites between the South Asian rivals. Under a 1974 bilateral agreement, India and Pakistan opened the possibility of undertaking cross-border pilgrimages to visit each other's religious shrines.
This year saw Guru Nanak's birth celebrations increase in prominence due to the opening of the Kartarpur corridor, a nearly five-kilometre (3-mile) long land-link that allows Sikhs from India visa-free access to one of Sikhism's holiest shrines in Pakistan.
Prior to the construction of the corridor, thousands of Sikhs would stand on the fence along the India-Pakistan border to gaze at the gurdwara (Sikh temple) through a telescope, tears clouding their eyes. Now, up to 5,000 pilgrims a day have been permitted by the Pakistani government.
"The Kartarpur corridor will promote peace and harmony between the two countries at a time when everything - including trade - is at a standstill," said Aamer Ahmed, chairman of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB), the main government body tasked with maintaining Sikh and Hindu religious sites across Pakistan.
"Pakistan is the land of the Sikhs," echoed Imran Gondal, the ETPB's Deputy Secretary of Shrines. "We encourage them to visit Pakistan."
191109074815589
In previous years, however, Sikh pilgrimages had been interrupted by the bitter enmity that periodically mars relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours.
Recently, the ongoing Kashmir dispute locked the rivals into a prolonged tension, with Pakistan suspending trade, downgrading diplomatic ties, and raising the issue at every international forum.
Ramesh Singh Arora, a leading Pakistani Sikh politician who introduced the country's first Sikh marriage legislation, said that Pakistan had been committed to opening the Kartarpur corridor on time.
"If you look at the last 10 months, there was a lot of tension between these two countries," said Arora. "But the Pakistani government didn't stop the construction work at Kartarpur. It wanted to send the message that it would give the Sikhs free and open access to Kartarpur."
Paulkaur Singh saw her trip as a way to heal the wounds of the 1947 Partition [Sabrina Toppa/Al Jazeera]
Other Indian Sikh pilgrims, such as 66-year-old Paulkaur Singh, saw their trip to Pakistan as a way to heal the wounds of the Partition, the violent event that saw mass displacement and population exchanges as the South Asian borders were redrawn in 1947.
Paulkaur Singh's husband had fled Bahawalpur, a city in Pakistan's Punjab province, to go to Haryana on the Indian side. He never reconnected with the home that he left behind in his dash towards safety and a new country.
Someday, Paulkaur Singh hopes to have a glimpse of her late husband's city, but she said it currently feels impossible on a government-approved travel itinerary restricted to Sikh heritage sites.
For now, Paulkaur Singh contends herself with being able to see Kartarpur in person, calling it her "asli ghar" (or true home). Unable to reach their revered holy site for decades, many Indian Sikhs had simply watched from afar. "Now we can do darshan openly," Paulkaur Singh said.
'No difference between us'
At the gurdwara's "sarovar" (or sacred pool) where Sikhs take a ceremonial bath, the Indian Sikhs were also joined by Pakistan's own minorities.
Muzawer Mal, a Nanakpanthi Hindu from Pakistan's southeast Sindh province, stood beaming at the site of Guru Nanak's birthplace. "I came here five times to roam with my 12 children. We have such a strong connection to Guru Nanak," he said.
191028090004587
"There is no difference between us, we are all Guru Nanak's followers," echoed Esardas Punjabi, a 55-year-old Nanakpanthi Hindu who had taken a 12-hour bus from Shikarpur, Pakistan to celebrate with Indian Sikhs. "I am extremely happy to be here."
Nanakpanthis are followers of Guru Nanak, though some of them may also identify themselves as Hindus. A significant number of them live in Pakistan's Sindh province.
Among Nankana Sahib's celebrants was a group of Sikhs from North America and Europe, who had undertaken a special "Journey to Kartarpur" road trip to the holy site, crisscrossing Turkey, Iran, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the rest of Europe to spread a message of peace.
The group visited gurdwaras in Europe to collect donations and eventually reached Pakistan's Punjab province, where security officials offered steaming cups of tea and bantered in Punjabi, recalled 61-year-old Ranjit Singh Sandhu.
Sandhu, who runs a truck company in Canada, said the highlight of his trip was the number of tea invites he received. "Every person treats us respectfully. They offered us cups of chai and wanted to show us around, but we didn't have time," he chuckles.
Sandhu said he believed that ordinary people want peace on both sides, and that little divides the citizens in both countries.
"There is no difference between them. The police are the same on both sides of the border, the food and drinks are the same. The only difference is the name. We are Sikhs, they are Muslims, but we are the same people," he said. "If Guru Nanak blesses us, I would love to come every year."
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https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17185052/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-fake-news-bots-cambridge
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Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hardest year, and what comes next
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2018-04-02
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Ezra Klein
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It ’ s been a tough year for Facebook . The social networking juggernaut found itself engulfed by controversies over fake news , electoral interference , privacy violations , and a broad backlash to smartphone addiction . Wall Street has noticed : The company has lost almost $ 100 billion in market value in recent weeks .
Behind Facebook ’ s hard year is a collision between the company ’ s values , ambitions , business model , and mind-boggling scale . Mark Zuckerberg , the founder of Facebook , has long held that the company ’ s mission is to make the world more open and connected — with the assumption being that a more open and connected world is a better world . That assumption has been sorely tested over the past year . As we ’ ve seen , a more open world can make it easier for governments to undermine each other ’ s elections from afar ; a more connected world can make it easier to spread hatred and incite violence .
In 2017 , Facebook hit more than 2 billion monthly users — and that ’ s to say nothing of the massive user bases of Facebook-owned properties like Instagram and WhatsApp . There is no way to track , or even understand , all that is happening on Facebook at any given time . Problems that look small in the moment — like organized disinformation campaigns mounted by Russia — reveal themselves , in retrospect , to be massive , possibly even world-changing , events .
I spoke with Zuckerberg on Friday about the state of his company , the implications of its global influence , and how he sees the problems ahead of him .
“ I think we will dig through this hole , but it will take a few years , ” Zuckerberg said . “ I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months , but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time . ”
But what happens then ? What has this past year meant for Facebook ’ s future ? In a 2017 manifesto , Zuckerberg argued that Facebook would help humanity takes its “ next step ” by becoming “ the social infrastructure ” for a truly global community .
Remarkably , Facebook ’ s scale makes this a plausible vision . But it comes with a dark side : Has Facebook become too big to manage , and too dangerous when it fails ? Should the most important social infrastructure of the global community be managed by a single company headquartered in Northern California ? And does Zuckerberg ’ s optimism about human nature and the benefits of a connected world make it harder for him to see the harm Facebook can cause ?
The full conversation with Zuckerberg can be heard on my podcast , The Ezra Klein Show . A transcript , lightly edited for length and clarity , follows .
I want to begin with something you said recently in an interview , which is that Facebook is now more like a government than a traditional company . Can you expand on that idea ?
Sure . People share a whole lot of content and then sometimes there are disputes between people around whether that content is acceptable , whether it ’ s hate speech or valid political speech ; whether it is an organization which is deemed to be a bad or hateful or terrorist organization or one that ’ s expressing a reasonable point of view .
I think more than a lot of other companies , we ’ re in a position where we have to adjudicate those kinds of disputes between different members of our community . And in order to do that , we ’ ve had to build out a whole set of policies and governance around how that works .
But I think it ’ s actually one of the most interesting philosophical questions that we face . With a community of more than 2 billion people all around the world , in every different country , where there are wildly different social and cultural norms , it ’ s just not clear to me that us sitting in an office here in California are best placed to always determine what the policies should be for people all around the world . And I ’ ve been working on and thinking through : How can you set up a more democratic or community-oriented process that reflects the values of people around the world ?
That ’ s one of the things that I really think we need to get right . Because I ’ m just not sure that the current state is a great one .
I ’ d love to hear more about where your thinking is on that because when Facebook gets it wrong , the consequences are on the scale of when a government gets it wrong . Elections can lose legitimacy , or ethnic violence can break out .
It makes me wonder , has Facebook just become too big and too vast and too consequential for normal corporate governance structures , and also normal private company incentives ?
We ’ re continually thinking through this . As the internet gets to a broader scale and some of these services reach a bigger scale than anything has before , we ’ re constantly confronted with new challenges . I try to judge our success not by , “ Are there no problems that come up ? ” But , “ When an issue comes up , can we deal with it responsively and make sure that we can address it so that those kinds of issues don ’ t come up again in the future ? ”
You mentioned our governance . One of the things that I feel really lucky we have is this company structure where , at the end of the day , it ’ s a controlled company . We are not at the whims of short-term shareholders . We can really design these products and decisions with what is going to be in the best interest of the community over time .
That is one of the ways Facebook is different , but I can imagine reading it both ways . On the one hand , your control of voting shares makes you more insulated from short-term pressures of the market . On the other hand , you have a lot more personal power . There ’ s no quadrennial election for CEO of Facebook . And that ’ s a normal way that democratic governments ensure accountability . Do you think that governance structure makes you , in some cases , less accountable ?
I certainly think that ’ s a fair question . My goal here is to create a governance structure around the content and the community that reflects more what people in the community want than what short-term-oriented shareholders might want . And if we do that well , then I think that could really break ground on governance for an internet community . But if we don ’ t do it well , then I think we ’ ll fail to handle a lot of the issues that are coming up .
Here are a few of the principles . One is transparency . Right now , I don ’ t think we are transparent enough around the prevalence of different issues on the platform . We haven ’ t done a good job of publishing and being transparent about the prevalence of those kinds of issues , and the work that we ’ re doing and the trends of how we ’ re driving those things down over time .
A second is some sort of independent appeal process . Right now , if you post something on Facebook and someone reports it and our community operations and review team looks at it and decides that it needs to get taken down , there ’ s not really a way to appeal that . I think in any kind of good-functioning democratic system , there needs to be a way to appeal . And I think we can build that internally as a first step .
But over the long term , what I ’ d really like to get to is an independent appeal . So maybe folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined , and then people can get a second opinion . You can imagine some sort of structure , almost like a Supreme Court , that is made up of independent folks who don ’ t work for Facebook , who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world .
One thing that has been damaging for Facebook over the past year is a concern will arise and initially the answer is , “ Very , very few people saw fake news. ” Or , “ Very , very few people saw anything from Russia-related bots. ” And then slowly it comes out , “ No , actually it was more . Millions . Maybe hundreds of millions . ”
The problem wasn ’ t the lack of transparency ; it was how to know we could trust what was coming out . And one of the reasons I ’ m interested to hear you broach the idea of independent institutions is I wonder if part of transparency has to be creating modes of information that are independent .
Yeah , I think that ’ s a good point . And I certainly think what you ’ re saying is a fair criticism . It ’ s tough to be transparent when we don ’ t first have a full understanding of where the state of some of the systems [ is ] . In 2016 , we were behind having an understanding and operational excellence on preventing things like misinformation , Russian interference . And you can bet that ’ s a huge focus for us going forward .
Right now in the company , I think we have about 14,000 people working on security and community operations and review , just to make sure that we can really nail down some of those issues that we had in 2016 .
After the 2016 US elections , a number of months later , there were the French elections . And for that , we spent a bunch of time developing new AI tools to find the kind of fake accounts spreading misinformation and we took down — I think it was more than 30,000 accounts , and I think the reports out of France were that people felt like that was a much cleaner election on social media .
A few months later , there were the German elections . And there , we augmented the playbook again to work directly with the election commission in Germany . If you work with the government in a country , they ’ ll really actually have a fuller understanding of what is going on and what are all the issues that we would need to focus on .
And then fast-forward to last year , 2017 , and the special election in Alabama . We deployed a number of new tools that we ’ d developed to find fake accounts who were trying to spread false news , and we got them off before a lot of the discussion around the election . And again , I think we felt a lot better about the result there .
Let me ask you about your tools to punish that misbehavior , though . The risk reward of manipulating a national election using Facebook is very high . If you ’ re Russia and you get caught hacking into our election systems — which they also tried to do — and you fail and Hillary Clinton wins , the consequences of that can be really severe . Sanctions could be tremendous , and you could even imagine something like that escalating into armed conflict .
If you do this on Facebook , maybe you get caught and your bots get shut down , but Facebook , in not being a government , really doesn ’ t have the ability to punish . If Cambridge Analytica messes with everybody ’ s privacy , you can ’ t throw them in jail in the way that , if you ’ re a doctor and you repeatedly violate HIPAA , the government makes sure you face very severe legal consequences . So do you have capacity to do not just detection but sanction ? Is there a way to increase the cost of using your platform for these kinds of efforts ?
There are three big categories of fake news . There ’ s a group of people who are like spammers . These are the people who , in pre-social media days , would ’ ve been sending you Viagra emails . The basic playbook that you want to run on that is just make it non-economical . So the first step , once we realized that this was an issue , was a number of them ran Facebook ads on their webpages . We immediately said , “ Okay . Anyone who ’ s even remotely sketchy , no way are you going to be able to use our tools to monetize. ” So the amount of money that they made went down .
Then they ’ re trying to pump this content into Facebook with the hopes that people will click on it and see ads and make money . As our systems get better at detecting this , we show the content less , which drives the economic value for them down . Eventually , they just get to a point where they go and do something else .
The second category is state actors . That ’ s basically the Russian interference effort . And that is a security problem . You never fully solve it , but you strengthen your defenses . You get rid of the fake accounts and the tools that they have . We can ’ t do this all by ourselves , so we try to work with local governments everywhere who have more tools to punish them and have more insight into what is going on across their country so that they can tell us what to focus on . And that one I feel like we ’ re making good progress on too .
Then there ’ s the third category , which is the most nuanced , which are basically real media outlets who are saying what they think is true but have varying levels of accuracy or trustworthiness . And that is actually the most challenging portion of the issue to deal with . Because there , I think , there are quite large free speech issues . Folks are saying stuff that may be wrong , but they mean it , they think they ’ re speaking their truth , and do you really wan na shut them down for doing that ?
So we ’ ve been probably the most careful on that piece . But this year , we ’ ve rolled out a number of changes to News Feed that try to boost in the ranking broadly trusted news sources . We ’ ve surveyed people across the whole community and asked them whether they trust different news sources .
Take the Wall Street Journal or New York Times . Even if not everyone reads them , the people who don ’ t read them typically still think they ’ re good , trustworthy journalism . Whereas if you get down to blogs that may be on more of the fringe , they ’ ll have their strong supporters , but people who don ’ t necessarily read them often don ’ t trust them as much .
I ’ m somebody who came up as a blogger and had a lot of love for the idea of the open internet and the way the gates were falling down . One thing I hear when I listen to the third solution there is it also creates a huge return to incumbency .
If you ’ re the New York Times and you ’ ve been around for a long time and you ’ re well-known , people trust you . If you ’ re somebody who wants to begin a media organization two months from now , people don ’ t know if they can trust you yet . If Facebook is the way people get their news , and the way Facebook ranks its News Feed is by privileging news people already trust , it ’ s going to be a lot harder for new organizations to break through .
That ’ s an important point that we spend a lot of time thinking about . One of the great things about the internet and the services we ’ re trying to build , you ’ re giving everyone a voice . That ’ s so deep in our mission . We definitely think about that in all the changes that we ’ re making .
I think it ’ s important to keep in mind that of all the strategies that I just laid out , they ’ re made up of many different actions , which each have relatively subtle effects . So the broadly trusted shift that I just mentioned , it changes how much something might be seen by , I don ’ t know , just call it in the range of maybe 20 percent .
What we ’ re really trying to do is make it so that the content that people see is actually really meaningful to them . And one of the things I think we often get criticized for is , and incorrectly in this case , is people say , “ Hey , you ’ re just ranking the system based on what people like and click on . ”
That ’ s actually not true . We moved past that many years back . There was this issue with clickbait , where there were a bunch of publications that would push content into Facebook , [ and ] people would click on them because they had sensational titles but then would not feel good about having read that content . So that was one of the first times that those basic metrics around clicks , likes , and comments on the content really stopped working to help us show the most meaningful content .
The way that this works today , broadly , is we have panels of hundreds or thousands of people who come in and we show them all the content that their friends and pages who they follow have shared . And we ask them to rank it , and basically say , “ What were the most meaningful things that you wish were at the top of feed ? ”
And then we try to design algorithms that just map to what people are actually telling us is meaningful to them . Not what they click on , not what is going to make us the most revenue , but what people actually find meaningful and valuable . So when we ’ re making shifts — like the broadly trusted shift — the reason why we ’ re doing that is because it actually maps to what people are telling us they want at a deep level .
One of the things that has been coming up a lot in the conversation is whether the business model of monetizing user attention is what is letting in a lot of these problems . Tim Cook , the CEO of Apple , gave an interview the other day and he was asked what he would do if he was in your shoes . He said , “ I wouldn ’ t be in this situation , ” and argued that Apple sells products to users , it doesn ’ t sell users to advertisers , and so it ’ s a sounder business model that doesn ’ t open itself to these problems .
Do you think part of the problem here is the business model where attention ends up dominating above all else , and so anything that can engage has powerful value within the ecosystem ?
You know , I find that argument , that if you ’ re not paying that somehow we can ’ t care about you , to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth . The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world , then there are a lot of people who can ’ t afford to pay . And therefore , as with a lot of media , having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people .
That doesn ’ t mean that we ’ re not primarily focused on serving people . I think probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team here , I make all of our decisions based on what ’ s going to matter to our community and focus much less on the advertising side of the business .
But if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people , then you need to have something that people can afford . I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying on this in one of his Kindle launches a number of years back . He said , “ There are companies that work hard to charge you more , and there are companies that work hard to charge you less. ” And at Facebook , we are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a free service that everyone can use .
I don ’ t think at all that that means that we don ’ t care about people . To the contrary , I think it ’ s important that we don ’ t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you . Because that sounds ridiculous to me .
So I ’ m also within an advertising model , and I have a lot of sympathy for the advertising model . But I also think the advertising model can blind us . It creates incentives that we operate under and justify . And one of the questions I wonder about is whether diversifying the model doesn ’ t make sense . If I understand , and I might not , WhatsApp , which is also part of Facebook , is subscription , right ? People pay a small amount ?
The broader point I want to make is that you don ’ t need to only serve rich people to diversify away from just being about attention . And when it is about attention , when it is about advertising , when you need to show growth to Wall Street , that does pull you toward getting more and more and more of people ’ s attention over time .
I did an interview with Tristan Harris , who ’ s been a critic of Facebook . And we were talking about your announcement that some of the changes you ’ re making have brought down , a little bit , the amount of time people are spending on the platform . And he made the point , “ You know that ’ s great . But he couldn ’ t do that by 50 percent . Wall Street would freak out ; his board would freak out. ” There are costs to this model , and I do wonder how you think about at least protecting yourself against some of them dominating in the long run .
Well , I think our responsibility here is to make sure that the time people spend on Facebook is time well spent . We don ’ t have teams who have , as their primary goal , making it so people spend more time . The way I design the goals for the teams is that you try to build the best experience you can . I don ’ t think it ’ s really right to assume that people spending time on a service is bad . But at the same time , I also think maximizing the time that people spend is not really the goal either .
In the last year , we ’ ve done a lot of research into what drives well-being for people . And what uses of social networks are correlated with happiness and long-term measures of health and all the measures of well-being that you ’ d expect , and what areas are not as positive .
And the thing we ’ ve found is that you can break Facebook and social media use into two categories . One is where people are connecting and building relationships , even if it ’ s subtle , even if it ’ s just I post a photo and someone I haven ’ t talked to in a while comments . That person is reminding me that they care about me .
The other part of the use is basically content consumption . So that ’ s watching videos , reading news , passively consuming content in a way where you ’ re not actually interacting with anyone or building a relationship . And what we find is that the things that are about interacting with people and building relationships end up being correlated with all of the measures of long-term well-being that you ’ d expect , whereas the things that are primarily just about content consumption , even if they ’ re informative or entertaining and people say they like them , are not as correlated with long-term measures of well-being .
So this is another shift we ’ ve made in News Feed and our systems this year . We ’ re prioritizing showing more content from your friends and family first , so that way you ’ ll be more likely to have interactions that are meaningful to you and that more of the time you ’ re spending is building those relationships .
That change actually took time spent down a little bit . That was part of what I was talking about on that earnings call . But over the long term , even if time spent goes down , if people are spending more time on Facebook actually building relationships with people they care about , then that ’ s going to build a stronger community and build a stronger business , regardless of what Wall Street thinks about it in the near term .
I want to ask you another question about the advertising model , and this one is trickier because it bears very directly on my industry . Something I ’ ve seen recently has been a perception at Facebook that a lot of the critical coverage from the media comes from journalists angry that Facebook is decimating the advertising market that journalism depends on . And there is that view . The publisher of Dow Jones , Will Lewis , said that the diversion of advertising dollars into Facebook and Google is killing news and that it has to stop .
Is he right or wrong ? And given that so much of the advertising on Facebook wraps around news that journalism organizations are paying to report and publish , what responsibility do you feel you have to the people creating real news for their business model to work , given that their products create value , not just for the world but for Facebook itself ?
So I do think a big responsibility that we have is to help support high-quality journalism . And that ’ s not just the big traditional institutions , but a big part of what I actually think about when I ’ m thinking about high-quality journalism is local news . And I think that there are almost two different strategies in terms of how you address that .
For the larger institutions , and maybe even some of the smaller ones as well , subscriptions are really a key point on this . I think a lot of these business models are moving toward a higher percentage of subscriptions , where the people who are getting the most value from you are contributing a disproportionate amount to the revenue . And there are certainly a lot of things that we can do on Facebook to help people , to help these news organizations , drive subscriptions . And that ’ s certainly been a lot of the work that we ’ ve done and we ’ ll continue doing .
In local news , I think some of the solutions might be a little bit different . But I think it ’ s easy to lose track of how important this is . There ’ s been a lot of conversation about civic engagement changing , and I think people can lose sight of how closely tied that can be to local news . In a town with a strong local newspaper , people are much more informed ; they ’ re much more likely to be civically active . On Facebook , we ’ ve taken steps to show more local news to people . We ’ re also working with them specifically , creating funds to support them and working on both subscriptions and ads that should hopefully create a more thriving ecosystem .
I ’ ve been thinking a lot , in preparing for this interview , about the 2017 manifesto where you said you wanted Facebook to help humankind take its next step . You wrote that “ progress now requires humanity coming together , not just as cities or nations , but also as a global community , ” and suggested that Facebook could be the social infrastructure for that evolution .
In retrospect , I think a key question here has become whether creating infrastructure where all the tensions of countries and ethnicities and regions and ideologies can more easily collide into each other will actually help us become that global community or whether it will further tear us apart . Has your thinking on that changed at all ?
Sure . I think over the last few years , the political reality has been that there ’ s a lot of people feeling left behind . And there ’ s been a big rise of isolationism and nationalism that I think threatens the global cooperation that will be required to solve some of the bigger issues , like maintaining peace , addressing climate change , eventually collaborating a lot in accelerating science and curing diseases and eliminating poverty .
So this is a huge part of our mission . One of the things I found heartening is if you ask millennials what they identify the most with , it ’ s not their nationality or even their ethnicity . The plurality identifies as a citizen of the world . And that , I think , reflects the values of where we need to go in order to solve some of these bigger questions .
So now the question is how do you do that ? I think it ’ s clear that just helping people connect by itself isn ’ t always positive . A much bigger part of the focus for me now is making sure that as we ’ re connecting people , we are helping to build bonds and bring people closer together , rather than just focused on the mechanics of the connection and the infrastructure .
There ’ s a number of different pieces that you need to do here . I think civic society basically starts bottom-up . You need to have well-functioning groups and communities . We ’ re very focused on that . You need a well-informed citizenry , so we ’ re very focused on the quality of journalism , that everyone has a voice , and that people can get access to the content they need . That , I think , ends up being really important .
Civic engagement , both being involved in elections and increasingly working to eliminate interference and different nation-states trying to interfere in each other ’ s elections , ends up being really important . And then I think part of what we need to do is work on some of the new types of governance questions that we started this conversation off with because there hasn ’ t been a community like this that has spanned so many different countries .
So those are some of the things that I ’ m focused on . But right now a lot of people aren ’ t as focused on connecting the world or bringing countries closer together as maybe they were a few years back . And I still view that as an important part of our vision for where the world should go — that we do what we can to stay committed to that and hopefully can help the world move in that direction .
One of the scary stories I ’ ve read about Facebook over the past year is that it had become a real source of anti-Rohingya propaganda in Myanmar , and thus become part of an ethnic cleansing . Phil Robertson , who ’ s a deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia , made the point that Facebook is dominant for news information in Myanmar but Myanmar is not an incredibly important market for Facebook . It doesn ’ t get the attention we give things that go wrong in America . I doubt you have a proportionate amount of staff in Myanmar to what you have in America . And he said the result is you end up being like “ an absentee landlord ” in Southeast Asia .
Is Facebook too big to manage its global scale in some of these other countries , the ones we don ’ t always talk about in this conversation , effectively ?
So one of the things I think we need to get better at as we grow is becoming a more global company . We have offices all over the world , so we ’ re already quite global . But our headquarters is here in California and the vast majority of our community is not even in the US , and it ’ s a constant challenge to make sure that we ’ re putting due attention on all of the people in different parts of the community around the world .
The Myanmar issues have , I think , gotten a lot of focus inside the company . I remember , one Saturday morning , I got a phone call and we detected that people were trying to spread sensational messages through — it was Facebook Messenger in this case — to each side of the conflict , basically telling the Muslims , “ Hey , there ’ s about to be an uprising of the Buddhists , so make sure that you are armed and go to this place. ” And then the same thing on the other side .
So that ’ s the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our tools in order to incite real harm . Now , in that case , our systems detect that that ’ s going on . We stop those messages from going through . But this is certainly something that we ’ re paying a lot of attention to .
I think if you go back a couple years in technology rhetoric , a lot of the slogans people had that were read optimistically have come to take on darker connotations too . The idea that “ anything is possible. ” Our sense of what “ anything ” means there has become wider . Or the idea that you want to make the world more open and connected — I think it ’ s become clearer that an open and connected world could be a better world or it could be a worse world .
So , when you think about the 20-year time frame , what will you be looking for to see if Facebook succeeded , if it actually made the world a better place ?
Well , I don ’ t think it ’ s going to take 20 years . I think the basic point that you ’ re getting at is that we ’ re really idealistic . When we started , we thought about how good it would be if people could connect , if everyone had a voice . Frankly , we didn ’ t spend enough time investing in , or thinking through , some of the downside uses of the tools . So for the first 10 years of the company , everyone was just focused on the positive .
I think now people are appropriately focused on some of the risks and downsides as well . And I think we were too slow in investing enough in that . It ’ s not like we did nothing . I mean , at the beginning of last year , I think we had 10,000 people working on security . But by the end of this year , we ’ re going to have 20,000 people working on security .
In terms of resolving a lot of these issues , I think it ’ s just a case where because we didn ’ t invest enough , I think we will dig through this hole , but it will take a few years . I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months , but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time .
Now , the good news there is that we really started investing more , at least a year ago . So if it ’ s going to be a three-year process , then I think we ’ re about a year in already . And hopefully , by the end of this year , we ’ ll have really started to turn the corner on some of these issues .
But getting back to your question , I think human nature is generally positive . I ’ m an optimist in that way . But there ’ s no doubt that our responsibilities to amplify the good parts of what people can do when they connect , and to mitigate and prevent the bad things that people might do to try to abuse each other .
And over the long term , I think that ’ s the big question . Have we enabled people to come together in new ways — whether that ’ s creating new jobs , creating new businesses , spreading new ideas , promoting a more open discourse , allowing good ideas to spread through society more quickly than they might have otherwise ? And on the other side , did we do a good job of preventing the abuse ? Of making it so that governments aren ’ t interfering in each other ’ s civic elections and processes ? Are we eliminating , or at least dramatically reducing , things like hate speech ?
We ’ re in the middle of a lot of issues , and I certainly think we could ’ ve done a better job so far . I ’ m optimistic that we ’ re going to address a lot of those challenges , and that we ’ ll get through this , and that when you look back five years from now , 10 years from now , people will look at the net effect of being able to connect online and have a voice and share what matters to them as just a massively positive thing in the world .
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It’s been a tough year for Facebook. The social networking juggernaut found itself engulfed by controversies over fake news, electoral interference, privacy violations, and a broad backlash to smartphone addiction. Wall Street has noticed: The company has lost almost $100 billion in market value in recent weeks.
Behind Facebook’s hard year is a collision between the company’s values, ambitions, business model, and mind-boggling scale. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has long held that the company’s mission is to make the world more open and connected — with the assumption being that a more open and connected world is a better world. That assumption has been sorely tested over the past year. As we’ve seen, a more open world can make it easier for governments to undermine each other’s elections from afar; a more connected world can make it easier to spread hatred and incite violence.
In 2017, Facebook hit more than 2 billion monthly users — and that’s to say nothing of the massive user bases of Facebook-owned properties like Instagram and WhatsApp. There is no way to track, or even understand, all that is happening on Facebook at any given time. Problems that look small in the moment — like organized disinformation campaigns mounted by Russia — reveal themselves, in retrospect, to be massive, possibly even world-changing, events.
I spoke with Zuckerberg on Friday about the state of his company, the implications of its global influence, and how he sees the problems ahead of him.
“I think we will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years,” Zuckerberg said. “I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months, but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time.”
But what happens then? What has this past year meant for Facebook’s future? In a 2017 manifesto, Zuckerberg argued that Facebook would help humanity takes its “next step” by becoming “the social infrastructure” for a truly global community.
Remarkably, Facebook’s scale makes this a plausible vision. But it comes with a dark side: Has Facebook become too big to manage, and too dangerous when it fails? Should the most important social infrastructure of the global community be managed by a single company headquartered in Northern California? And does Zuckerberg’s optimism about human nature and the benefits of a connected world make it harder for him to see the harm Facebook can cause?
The full conversation with Zuckerberg can be heard on my podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. A transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Ezra Klein
I want to begin with something you said recently in an interview, which is that Facebook is now more like a government than a traditional company. Can you expand on that idea?
Mark Zuckerberg
Sure. People share a whole lot of content and then sometimes there are disputes between people around whether that content is acceptable, whether it’s hate speech or valid political speech; whether it is an organization which is deemed to be a bad or hateful or terrorist organization or one that’s expressing a reasonable point of view.
I think more than a lot of other companies, we’re in a position where we have to adjudicate those kinds of disputes between different members of our community. And in order to do that, we’ve had to build out a whole set of policies and governance around how that works.
But I think it’s actually one of the most interesting philosophical questions that we face. With a community of more than 2 billion people all around the world, in every different country, where there are wildly different social and cultural norms, it’s just not clear to me that us sitting in an office here in California are best placed to always determine what the policies should be for people all around the world. And I’ve been working on and thinking through: How can you set up a more democratic or community-oriented process that reflects the values of people around the world?
That’s one of the things that I really think we need to get right. Because I’m just not sure that the current state is a great one.
Ezra Klein
I’d love to hear more about where your thinking is on that because when Facebook gets it wrong, the consequences are on the scale of when a government gets it wrong. Elections can lose legitimacy, or ethnic violence can break out.
It makes me wonder, has Facebook just become too big and too vast and too consequential for normal corporate governance structures, and also normal private company incentives?
Mark Zuckerberg
We’re continually thinking through this. As the internet gets to a broader scale and some of these services reach a bigger scale than anything has before, we’re constantly confronted with new challenges. I try to judge our success not by, “Are there no problems that come up?” But, “When an issue comes up, can we deal with it responsively and make sure that we can address it so that those kinds of issues don’t come up again in the future?”
You mentioned our governance. One of the things that I feel really lucky we have is this company structure where, at the end of the day, it’s a controlled company. We are not at the whims of short-term shareholders. We can really design these products and decisions with what is going to be in the best interest of the community over time.
Ezra Klein
That is one of the ways Facebook is different, but I can imagine reading it both ways. On the one hand, your control of voting shares makes you more insulated from short-term pressures of the market. On the other hand, you have a lot more personal power. There’s no quadrennial election for CEO of Facebook. And that’s a normal way that democratic governments ensure accountability. Do you think that governance structure makes you, in some cases, less accountable?
Mark Zuckerberg
I certainly think that’s a fair question. My goal here is to create a governance structure around the content and the community that reflects more what people in the community want than what short-term-oriented shareholders might want. And if we do that well, then I think that could really break ground on governance for an internet community. But if we don’t do it well, then I think we’ll fail to handle a lot of the issues that are coming up.
Here are a few of the principles. One is transparency. Right now, I don’t think we are transparent enough around the prevalence of different issues on the platform. We haven’t done a good job of publishing and being transparent about the prevalence of those kinds of issues, and the work that we’re doing and the trends of how we’re driving those things down over time.
A second is some sort of independent appeal process. Right now, if you post something on Facebook and someone reports it and our community operations and review team looks at it and decides that it needs to get taken down, there’s not really a way to appeal that. I think in any kind of good-functioning democratic system, there needs to be a way to appeal. And I think we can build that internally as a first step.
But over the long term, what I’d really like to get to is an independent appeal. So maybe folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world.
Ezra Klein
One thing that has been damaging for Facebook over the past year is a concern will arise and initially the answer is, “Very, very few people saw fake news.” Or, “Very, very few people saw anything from Russia-related bots.” And then slowly it comes out, “No, actually it was more. Millions. Maybe hundreds of millions.”
The problem wasn’t the lack of transparency; it was how to know we could trust what was coming out. And one of the reasons I’m interested to hear you broach the idea of independent institutions is I wonder if part of transparency has to be creating modes of information that are independent.
Mark Zuckerberg
Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And I certainly think what you’re saying is a fair criticism. It’s tough to be transparent when we don’t first have a full understanding of where the state of some of the systems [is]. In 2016, we were behind having an understanding and operational excellence on preventing things like misinformation, Russian interference. And you can bet that’s a huge focus for us going forward.
Right now in the company, I think we have about 14,000 people working on security and community operations and review, just to make sure that we can really nail down some of those issues that we had in 2016.
After the 2016 US elections, a number of months later, there were the French elections. And for that, we spent a bunch of time developing new AI tools to find the kind of fake accounts spreading misinformation and we took down — I think it was more than 30,000 accounts, and I think the reports out of France were that people felt like that was a much cleaner election on social media.
A few months later, there were the German elections. And there, we augmented the playbook again to work directly with the election commission in Germany. If you work with the government in a country, they’ll really actually have a fuller understanding of what is going on and what are all the issues that we would need to focus on.
And then fast-forward to last year, 2017, and the special election in Alabama. We deployed a number of new tools that we’d developed to find fake accounts who were trying to spread false news, and we got them off before a lot of the discussion around the election. And again, I think we felt a lot better about the result there.
Ezra Klein
Let me ask you about your tools to punish that misbehavior, though. The risk reward of manipulating a national election using Facebook is very high. If you’re Russia and you get caught hacking into our election systems — which they also tried to do — and you fail and Hillary Clinton wins, the consequences of that can be really severe. Sanctions could be tremendous, and you could even imagine something like that escalating into armed conflict.
If you do this on Facebook, maybe you get caught and your bots get shut down, but Facebook, in not being a government, really doesn’t have the ability to punish. If Cambridge Analytica messes with everybody’s privacy, you can’t throw them in jail in the way that, if you’re a doctor and you repeatedly violate HIPAA, the government makes sure you face very severe legal consequences. So do you have capacity to do not just detection but sanction? Is there a way to increase the cost of using your platform for these kinds of efforts?
Mark Zuckerberg
I can walk through how we’re basically approaching this.
There are three big categories of fake news. There’s a group of people who are like spammers. These are the people who, in pre-social media days, would’ve been sending you Viagra emails. The basic playbook that you want to run on that is just make it non-economical. So the first step, once we realized that this was an issue, was a number of them ran Facebook ads on their webpages. We immediately said, “Okay. Anyone who’s even remotely sketchy, no way are you going to be able to use our tools to monetize.” So the amount of money that they made went down.
Then they’re trying to pump this content into Facebook with the hopes that people will click on it and see ads and make money. As our systems get better at detecting this, we show the content less, which drives the economic value for them down. Eventually, they just get to a point where they go and do something else.
The second category is state actors. That’s basically the Russian interference effort. And that is a security problem. You never fully solve it, but you strengthen your defenses. You get rid of the fake accounts and the tools that they have. We can’t do this all by ourselves, so we try to work with local governments everywhere who have more tools to punish them and have more insight into what is going on across their country so that they can tell us what to focus on. And that one I feel like we’re making good progress on too.
Then there’s the third category, which is the most nuanced, which are basically real media outlets who are saying what they think is true but have varying levels of accuracy or trustworthiness. And that is actually the most challenging portion of the issue to deal with. Because there, I think, there are quite large free speech issues. Folks are saying stuff that may be wrong, but they mean it, they think they’re speaking their truth, and do you really wanna shut them down for doing that?
So we’ve been probably the most careful on that piece. But this year, we’ve rolled out a number of changes to News Feed that try to boost in the ranking broadly trusted news sources. We’ve surveyed people across the whole community and asked them whether they trust different news sources.
Take the Wall Street Journal or New York Times. Even if not everyone reads them, the people who don’t read them typically still think they’re good, trustworthy journalism. Whereas if you get down to blogs that may be on more of the fringe, they’ll have their strong supporters, but people who don’t necessarily read them often don’t trust them as much.
Ezra Klein
I’m somebody who came up as a blogger and had a lot of love for the idea of the open internet and the way the gates were falling down. One thing I hear when I listen to the third solution there is it also creates a huge return to incumbency.
If you’re the New York Times and you’ve been around for a long time and you’re well-known, people trust you. If you’re somebody who wants to begin a media organization two months from now, people don’t know if they can trust you yet. If Facebook is the way people get their news, and the way Facebook ranks its News Feed is by privileging news people already trust, it’s going to be a lot harder for new organizations to break through.
Mark Zuckerberg
That’s an important point that we spend a lot of time thinking about. One of the great things about the internet and the services we’re trying to build, you’re giving everyone a voice. That’s so deep in our mission. We definitely think about that in all the changes that we’re making.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that of all the strategies that I just laid out, they’re made up of many different actions, which each have relatively subtle effects. So the broadly trusted shift that I just mentioned, it changes how much something might be seen by, I don’t know, just call it in the range of maybe 20 percent.
What we’re really trying to do is make it so that the content that people see is actually really meaningful to them. And one of the things I think we often get criticized for is, and incorrectly in this case, is people say, “Hey, you’re just ranking the system based on what people like and click on.”
That’s actually not true. We moved past that many years back. There was this issue with clickbait, where there were a bunch of publications that would push content into Facebook, [and] people would click on them because they had sensational titles but then would not feel good about having read that content. So that was one of the first times that those basic metrics around clicks, likes, and comments on the content really stopped working to help us show the most meaningful content.
The way that this works today, broadly, is we have panels of hundreds or thousands of people who come in and we show them all the content that their friends and pages who they follow have shared. And we ask them to rank it, and basically say, “What were the most meaningful things that you wish were at the top of feed?”
And then we try to design algorithms that just map to what people are actually telling us is meaningful to them. Not what they click on, not what is going to make us the most revenue, but what people actually find meaningful and valuable. So when we’re making shifts — like the broadly trusted shift — the reason why we’re doing that is because it actually maps to what people are telling us they want at a deep level.
Ezra Klein
One of the things that has been coming up a lot in the conversation is whether the business model of monetizing user attention is what is letting in a lot of these problems. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, gave an interview the other day and he was asked what he would do if he was in your shoes. He said, “I wouldn’t be in this situation,” and argued that Apple sells products to users, it doesn’t sell users to advertisers, and so it’s a sounder business model that doesn’t open itself to these problems.
Do you think part of the problem here is the business model where attention ends up dominating above all else, and so anything that can engage has powerful value within the ecosystem?
Mark Zuckerberg
You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth. The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay. And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people.
That doesn’t mean that we’re not primarily focused on serving people. I think probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team here, I make all of our decisions based on what’s going to matter to our community and focus much less on the advertising side of the business.
But if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford. I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying on this in one of his Kindle launches a number of years back. He said, “There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less.” And at Facebook, we are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a free service that everyone can use.
I don’t think at all that that means that we don’t care about people. To the contrary, I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me.
Ezra Klein
So I’m also within an advertising model, and I have a lot of sympathy for the advertising model. But I also think the advertising model can blind us. It creates incentives that we operate under and justify. And one of the questions I wonder about is whether diversifying the model doesn’t make sense. If I understand, and I might not, WhatsApp, which is also part of Facebook, is subscription, right? People pay a small amount?
Mark Zuckerberg
No, we actually got rid of that.
Ezra Klein
Well, see, there you go. Shows what I know.
Mark Zuckerberg
But keep going.
Ezra Klein
The broader point I want to make is that you don’t need to only serve rich people to diversify away from just being about attention. And when it is about attention, when it is about advertising, when you need to show growth to Wall Street, that does pull you toward getting more and more and more of people’s attention over time.
I did an interview with Tristan Harris, who’s been a critic of Facebook. And we were talking about your announcement that some of the changes you’re making have brought down, a little bit, the amount of time people are spending on the platform. And he made the point, “You know that’s great. But he couldn’t do that by 50 percent. Wall Street would freak out; his board would freak out.” There are costs to this model, and I do wonder how you think about at least protecting yourself against some of them dominating in the long run.
Mark Zuckerberg
Well, I think our responsibility here is to make sure that the time people spend on Facebook is time well spent. We don’t have teams who have, as their primary goal, making it so people spend more time. The way I design the goals for the teams is that you try to build the best experience you can. I don’t think it’s really right to assume that people spending time on a service is bad. But at the same time, I also think maximizing the time that people spend is not really the goal either.
In the last year, we’ve done a lot of research into what drives well-being for people. And what uses of social networks are correlated with happiness and long-term measures of health and all the measures of well-being that you’d expect, and what areas are not as positive.
And the thing we’ve found is that you can break Facebook and social media use into two categories. One is where people are connecting and building relationships, even if it’s subtle, even if it’s just I post a photo and someone I haven’t talked to in a while comments. That person is reminding me that they care about me.
The other part of the use is basically content consumption. So that’s watching videos, reading news, passively consuming content in a way where you’re not actually interacting with anyone or building a relationship. And what we find is that the things that are about interacting with people and building relationships end up being correlated with all of the measures of long-term well-being that you’d expect, whereas the things that are primarily just about content consumption, even if they’re informative or entertaining and people say they like them, are not as correlated with long-term measures of well-being.
So this is another shift we’ve made in News Feed and our systems this year. We’re prioritizing showing more content from your friends and family first, so that way you’ll be more likely to have interactions that are meaningful to you and that more of the time you’re spending is building those relationships.
That change actually took time spent down a little bit. That was part of what I was talking about on that earnings call. But over the long term, even if time spent goes down, if people are spending more time on Facebook actually building relationships with people they care about, then that’s going to build a stronger community and build a stronger business, regardless of what Wall Street thinks about it in the near term.
Ezra Klein
I want to ask you another question about the advertising model, and this one is trickier because it bears very directly on my industry. Something I’ve seen recently has been a perception at Facebook that a lot of the critical coverage from the media comes from journalists angry that Facebook is decimating the advertising market that journalism depends on. And there is that view. The publisher of Dow Jones, Will Lewis, said that the diversion of advertising dollars into Facebook and Google is killing news and that it has to stop.
Is he right or wrong? And given that so much of the advertising on Facebook wraps around news that journalism organizations are paying to report and publish, what responsibility do you feel you have to the people creating real news for their business model to work, given that their products create value, not just for the world but for Facebook itself?
Mark Zuckerberg
So I do think a big responsibility that we have is to help support high-quality journalism. And that’s not just the big traditional institutions, but a big part of what I actually think about when I’m thinking about high-quality journalism is local news. And I think that there are almost two different strategies in terms of how you address that.
For the larger institutions, and maybe even some of the smaller ones as well, subscriptions are really a key point on this. I think a lot of these business models are moving toward a higher percentage of subscriptions, where the people who are getting the most value from you are contributing a disproportionate amount to the revenue. And there are certainly a lot of things that we can do on Facebook to help people, to help these news organizations, drive subscriptions. And that’s certainly been a lot of the work that we’ve done and we’ll continue doing.
In local news, I think some of the solutions might be a little bit different. But I think it’s easy to lose track of how important this is. There’s been a lot of conversation about civic engagement changing, and I think people can lose sight of how closely tied that can be to local news. In a town with a strong local newspaper, people are much more informed; they’re much more likely to be civically active. On Facebook, we’ve taken steps to show more local news to people. We’re also working with them specifically, creating funds to support them and working on both subscriptions and ads that should hopefully create a more thriving ecosystem.
Ezra Klein
I’ve been thinking a lot, in preparing for this interview, about the 2017 manifesto where you said you wanted Facebook to help humankind take its next step. You wrote that “progress now requires humanity coming together, not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community,” and suggested that Facebook could be the social infrastructure for that evolution.
In retrospect, I think a key question here has become whether creating infrastructure where all the tensions of countries and ethnicities and regions and ideologies can more easily collide into each other will actually help us become that global community or whether it will further tear us apart. Has your thinking on that changed at all?
Mark Zuckerberg
Sure. I think over the last few years, the political reality has been that there’s a lot of people feeling left behind. And there’s been a big rise of isolationism and nationalism that I think threatens the global cooperation that will be required to solve some of the bigger issues, like maintaining peace, addressing climate change, eventually collaborating a lot in accelerating science and curing diseases and eliminating poverty.
So this is a huge part of our mission. One of the things I found heartening is if you ask millennials what they identify the most with, it’s not their nationality or even their ethnicity. The plurality identifies as a citizen of the world. And that, I think, reflects the values of where we need to go in order to solve some of these bigger questions.
So now the question is how do you do that? I think it’s clear that just helping people connect by itself isn’t always positive. A much bigger part of the focus for me now is making sure that as we’re connecting people, we are helping to build bonds and bring people closer together, rather than just focused on the mechanics of the connection and the infrastructure.
There’s a number of different pieces that you need to do here. I think civic society basically starts bottom-up. You need to have well-functioning groups and communities. We’re very focused on that. You need a well-informed citizenry, so we’re very focused on the quality of journalism, that everyone has a voice, and that people can get access to the content they need. That, I think, ends up being really important.
Civic engagement, both being involved in elections and increasingly working to eliminate interference and different nation-states trying to interfere in each other’s elections, ends up being really important. And then I think part of what we need to do is work on some of the new types of governance questions that we started this conversation off with because there hasn’t been a community like this that has spanned so many different countries.
So those are some of the things that I’m focused on. But right now a lot of people aren’t as focused on connecting the world or bringing countries closer together as maybe they were a few years back. And I still view that as an important part of our vision for where the world should go — that we do what we can to stay committed to that and hopefully can help the world move in that direction.
Ezra Klein
One of the scary stories I’ve read about Facebook over the past year is that it had become a real source of anti-Rohingya propaganda in Myanmar, and thus become part of an ethnic cleansing. Phil Robertson, who’s a deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, made the point that Facebook is dominant for news information in Myanmar but Myanmar is not an incredibly important market for Facebook. It doesn’t get the attention we give things that go wrong in America. I doubt you have a proportionate amount of staff in Myanmar to what you have in America. And he said the result is you end up being like “an absentee landlord” in Southeast Asia.
Is Facebook too big to manage its global scale in some of these other countries, the ones we don’t always talk about in this conversation, effectively?
Mark Zuckerberg
So one of the things I think we need to get better at as we grow is becoming a more global company. We have offices all over the world, so we’re already quite global. But our headquarters is here in California and the vast majority of our community is not even in the US, and it’s a constant challenge to make sure that we’re putting due attention on all of the people in different parts of the community around the world.
The Myanmar issues have, I think, gotten a lot of focus inside the company. I remember, one Saturday morning, I got a phone call and we detected that people were trying to spread sensational messages through — it was Facebook Messenger in this case — to each side of the conflict, basically telling the Muslims, “Hey, there’s about to be an uprising of the Buddhists, so make sure that you are armed and go to this place.” And then the same thing on the other side.
So that’s the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our tools in order to incite real harm. Now, in that case, our systems detect that that’s going on. We stop those messages from going through. But this is certainly something that we’re paying a lot of attention to.
Ezra Klein
I think if you go back a couple years in technology rhetoric, a lot of the slogans people had that were read optimistically have come to take on darker connotations too. The idea that “anything is possible.” Our sense of what “anything” means there has become wider. Or the idea that you want to make the world more open and connected — I think it’s become clearer that an open and connected world could be a better world or it could be a worse world.
So, when you think about the 20-year time frame, what will you be looking for to see if Facebook succeeded, if it actually made the world a better place?
Mark Zuckerberg
Well, I don’t think it’s going to take 20 years. I think the basic point that you’re getting at is that we’re really idealistic. When we started, we thought about how good it would be if people could connect, if everyone had a voice. Frankly, we didn’t spend enough time investing in, or thinking through, some of the downside uses of the tools. So for the first 10 years of the company, everyone was just focused on the positive.
I think now people are appropriately focused on some of the risks and downsides as well. And I think we were too slow in investing enough in that. It’s not like we did nothing. I mean, at the beginning of last year, I think we had 10,000 people working on security. But by the end of this year, we’re going to have 20,000 people working on security.
In terms of resolving a lot of these issues, I think it’s just a case where because we didn’t invest enough, I think we will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years. I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months, but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time.
Now, the good news there is that we really started investing more, at least a year ago. So if it’s going to be a three-year process, then I think we’re about a year in already. And hopefully, by the end of this year, we’ll have really started to turn the corner on some of these issues.
But getting back to your question, I think human nature is generally positive. I’m an optimist in that way. But there’s no doubt that our responsibilities to amplify the good parts of what people can do when they connect, and to mitigate and prevent the bad things that people might do to try to abuse each other.
And over the long term, I think that’s the big question. Have we enabled people to come together in new ways — whether that’s creating new jobs, creating new businesses, spreading new ideas, promoting a more open discourse, allowing good ideas to spread through society more quickly than they might have otherwise? And on the other side, did we do a good job of preventing the abuse? Of making it so that governments aren’t interfering in each other’s civic elections and processes? Are we eliminating, or at least dramatically reducing, things like hate speech?
We’re in the middle of a lot of issues, and I certainly think we could’ve done a better job so far. I’m optimistic that we’re going to address a lot of those challenges, and that we’ll get through this, and that when you look back five years from now, 10 years from now, people will look at the net effect of being able to connect online and have a voice and share what matters to them as just a massively positive thing in the world.
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www.vox.com
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GAsi86TdfF7Dyjgz
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environment
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The New Yorker
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-dire-warnings-of-the-united-nations-latest-climate-change-report
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The Dire Warnings of the United Nations’ Latest Climate-Change Report
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Carolyn Kormann, Rachel Aviv, Michael Luo, Natan Last, David Rohde, Andy Borowitz
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In the fall of 2015 , several artists in the Caribbean appeared in a film titled “ 1.5 Stay Alive , ” featuring a series of homespun music videos . The name of the project referred to a campaign to limit the rise in average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius ( 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit ) above pre-industrial times . Since the 2009 United Nations climate talks , in Copenhagen , the consensus among scientists and policymakers has been that two degrees Celsius should be the limit ; any further temperature increase would be catastrophic . But , for the citizens of small island countries and other vulnerable places in the tropics and the Arctic , even two degrees of warming would be a death sentence . Their communities would be inundated , and eventually destroyed . This could happen by the time the children in the film reached middle age .
Later that year , at the climate talks in Paris , “ 1.5 to Stay Alive ” had become a rallying cry for the leaders of the Alliance of Small Island States , which includes countries like the Bahamas , the Maldives , and the Marshall Islands . As a result , the final Paris Agreement declared that , while warming shall not surpass two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels ( the target now commonly cited ) , countries should pursue “ efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C. ” The Alliance of Small Island States also asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( I.P.C.C . ) —the scientific body that informs the climate policies of the United Nations ’ member states—to prepare a special report on the specific impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees , along with ways the world could feasibly keep the temperature from rising further . “ We needed literature on the conditions of the 1.5-degree world , so this spurred a tremendous amount of new research , ” William Solecki , a climate scientist at Hunter College , in New York , and one of the report ’ s lead authors , told me . “ As soon as the ink was drying on the Paris Agreement , we were off . ”
Last night , in Incheon , South Korea , after a week of deliberation , the I.P.C.C . released the new findings . The summary tells a nightmarish tale—one much worse than any of those in the I.P.C.C. ’ s previous reports—surveying the climate-change impacts we ’ re already experiencing with one degree of warming , and the severity of the impacts to come once we surpass 1.5 degrees of warming . Ten million more people would be exposed to permanent inundation , and several hundred million more to “ climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty. ” Malaria and dengue fever will be more widespread , and crops like maize , rice , and wheat will have smaller and smaller yields—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa , Southeast Asia , and Central and South America . Security and economic growth will be that much more imperilled . “ Robust scientific literature now shows that there are significant differences between 1.5 and 2 degrees , ” Adelle Thomas , a geographer from the Bahamas and also one of the report ’ s lead authors , told me . “ The scientific consensus is really strong . It ’ s not just a political slogan : ‘ 1.5 to stay alive. ’ It ’ s true . ”
The report marks the start of the I.P.C.C. ’ s latest assessment cycle , the sixth since the organization was formed by the U.N . Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization , in 1988 . Its importance is hard to overstate . The thirty-three-page summary for policymakers—which is based on more than six thousand cited studies , and written by ninety-one authors from forty different countries—is a collective scream sieved through the stern , strained language of bureaucratese . Unique ecosystems will vanish and species will go extinct by the thousands . With two degrees of warming , three times as many insects ( eighteen per cent ) , and twice as many plants ( sixteen per cent ) and vertebrates ( eight per cent ) , will lose their geographic range , when compared with warming of 1.5 degrees . Nearly all the coral reefs ( more than ninety-nine per cent ) will be dead , including the Great Barrier Reef , an ecosystem some twenty-five million years old , which is visible from space and is already in severe decline . The global annual catch from marine fisheries will decrease by three million tons . The likelihood of a sea-ice-free Arctic summer will increase from once per century to once per decade . “ The next few years are probably the most important in our history , ” Debra Roberts , a co-chair of the I.P.C.C . Working Group II , said . ( There are three working groups : one focussed on the physical science of climate change ; the second on impacts , adaptation , and vulnerabilities ; and the third on mitigation . )
To keep warming at 1.5 degrees , governments and private businesses must make unprecedented changes—on a sweeping global scale—in energy systems , land management , building efficiency , industrial operations , shipping and aviation , and city-wide design . Within the next decade , human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions need to fall forty-five per cent below 2010 levels . By 2050 , net carbon-dioxide emissions must equal zero . “ It ’ s a goal that we can aspire to , but maybe not meet , ” Jennifer Francis , a climate scientist at Rutgers University who studies Arctic warming and its impacts on global climate , said . “ So it ’ s useful , even if it isn ’ t all that realistic . ”
“ Human activities , ” the report ’ s authors note , have already caused the global mean temperature to increase as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels , with greater warming in certain regions , and particularly in the Arctic . Warming has already led to weather extremes such as heat waves and precipitation of increased intensity and frequency . If warming continues at its current rate , it could reach 1.5 degrees by the time a child who is now a toddler starts high school . The longer countries take to reduce energy consumption and transition to renewable energy sources like solar and wind , the more they will have to rely on technologies such as carbon removal , which are currently too expensive , experimental , and small-scale to do the job .
“ You have to think in terms of the survival of human society , ” Benjamin Horton , a British geographer who is currently leading the creation of a sea-level-rise adaptation plan for Singapore and who will serve as an editor for a later segment of the I.P.C.C. ’ s sixth assessment report , said . “ It ’ s not only the magnitude of change , it ’ s the pace at which it changes , ” he said . The rate of sea-level rise accelerates once the West Antarctic Ice Sheet hits its tipping point—likely set to occur somewhere between 1.5 and two degrees of warming , if it hasn ’ t occurred already—when physics demands the whole sheet will irreversibly disintegrate . At that point , Horton said , “ You can ’ t do anything about it . It is very hard to grow an ice sheet , but very easy to melt . ”
As things stand now , even if every country met the commitment it made in the Paris Agreement , the temperature would still increase to three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century . If the world continues burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases at the current rate , it could rise by four degrees—a fact that the Trump Administration , which withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement , in June , 2017 , acknowledged with language buried deep in an August draft report issued in support of eliminating Obama-era fuel-economy rules . Representatives from the Trump Administration were in Incheon and had to approve the conclusions of the report . Whether President Trump will respond to its findings remains to be seen . But Adelle Thomas told me that during the draft process , while authors were reviewing more than forty thousand comments submitted by different nations , “ there was a real difference between developed countries and non-developed countries. ” The former , she said , “ wanted to soften the report , and take out anything that specifically mentions island states , challenging why small developing islands should be considered a special case . ”
For these regions , faster rates of sea-level rise allow much less time to adapt—to restore natural coastal ecosystems and reinforce infrastructure . “ Above 1.5 it becomes even more difficult for small islands to plan and recover economically from any damage , ” Thomas said . “ There are issues of migration and reduced social cohesion after repeated extreme events. ” At the U.N. talks in 2010 , rich countries had promised to provide financial support of as much as a hundred billion dollars collectively ( or one per cent of their total G.D.P.s ) , to developing nations by 2020 , to help with the transition to a low-carbon economy and with adapting to climate impacts they already experience . Rich nations have not followed through on that promise ; this year , both the United States and Australia declared that they would no longer be contributing any money at all .
Heads of state and international leaders will meet in Poland , in December , for the next round of U.N. climate-change talks . They have been given a map of the scale and urgency of the risks that island nations , and the rest of the world , now face , and also specific , feasible pathways to reduced emissions . The science is settled . The only question now is whether the world can find the political—or moral—will to do anything about it . “ The report is an assessment of the current scientific understanding , ” Solecki , who co-authored the first chapter , told me . “ The tone of the report paints a challenging picture , but one that also can be viewed as an opportunity . ”
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In the fall of 2015, several artists in the Caribbean appeared in a film titled “1.5 Stay Alive,” featuring a series of homespun music videos. The name of the project referred to a campaign to limit the rise in average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. Since the 2009 United Nations climate talks, in Copenhagen, the consensus among scientists and policymakers has been that two degrees Celsius should be the limit; any further temperature increase would be catastrophic. But, for the citizens of small island countries and other vulnerable places in the tropics and the Arctic, even two degrees of warming would be a death sentence. Their communities would be inundated, and eventually destroyed. This could happen by the time the children in the film reached middle age.
Later that year, at the climate talks in Paris, “1.5 to Stay Alive” had become a rallying cry for the leaders of the Alliance of Small Island States, which includes countries like the Bahamas, the Maldives, and the Marshall Islands. As a result, the final Paris Agreement declared that, while warming shall not surpass two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (the target now commonly cited), countries should pursue “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C.” The Alliance of Small Island States also asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.)—the scientific body that informs the climate policies of the United Nations’ member states—to prepare a special report on the specific impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees, along with ways the world could feasibly keep the temperature from rising further. “We needed literature on the conditions of the 1.5-degree world, so this spurred a tremendous amount of new research,” William Solecki, a climate scientist at Hunter College, in New York, and one of the report’s lead authors, told me. “As soon as the ink was drying on the Paris Agreement, we were off.”
Last night, in Incheon, South Korea, after a week of deliberation, the I.P.C.C. released the new findings. The summary tells a nightmarish tale—one much worse than any of those in the I.P.C.C.’s previous reports—surveying the climate-change impacts we’re already experiencing with one degree of warming, and the severity of the impacts to come once we surpass 1.5 degrees of warming. Ten million more people would be exposed to permanent inundation, and several hundred million more to “climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty.” Malaria and dengue fever will be more widespread, and crops like maize, rice, and wheat will have smaller and smaller yields—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America. Security and economic growth will be that much more imperilled. “Robust scientific literature now shows that there are significant differences between 1.5 and 2 degrees,” Adelle Thomas, a geographer from the Bahamas and also one of the report’s lead authors, told me. “The scientific consensus is really strong. It’s not just a political slogan: ‘1.5 to stay alive.’ It’s true.”
The report marks the start of the I.P.C.C.’s latest assessment cycle, the sixth since the organization was formed by the U.N. Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization, in 1988. Its importance is hard to overstate. The thirty-three-page summary for policymakers—which is based on more than six thousand cited studies, and written by ninety-one authors from forty different countries—is a collective scream sieved through the stern, strained language of bureaucratese. Unique ecosystems will vanish and species will go extinct by the thousands. With two degrees of warming, three times as many insects (eighteen per cent), and twice as many plants (sixteen per cent) and vertebrates (eight per cent), will lose their geographic range, when compared with warming of 1.5 degrees. Nearly all the coral reefs (more than ninety-nine per cent) will be dead, including the Great Barrier Reef, an ecosystem some twenty-five million years old, which is visible from space and is already in severe decline. The global annual catch from marine fisheries will decrease by three million tons. The likelihood of a sea-ice-free Arctic summer will increase from once per century to once per decade. “The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the I.P.C.C. Working Group II, said. (There are three working groups: one focussed on the physical science of climate change; the second on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities; and the third on mitigation.)
To keep warming at 1.5 degrees, governments and private businesses must make unprecedented changes—on a sweeping global scale—in energy systems, land management, building efficiency, industrial operations, shipping and aviation, and city-wide design. Within the next decade, human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions need to fall forty-five per cent below 2010 levels. By 2050, net carbon-dioxide emissions must equal zero. “It’s a goal that we can aspire to, but maybe not meet,” Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who studies Arctic warming and its impacts on global climate, said. “So it’s useful, even if it isn’t all that realistic.”
“Human activities,” the report’s authors note, have already caused the global mean temperature to increase as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with greater warming in certain regions, and particularly in the Arctic. Warming has already led to weather extremes such as heat waves and precipitation of increased intensity and frequency. If warming continues at its current rate, it could reach 1.5 degrees by the time a child who is now a toddler starts high school. The longer countries take to reduce energy consumption and transition to renewable energy sources like solar and wind, the more they will have to rely on technologies such as carbon removal, which are currently too expensive, experimental, and small-scale to do the job.
“You have to think in terms of the survival of human society,” Benjamin Horton, a British geographer who is currently leading the creation of a sea-level-rise adaptation plan for Singapore and who will serve as an editor for a later segment of the I.P.C.C.’s sixth assessment report, said. “It’s not only the magnitude of change, it’s the pace at which it changes,” he said. The rate of sea-level rise accelerates once the West Antarctic Ice Sheet hits its tipping point—likely set to occur somewhere between 1.5 and two degrees of warming, if it hasn’t occurred already—when physics demands the whole sheet will irreversibly disintegrate. At that point, Horton said, “You can’t do anything about it. It is very hard to grow an ice sheet, but very easy to melt.”
As things stand now, even if every country met the commitment it made in the Paris Agreement, the temperature would still increase to three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. If the world continues burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases at the current rate, it could rise by four degrees—a fact that the Trump Administration, which withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, in June, 2017, acknowledged with language buried deep in an August draft report issued in support of eliminating Obama-era fuel-economy rules. Representatives from the Trump Administration were in Incheon and had to approve the conclusions of the report. Whether President Trump will respond to its findings remains to be seen. But Adelle Thomas told me that during the draft process, while authors were reviewing more than forty thousand comments submitted by different nations, “there was a real difference between developed countries and non-developed countries.” The former, she said, “wanted to soften the report, and take out anything that specifically mentions island states, challenging why small developing islands should be considered a special case.”
For these regions, faster rates of sea-level rise allow much less time to adapt—to restore natural coastal ecosystems and reinforce infrastructure. “Above 1.5 it becomes even more difficult for small islands to plan and recover economically from any damage,” Thomas said. “There are issues of migration and reduced social cohesion after repeated extreme events.” At the U.N. talks in 2010, rich countries had promised to provide financial support of as much as a hundred billion dollars collectively (or one per cent of their total G.D.P.s), to developing nations by 2020, to help with the transition to a low-carbon economy and with adapting to climate impacts they already experience. Rich nations have not followed through on that promise; this year, both the United States and Australia declared that they would no longer be contributing any money at all.
Heads of state and international leaders will meet in Poland, in December, for the next round of U.N. climate-change talks. They have been given a map of the scale and urgency of the risks that island nations, and the rest of the world, now face, and also specific, feasible pathways to reduced emissions. The science is settled. The only question now is whether the world can find the political—or moral—will to do anything about it. “The report is an assessment of the current scientific understanding,” Solecki, who co-authored the first chapter, told me. “The tone of the report paints a challenging picture, but one that also can be viewed as an opportunity.”
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www.newyorker.com
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Fox Online News
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/25/pope-lights-christmas-peace-candle-on-windowsill-his-vatican-studio/
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Christians flock to Bethlehem to mark Jesus' birth, as pope delivers Christmas Day message
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2012-12-25
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U.S. troops in Afghanistan , away from their families and thousands of miles from home , were celebrating Christmas in their own way Tuesday with carols , candles and the company of each other .
Soldiers from the U.S. , France and Germany packed a dining hall at the Kabul International Airport for a traditional Christmas meal . As the turkey was carved , they shared thoughts of their families .
`` I wish I could be home with my family and friends , but , I mean , I am surrounded by nothing but awesome people , so it is good , '' U.S. soldier Vanessa Gann said .
In Kabul , soldiers and service members with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF ) sang carols and lit candles during a service on Christmas Eve at the U.S.-led coalition base .
For some soldiers , this is hardly the first Christmas away from home . But it should be one of the last in Kabul , with NATO forces expected to mostly withdraw by 2014 . The U.S. and allied nations are trying to turn over the country to Afghan-led security forces .
More On This ... Holiday revelers celebrate Christmas around the world
As troops rung in the holiday , and soon the new year , Christians from around the world flocked to Manger Square in Bethlehem on Tuesday to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the ancient West Bank town where he was born .
Others traveled to Vatican City , where Pope Benedict XVI delivered his traditional `` Urbi et Orbi '' speech -- Latin for `` to the city and the world '' -- from the central balcony of St. Peter 's Basilica to thousands of pilgrims , tourists and Romans gathered in the piazza below .
Benedict wished Christmas peace to the world , decrying the slaughter of the `` defenseless '' in Syria and urging Israelis and Palestinians to find the courage to negotiate .
He also encouraged Arab spring nations , especially Egypt , to build just and respectful societies and prayed that China 's new leaders respect religion , a reference to persecution Chinese Roman Catholics have at times endured under communism .
Overcast skies and a cold wind did n't dampen the spirits of worshippers who came dressed in holiday finery and the traditional attire of foreign lands to mark the holy day in this biblical West Bank town . Bells pealed and long lines formed inside the fourth-century Church of the Nativity complex as Christian faithful waited eagerly to see the grotto that is Jesus ' traditional birthplace .
The cavernous church was unable to hold all the worshippers who had hoped to celebrate Christmas Day Mass inside . A loudspeaker outside the church broadcast the service to the hundreds in the square who could not pack inside .
Tourists in the square posed for pictures as vendors hawked olive wood rosaries , nativity scenes , corn on the cob , roasted nuts , tea and coffee .
An official from the Palestinian tourism ministry predicted 10,000 foreigners would visit Bethlehem on Christmas Day and said 15,000 visited on Christmas Eve -- up 20 percent from a year earlier . The official , Rula Maia ' a , attributed the rise in part to the Church of the Nativity 's classification earlier this year as a U.N. World Heritage Site .
On Christmas Eve , the pope presided over Mass in St. Peter 's Basilica . The service began at 10 p.m. local time , or 4 p.m . ET . The midnight start time was changed at the Vatican years ago to let the pontiff rest before a Christmas Day speech to be delivered from the basilica 's central balcony .
In his homily , Benedict cited the Gospel account of Mary and Joseph finding no room at an inn and ending up in a stable which sheltered the baby Jesus . He urged people to reflect upon what they find time for in their busy , technology-driven lives .
`` The great moral question of our attitude toward the homeless , toward refugees and migrants takes on a deeper dimension : Do we really have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof ? Do we have time and space for him ? '' the pope said .
`` The faster we can move , the more efficient our time-saving appliances become , the less time we have . And God ? The question of God never seems urgent , '' Benedict lamented .
The pope worried that `` we are so 'full ' of ourselves that there is no room left for God . '' He added , `` that means there is no room for others either -- for children , for the poor , for the stranger . ''
The pontiff also prayed that Israelis and Palestinians live in peace and freedom , and asked the faithful to pray for strife-torn Syria as well as Lebanon and Iraq .
In Bethlehem , the Palestinian hosts were hopeful after a recent vote in favor of statehood in the United Nations , though the vote did little to bring them closer to independence .
In his annual pre-Christmas homily , the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land , Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal , said this year 's festivities were doubly joyful .
`` The path ( to statehood ) remains long , and will require a united effort , '' said Twal , a Palestinian citizen of Jordan , at the patriarchate 's headquarters in Jerusalem 's Old City .
Then he set off in a procession for the West Bank city of Bethlehem , Jesus ' traditional birthplace . Twal had to enter the biblical town through a massive metal gate in the barrier of towering concrete slabs Israel built between Jerusalem and Bethlehem during a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the last decade . The Israeli military , which controls the crossing , said it significantly eased restrictions for the Christmas season .
Israel , backed by the United States , opposed the statehood bid , saying it was a Palestinian ploy to bypass negotiations . Talks stalled four years ago .
Hundreds of people greeted Twal in Manger Square , outside the Church of Nativity . The mood was festive under sunny skies , with children dressed in holiday finery or in Santa costumes , and marching bands playing in the streets .
After nightfall on Monday , a packed Manger Square , resplendent with strings of lights , decorations and a 17-meter Christmas tree , took on a festival atmosphere .
A choral group from the Baptist Church in Jerusalem performed carols on one side of the square , handing out sheets of lyrics and encouraging others to sing along with songs such as `` We Wish You A Merry Christmas . ''
Festivities led up to the Midnight Mass at St. Catherine 's Church , next to the fourth-century Church of the Nativity , built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born .
Audra Kasparian , 45 , from Salt Lake City , Utah , called her visit to Bethlehem `` a life event to cherish forever . It is one of those events that is great to be a part of . ''
Christmas is the high point of the year in Bethlehem , which , like the rest of the West Bank , is struggling to recover from the economic hard times that followed the violent Palestinian uprising against Israel that broke out in late 2000 .
Tourists and pilgrims who were scared away by the fighting have been returning in larger numbers . Last year 's Christmas Eve celebration produced the highest turnout in more than a decade , with some 100,000 visitors , including foreign workers and Arab Christians from Israel .
The Israeli Tourism Ministry predicted a 25 percent drop from that level this year , following last month 's clash between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza , which put a chill on tourist arrivals . Foreign tourists heading to Bethlehem must pass through Israel or the Israel-controlled border crossing into the West Bank from Jordan .
Outside the town 's quaint Manger Square , Bethlehem is a drab , sprawling town with a dwindling Christian base .
Overall , there are only about 50,000 Christians in the West Bank , less than 3 percent of the population , the result of a lower birthrate and increased emigration . Bethlehem 's Christians make up only a third of the town 's residents , down from 75 percent a few decades ago .
Elias Joha , a 44-year-old Christian who runs a souvenir store , said even with the U.N. recognition , this year 's celebrations were sad for him . He said most of his family has left , and that if he had the opportunity , he would do the same .
`` These celebrations are not even for Christians because there are no Christians . It is going from bad to worse from all sides ... we are not enjoying Christmas as before . ''
Located on the southeastern outskirts of Jerusalem , Bethlehem has the highest unemployment in the West Bank , but the tourist boom of Christmas offered a brief reprieve . Officials say all 34 hotels in the town are fully booked for the Christmas season , including 13 new ones built this year .
Israel turned Bethlehem over to Palestinian civil control a few days before Christmas in 1995 , and since then , residents have been celebrating the holiday regardless of their religion . Many Muslims took part in celebration Monday as well .
In Iraq , Christians gathered for services with tight security , including at Baghdad 's Our Lady of Salvation church , the scene of a brutal October 2010 attack that killed more than 50 worshippers and wounded scores more .
Earlier this month , Cardinal Leonardo Sandri , who is responsible for the Vatican 's outreach to the Middle East 's Catholic communities , traveled to Iraq and presided over a Mass to rededicate the church following renovations . In his homily , he remembered those who were killed and expressed hope that `` the tears shed in this sacred place become the good seed of communion and witness and bear much fruit , '' according to an account by Vatican Radio .
The exact number of Christians remaining in Iraq is not known , but it has fallen sharply from as many as 1.4 million before the U.S.-led invasion nearly a decade ago to about 400,000 to 600,000 , according community leaders cited by the U.S. State Department .
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U.S. troops in Afghanistan, away from their families and thousands of miles from home, were celebrating Christmas in their own way Tuesday with carols, candles and the company of each other.
Soldiers from the U.S., France and Germany packed a dining hall at the Kabul International Airport for a traditional Christmas meal. As the turkey was carved, they shared thoughts of their families.
"I wish I could be home with my family and friends, but, I mean, I am surrounded by nothing but awesome people, so it is good," U.S. soldier Vanessa Gann said.
In Kabul, soldiers and service members with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) sang carols and lit candles during a service on Christmas Eve at the U.S.-led coalition base.
For some soldiers, this is hardly the first Christmas away from home. But it should be one of the last in Kabul, with NATO forces expected to mostly withdraw by 2014. The U.S. and allied nations are trying to turn over the country to Afghan-led security forces.
More On This... Holiday revelers celebrate Christmas around the world
As troops rung in the holiday, and soon the new year, Christians from around the world flocked to Manger Square in Bethlehem on Tuesday to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the ancient West Bank town where he was born.
Others traveled to Vatican City, where Pope Benedict XVI delivered his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" speech -- Latin for "to the city and the world" -- from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to thousands of pilgrims, tourists and Romans gathered in the piazza below.
Benedict wished Christmas peace to the world, decrying the slaughter of the "defenseless" in Syria and urging Israelis and Palestinians to find the courage to negotiate.
He also encouraged Arab spring nations, especially Egypt, to build just and respectful societies and prayed that China's new leaders respect religion, a reference to persecution Chinese Roman Catholics have at times endured under communism.
Overcast skies and a cold wind didn't dampen the spirits of worshippers who came dressed in holiday finery and the traditional attire of foreign lands to mark the holy day in this biblical West Bank town. Bells pealed and long lines formed inside the fourth-century Church of the Nativity complex as Christian faithful waited eagerly to see the grotto that is Jesus' traditional birthplace.
The cavernous church was unable to hold all the worshippers who had hoped to celebrate Christmas Day Mass inside. A loudspeaker outside the church broadcast the service to the hundreds in the square who could not pack inside.
Tourists in the square posed for pictures as vendors hawked olive wood rosaries, nativity scenes, corn on the cob, roasted nuts, tea and coffee.
An official from the Palestinian tourism ministry predicted 10,000 foreigners would visit Bethlehem on Christmas Day and said 15,000 visited on Christmas Eve -- up 20 percent from a year earlier. The official, Rula Maia'a, attributed the rise in part to the Church of the Nativity's classification earlier this year as a U.N. World Heritage Site.
On Christmas Eve, the pope presided over Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. The service began at 10 p.m. local time, or 4 p.m. ET. The midnight start time was changed at the Vatican years ago to let the pontiff rest before a Christmas Day speech to be delivered from the basilica's central balcony.
In his homily, Benedict cited the Gospel account of Mary and Joseph finding no room at an inn and ending up in a stable which sheltered the baby Jesus. He urged people to reflect upon what they find time for in their busy, technology-driven lives.
"The great moral question of our attitude toward the homeless, toward refugees and migrants takes on a deeper dimension: Do we really have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have time and space for him?" the pope said.
"The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The question of God never seems urgent," Benedict lamented.
The pope worried that "we are so 'full' of ourselves that there is no room left for God." He added, "that means there is no room for others either -- for children, for the poor, for the stranger."
The pontiff also prayed that Israelis and Palestinians live in peace and freedom, and asked the faithful to pray for strife-torn Syria as well as Lebanon and Iraq.
In Bethlehem, the Palestinian hosts were hopeful after a recent vote in favor of statehood in the United Nations, though the vote did little to bring them closer to independence.
In his annual pre-Christmas homily, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, said this year's festivities were doubly joyful.
"The path (to statehood) remains long, and will require a united effort," said Twal, a Palestinian citizen of Jordan, at the patriarchate's headquarters in Jerusalem's Old City.
Then he set off in a procession for the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Jesus' traditional birthplace. Twal had to enter the biblical town through a massive metal gate in the barrier of towering concrete slabs Israel built between Jerusalem and Bethlehem during a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the last decade. The Israeli military, which controls the crossing, said it significantly eased restrictions for the Christmas season.
Israel, backed by the United States, opposed the statehood bid, saying it was a Palestinian ploy to bypass negotiations. Talks stalled four years ago.
Hundreds of people greeted Twal in Manger Square, outside the Church of Nativity. The mood was festive under sunny skies, with children dressed in holiday finery or in Santa costumes, and marching bands playing in the streets.
After nightfall on Monday, a packed Manger Square, resplendent with strings of lights, decorations and a 17-meter Christmas tree, took on a festival atmosphere.
A choral group from the Baptist Church in Jerusalem performed carols on one side of the square, handing out sheets of lyrics and encouraging others to sing along with songs such as "We Wish You A Merry Christmas."
Festivities led up to the Midnight Mass at St. Catherine's Church, next to the fourth-century Church of the Nativity, built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born.
Audra Kasparian, 45, from Salt Lake City, Utah, called her visit to Bethlehem "a life event to cherish forever. It is one of those events that is great to be a part of."
Christmas is the high point of the year in Bethlehem, which, like the rest of the West Bank, is struggling to recover from the economic hard times that followed the violent Palestinian uprising against Israel that broke out in late 2000.
Tourists and pilgrims who were scared away by the fighting have been returning in larger numbers. Last year's Christmas Eve celebration produced the highest turnout in more than a decade, with some 100,000 visitors, including foreign workers and Arab Christians from Israel.
The Israeli Tourism Ministry predicted a 25 percent drop from that level this year, following last month's clash between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, which put a chill on tourist arrivals. Foreign tourists heading to Bethlehem must pass through Israel or the Israel-controlled border crossing into the West Bank from Jordan.
Outside the town's quaint Manger Square, Bethlehem is a drab, sprawling town with a dwindling Christian base.
Overall, there are only about 50,000 Christians in the West Bank, less than 3 percent of the population, the result of a lower birthrate and increased emigration. Bethlehem's Christians make up only a third of the town's residents, down from 75 percent a few decades ago.
Elias Joha, a 44-year-old Christian who runs a souvenir store, said even with the U.N. recognition, this year's celebrations were sad for him. He said most of his family has left, and that if he had the opportunity, he would do the same.
"These celebrations are not even for Christians because there are no Christians. It is going from bad to worse from all sides ... we are not enjoying Christmas as before."
Located on the southeastern outskirts of Jerusalem, Bethlehem has the highest unemployment in the West Bank, but the tourist boom of Christmas offered a brief reprieve. Officials say all 34 hotels in the town are fully booked for the Christmas season, including 13 new ones built this year.
Israel turned Bethlehem over to Palestinian civil control a few days before Christmas in 1995, and since then, residents have been celebrating the holiday regardless of their religion. Many Muslims took part in celebration Monday as well.
Christians across the region marked the holiday.
In Iraq, Christians gathered for services with tight security, including at Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation church, the scene of a brutal October 2010 attack that killed more than 50 worshippers and wounded scores more.
Earlier this month, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who is responsible for the Vatican's outreach to the Middle East's Catholic communities, traveled to Iraq and presided over a Mass to rededicate the church following renovations. In his homily, he remembered those who were killed and expressed hope that "the tears shed in this sacred place become the good seed of communion and witness and bear much fruit," according to an account by Vatican Radio.
The exact number of Christians remaining in Iraq is not known, but it has fallen sharply from as many as 1.4 million before the U.S.-led invasion nearly a decade ago to about 400,000 to 600,000, according community leaders cited by the U.S. State Department.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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elections
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Slate
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/republican-democracy-stress-test-michigan-wisconsin-north-carolina.html
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The Lame-Duck Power Grab
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2018-12-05
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Jamelle Bouie
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In 2012 , North Carolina Republicans won a “ trifecta ” of legislative and executive power . They used their newfound power to aggressively gerrymander the electoral map and impose new restrictions on voting . In 2016 , Democrats reversed those gains , narrowly toppling incumbent Gov . Pat McCrory—and the GOP Legislature responded by stripping the incoming executive of key powers and privileges . Before Democrats took their seats , Republicans ended the governor ’ s control of election boards , withdrew the office ’ s ability to make appointments to the state school board and the University of North Carolina ’ s Board of Trustees , slashed the overall number of jobs appointed by the governor from 1,500 to 300 , and made Cabinet nominations subject to state Senate approval .
Rather than accept the will of the voters , who empowered the new governor to take the reins of the state government , Republicans entrenched their influence and undermined gubernatorial authority in an effort to avoid and undermine democratic accountability .
At the time , this anti-democratic maneuvering appeared exceptional to North Carolina . But in the wake of major Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm elections , it seems it was the canary in the coal mine .
Democrats won important victories in Republican-controlled Midwestern states that backed Donald Trump for president , in many instances , flipping the control of state legislatures . Democrats in Michigan won close races for governor , attorney general , and secretary of state while Democrats in Wisconsin won races for governor—sweeping incumbent Scott Walker out of office—and attorney general . Instead of allowing power to shift without contest , Republicans in both states are now fighting rear-guard actions to strip authority from these offices , using “ lame duck ” sessions to launch what are effectively legislative coup d ’ états .
In Wisconsin , GOP lawmakers have advanced bills to sharply limit the power of the incoming governor , Tony Evers . The measures will restrict his ability to run public benefits programs and curb his authority to set rules on the implementation of state laws . They ’ ve also placed a legislative veto on any effort to ban guns from the state capitol and ended gubernatorial control over the Walker-created agency that uses taxpayer-funded loans and subsidies to attract outside businesses .
To reject the outcome of a fair election is to directly undermine the entire democratic project .
Republicans have also planned an attack on the attorney general ’ s office . They ’ ve eliminated the ( recently created ) office of the solicitor general , established a new legislative power to intervene in any litigation challenging a state law ( even allowing lawmakers to hire their own lawyers , at taxpayer expense , to undermine the attorney general ) , given legislators control over money from court settlements , and given the legislature ’ s budget committee , rather than the attorney general , the right to decide on continued legal action against the Affordable Care Act . The scope of these changes is a sign of the state GOP ’ s confidence in its ability to hold the Legislature—confidence that stems from the party ’ s extreme partisan gerrymandering that has created a firewall such that Republicans can resist anything short of a tsunami of opposition . To that end , Wisconsin Republicans also want new limits on early voting .
It ’ s an almost identical situation in Michigan , where Democrats have captured all three statewide offices—governor , attorney general , and secretary of state—for the first time in 28 years . There , Republican lawmakers have introduced several lame-duck proposals for wresting power from incoming Democratic officeholders . First is a bill that would allow the legislature to intervene in any legal proceedings involving state laws that the governor and attorney general may be reluctant to defend . A separate proposal would shift oversight of campaign finance law from the secretary of state to a six-person commission with members nominated by the state Republican and Democratic parties , a move that would produce deadlock in handling those issues , likely entrenching a status quo shaped by Republican officials .
Even the best defense of these moves—that they are simply an effort to protect the gains and accomplishments of the previous majority—accepts the anti-democratic reasoning that an outgoing majority is not bound by the results of an election , and instead has the right to change the rules of the game to preserve its power .
The peaceful uncontested transfer of power is the cornerstone of representative democracy—the critical moment where we see if political actors have embraced the spirit of cooperation and adherence to the rules that make self-government possible . There are laws for how we accomplish the orderly transfer of power , but the moment itself , the choice of a party or politician to honor to the will of the voters , is an act of democratic faith—a statement of belief in the American idea . It ’ s why Donald Trump earned wide condemnation when he hinted , during the 2016 election , that he would not concede the election in the event of a loss to Hillary Clinton . To reject the outcome of a fair election is to directly undermine the entire democratic project .
Republicans in Michigan , Wisconsin , and North Carolina haven ’ t gone as far as to challenge the results of their respective elections , but their actions , which serve to hamstring the incoming body of duly elected officials , are movement in that direction . In national politics , Republican lawmakers are openly questioning the legitimacy of the Democratic House of Representatives victory , casting ordinary acts—the counting of ballots—as potentially insidious . Indeed , much of the Republican Party has already embraced voter suppression , extreme gerrymandering , and other methods to preserve legislative majorities in the face of popular opposition . The lame-duck power grab is just a natural next step .
For all the attention on Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy , it ’ s these actions—from ordinary , almost anonymous , Republican politicians , uncontested by anyone of influence in the party—that are much more ominous . It ’ s one thing to jockey for partisan advantage , it ’ s something much more dangerous to treat democracy like a game of Calvinball , where the rules only count when they suit your interests .
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Photo illustration by Slate. Map by iStock/Getty Images Plus.
In 2012, North Carolina Republicans won a “trifecta” of legislative and executive power. They used their newfound power to aggressively gerrymander the electoral map and impose new restrictions on voting. In 2016, Democrats reversed those gains, narrowly toppling incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory—and the GOP Legislature responded by stripping the incoming executive of key powers and privileges. Before Democrats took their seats, Republicans ended the governor’s control of election boards, withdrew the office’s ability to make appointments to the state school board and the University of North Carolina’s Board of Trustees, slashed the overall number of jobs appointed by the governor from 1,500 to 300, and made Cabinet nominations subject to state Senate approval.
Rather than accept the will of the voters, who empowered the new governor to take the reins of the state government, Republicans entrenched their influence and undermined gubernatorial authority in an effort to avoid and undermine democratic accountability.
At the time, this anti-democratic maneuvering appeared exceptional to North Carolina. But in the wake of major Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm elections, it seems it was the canary in the coal mine.
Democrats won important victories in Republican-controlled Midwestern states that backed Donald Trump for president, in many instances, flipping the control of state legislatures. Democrats in Michigan won close races for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state while Democrats in Wisconsin won races for governor—sweeping incumbent Scott Walker out of office—and attorney general. Instead of allowing power to shift without contest, Republicans in both states are now fighting rear-guard actions to strip authority from these offices, using “lame duck” sessions to launch what are effectively legislative coup d’états.
In Wisconsin, GOP lawmakers have advanced bills to sharply limit the power of the incoming governor, Tony Evers. The measures will restrict his ability to run public benefits programs and curb his authority to set rules on the implementation of state laws. They’ve also placed a legislative veto on any effort to ban guns from the state capitol and ended gubernatorial control over the Walker-created agency that uses taxpayer-funded loans and subsidies to attract outside businesses.
To reject the outcome of a fair election is to directly undermine the entire democratic project.
Republicans have also planned an attack on the attorney general’s office. They’ve eliminated the (recently created) office of the solicitor general, established a new legislative power to intervene in any litigation challenging a state law (even allowing lawmakers to hire their own lawyers, at taxpayer expense, to undermine the attorney general), given legislators control over money from court settlements, and given the legislature’s budget committee, rather than the attorney general, the right to decide on continued legal action against the Affordable Care Act. The scope of these changes is a sign of the state GOP’s confidence in its ability to hold the Legislature—confidence that stems from the party’s extreme partisan gerrymandering that has created a firewall such that Republicans can resist anything short of a tsunami of opposition. To that end, Wisconsin Republicans also want new limits on early voting.
It’s an almost identical situation in Michigan, where Democrats have captured all three statewide offices—governor, attorney general, and secretary of state—for the first time in 28 years. There, Republican lawmakers have introduced several lame-duck proposals for wresting power from incoming Democratic officeholders. First is a bill that would allow the legislature to intervene in any legal proceedings involving state laws that the governor and attorney general may be reluctant to defend. A separate proposal would shift oversight of campaign finance law from the secretary of state to a six-person commission with members nominated by the state Republican and Democratic parties, a move that would produce deadlock in handling those issues, likely entrenching a status quo shaped by Republican officials.
Even the best defense of these moves—that they are simply an effort to protect the gains and accomplishments of the previous majority—accepts the anti-democratic reasoning that an outgoing majority is not bound by the results of an election, and instead has the right to change the rules of the game to preserve its power.
The peaceful uncontested transfer of power is the cornerstone of representative democracy—the critical moment where we see if political actors have embraced the spirit of cooperation and adherence to the rules that make self-government possible. There are laws for how we accomplish the orderly transfer of power, but the moment itself, the choice of a party or politician to honor to the will of the voters, is an act of democratic faith—a statement of belief in the American idea. It’s why Donald Trump earned wide condemnation when he hinted, during the 2016 election, that he would not concede the election in the event of a loss to Hillary Clinton. To reject the outcome of a fair election is to directly undermine the entire democratic project.
Republicans in Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina haven’t gone as far as to challenge the results of their respective elections, but their actions, which serve to hamstring the incoming body of duly elected officials, are movement in that direction. In national politics, Republican lawmakers are openly questioning the legitimacy of the Democratic House of Representatives victory, casting ordinary acts—the counting of ballots—as potentially insidious. Indeed, much of the Republican Party has already embraced voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering, and other methods to preserve legislative majorities in the face of popular opposition. The lame-duck power grab is just a natural next step.
For all the attention on Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy, it’s these actions—from ordinary, almost anonymous, Republican politicians, uncontested by anyone of influence in the party—that are much more ominous. It’s one thing to jockey for partisan advantage, it’s something much more dangerous to treat democracy like a game of Calvinball, where the rules only count when they suit your interests.
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www.slate.com
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MgIxZd1oVyzkqlBB
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environment
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Washington Times
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/29/harvey-blamed-on-climate-change-despite-hurricane-/
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Harvey blamed on climate change despite drought from hurricane strikes
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2017-08-29
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Valerie Richardson
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Before Harvey , it had been a record 12 years since a major hurricane made landfall in the United States , but that hasn ’ t stopped the climate change movement from blaming the Category 4 storm on global warming .
A torrent of claims linking Hurricane Harvey to climate change surfaced after the storm hit Corpus Christi , Texas , late Friday , bringing catastrophic flooding and an unprecedented 50 inches of rain by Tuesday as the system stalled over the Houston area .
“ Harvey is what climate change looks like , ” meteorologist and climate activist Eric Holthaus declared Tuesday in Politico magazine .
Climate Reality Project , founded by former Vice President Al Gore , argued that “ climate change makes hurricanes more devastating , ” while 350.org called the storm “ an unnatural disaster ” and “ the product of both a hotter planet and this administration ’ s climate denial , racism and callousness . ”
“ [ W ] e can ’ t say that Hurricane Harvey was caused by climate change . But it was certainly worsened by it , ” Michael E. Mann , Penn State professor of atmospheric science , said in a Monday op-ed headlined “ It ’ s a fact : climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly . ”
Begging to differ was Judith Curry , a climatologist and recently retired Georgia Tech professor , who cited data showing Harvey tied for 14th among strongest U.S. hurricanes since 1851 as ranked by pressure , along with storms from 1989 and 1954 .
SEE ALSO : Animal lovers making sure pets not left behind from Hurricane Harvey
“ Anyone blaming Harvey on global warming doesn ’ t have a leg to stand on , ” Ms. Curry said on her Climate Etc . blog .
Roger Pielke Jr. , a professor at the University of Colorado Center for Science & Technology Policy Research , pointed out that there were 14 U.S. landfalls of Category 4 or greater hurricanes — Category 5 is the highest — from 1926 to 1969 , but only four from 1970 to 2017 .
A specialist on extreme weather , Mr. Pielke said just four hurricanes of any size made landfall during the Obama administration for an average of 0.5 per year , the fewest of any presidential administration dating back to 1901 .
The number was small despite rising greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere . Why ? Mr. Obama was lucky , Mr. Pielke said .
“ There is no reason to be debating Harvey and climate change in the context of an unfolding disaster , other than political opportunism and attention seeking , ” Mr. Pielke said in a statement . “ It ’ s not a good look for scientists or journalists who are promoting this issue . ”
Assessments by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others “ are quite clear on this subject and one storm doesn ’ t change that . A better focus in the short term is on those with expertise in disaster response and recovery . The politicized debate over climate change can wait , ” Mr. Pielke said .
“ As the inundation of Houston and other parts of the Texas Coast reached cataclysmic , probably unprecedented levels , it was clear that climate change played a role in worsening the storm , ” InsideClimate News said Tuesday in an article .
San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer , founder of NextGen Climate , said on Twitter that humans “ must stop adding to the damage . ”
What ’ s inconvenient for the climate change movement is that Harvey broke up a 142-month hurricane drought , which was the longest period without a major hurricane hitting the continental United States since the 96 months from September 1860 to August 1869 , CNSNews reported .
Penn State ’ s Mr. Mann , a leader of the climate “ consensus ” camp , argued that rising sea levels and surface temperatures create more moisture in the atmosphere , which “ creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding . ”
“ Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming , which means stronger winds , more wind damage and a larger storm surge , ” Mr. Mann said in the [ U.K. ] Guardian .
Roy W. Spencer , principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville , disagreed , saying he plotted the sea surface temperatures of all major Category 3 strikes in Texas since 1870 and found that “ major hurricanes don ’ t really care whether the Gulf is above average or below average in temperature . ”
He also challenged Mr. Mann ’ s assertion that global warming may explain why the storm stalled over Southeast Texas , producing record rainfall .
“ This pattern , in turn , is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high-pressure system over much of the U.S. at the moment , with the jet stream pushed well to the north , ” Mr. Mann said . “ This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change . ”
Not so , said Mr. Spencer , who explained : “ We didn ’ t have a warm August in the U.S. pushing the jet stream farther north . ”
“ The flooding disaster in Houston is the chance occurrence of several factors which can be explained naturally , without having to invoke human-caused climate change , ” Mr. Spencer said on his Global Warming blog .
The National Weather Service reported Tuesday that Harvey had produced more than 50 inches of rain in Cedar Bayou , Texas , surpassing the measured single-storm rainfall record for the continental United States .
Then again , said Mr. Spencer , if the system had been moving a little faster , it would have dispersed the rainfall over a wider area and missed the record despite producing the same amount of precipitation .
“ There is no aspect of global warming theory that says rain systems are going to be moving slower , as we are seeing in Texas , ” Mr. Spencer said . “ This is just the luck of the draw . ”
The National Weather Service fueled the political debate with a Sunday tweet : “ This is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced . ”
That may well turn out to be the case in terms of property damage and the size of the population affected — Houston is the fourth-largest city in the nation with 2.3 million — but it “ won ’ t be because this was an unprecedented meteorological event , ” said Mr. Spencer .
“ ‘ Unprecedented ’ doesn ’ t necessarily mean it represents a new normal , ” Mr. Spencer said . “ It can just be a rare combination of events . ”
He noted that there were so many strong U.S. hurricanes in 2005 , including the Category 5 Hurricane Katrina , that the National Hurricane Center ran out of names for the tropical storms . Then came the 12-year drought of major hurricanes .
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Before Harvey, it had been a record 12 years since a major hurricane made landfall in the United States, but that hasn’t stopped the climate change movement from blaming the Category 4 storm on global warming.
A torrent of claims linking Hurricane Harvey to climate change surfaced after the storm hit Corpus Christi, Texas, late Friday, bringing catastrophic flooding and an unprecedented 50 inches of rain by Tuesday as the system stalled over the Houston area.
“Harvey is what climate change looks like,” meteorologist and climate activist Eric Holthaus declared Tuesday in Politico magazine.
Climate Reality Project, founded by former Vice President Al Gore, argued that “climate change makes hurricanes more devastating,” while 350.org called the storm “an unnatural disaster” and “the product of both a hotter planet and this administration’s climate denial, racism and callousness.”
“[W]e can’t say that Hurricane Harvey was caused by climate change. But it was certainly worsened by it,” Michael E. Mann, Penn State professor of atmospheric science, said in a Monday op-ed headlined “It’s a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly.”
Begging to differ was Judith Curry, a climatologist and recently retired Georgia Tech professor, who cited data showing Harvey tied for 14th among strongest U.S. hurricanes since 1851 as ranked by pressure, along with storms from 1989 and 1954.
SEE ALSO: Animal lovers making sure pets not left behind from Hurricane Harvey
“Anyone blaming Harvey on global warming doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Ms. Curry said on her Climate Etc. blog.
Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado Center for Science & Technology Policy Research, pointed out that there were 14 U.S. landfalls of Category 4 or greater hurricanes — Category 5 is the highest — from 1926 to 1969, but only four from 1970 to 2017.
A specialist on extreme weather, Mr. Pielke said just four hurricanes of any size made landfall during the Obama administration for an average of 0.5 per year, the fewest of any presidential administration dating back to 1901.
The number was small despite rising greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Why? Mr. Obama was lucky, Mr. Pielke said.
“There is no reason to be debating Harvey and climate change in the context of an unfolding disaster, other than political opportunism and attention seeking,” Mr. Pielke said in a statement. “It’s not a good look for scientists or journalists who are promoting this issue.”
Assessments by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others “are quite clear on this subject and one storm doesn’t change that. A better focus in the short term is on those with expertise in disaster response and recovery. The politicized debate over climate change can wait,” Mr. Pielke said.
Not everyone took his advice.
“As the inundation of Houston and other parts of the Texas Coast reached cataclysmic, probably unprecedented levels, it was clear that climate change played a role in worsening the storm,” InsideClimate News said Tuesday in an article.
San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen Climate, said on Twitter that humans “must stop adding to the damage.”
What’s inconvenient for the climate change movement is that Harvey broke up a 142-month hurricane drought, which was the longest period without a major hurricane hitting the continental United States since the 96 months from September 1860 to August 1869, CNSNews reported.
Penn State’s Mr. Mann, a leader of the climate “consensus” camp, argued that rising sea levels and surface temperatures create more moisture in the atmosphere, which “creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding.”
An ‘unprecedented’ event
“Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge,” Mr. Mann said in the [U.K.] Guardian.
Roy W. Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, disagreed, saying he plotted the sea surface temperatures of all major Category 3 strikes in Texas since 1870 and found that “major hurricanes don’t really care whether the Gulf is above average or below average in temperature.”
He also challenged Mr. Mann’s assertion that global warming may explain why the storm stalled over Southeast Texas, producing record rainfall.
“This pattern, in turn, is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high-pressure system over much of the U.S. at the moment, with the jet stream pushed well to the north,” Mr. Mann said. “This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change.”
Not so, said Mr. Spencer, who explained: “We didn’t have a warm August in the U.S. pushing the jet stream farther north.”
“The flooding disaster in Houston is the chance occurrence of several factors which can be explained naturally, without having to invoke human-caused climate change,” Mr. Spencer said on his Global Warming blog.
The National Weather Service reported Tuesday that Harvey had produced more than 50 inches of rain in Cedar Bayou, Texas, surpassing the measured single-storm rainfall record for the continental United States.
Then again, said Mr. Spencer, if the system had been moving a little faster, it would have dispersed the rainfall over a wider area and missed the record despite producing the same amount of precipitation.
“There is no aspect of global warming theory that says rain systems are going to be moving slower, as we are seeing in Texas,” Mr. Spencer said. “This is just the luck of the draw.”
The National Weather Service fueled the political debate with a Sunday tweet: “This is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.”
That may well turn out to be the case in terms of property damage and the size of the population affected — Houston is the fourth-largest city in the nation with 2.3 million — but it “won’t be because this was an unprecedented meteorological event,” said Mr. Spencer.
“‘Unprecedented’ doesn’t necessarily mean it represents a new normal,” Mr. Spencer said. “It can just be a rare combination of events.”
He noted that there were so many strong U.S. hurricanes in 2005, including the Category 5 Hurricane Katrina, that the National Hurricane Center ran out of names for the tropical storms. Then came the 12-year drought of major hurricanes.
“Weird stuff happens,” Mr. Spencer concluded.
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New York Times - News
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/us/politics/joe-biden-hyde-amendment.html
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Joe Biden Denounces Hyde Amendment, Reversing His Position
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2019-06-06
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Katie Glueck
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A former vice president known for — “ My love affair with Amtrak. ” “ Back on Amtrak ” — and his famous friend . “ This also gives the internet one last chance to talk about our bromance. ” Joe Biden is running for president . “ Today , I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States . He ’ s tried it before . “ And with the grace of God and the support of the American people , I mean to be that kind of president. ” Twice . “ This is not about experience . It ’ s not about change . It ’ s about action. ” So , why does he think the third time ’ s a charm ? Biden may be betting that in this politically tumultuous time , voters are looking for a familiar face . He arrived in Washington before C-Span existed and before these members of Congress were born . His credentials are unmatched in the Democratic Party . He served two terms as vice president , 36 years in the Senate and has chaired powerful congressional committees . And he ’ s earned himself a few nicknames along the way . “ Working-Class Joe. ” “ Working-Class Joe Biden. ” “ Old Uncle Joe Biden. ” “ Crazy Uncle Joe Biden , just being Biden. ” So , what are Biden ’ s priorities ? He ’ s a moderate Democrat and is likely to focus on : expanding health care , investing in education and rebuilding relationships with allies . “ The America I see does not wish to turn our back on the world or our allies . We will be back. ” But his decadeslong record comes with some baggage , including his support for the Iraq war . “ President Bush is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein ’ s relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. ” Tough anti-crime policies . “ First , we have to join together to ensure that drug dealers are punished swiftly , surely and severely. ” And his role in the Anita Hill hearing . “ It is appropriate to ask Professor Hill anything any member wishes to ask her to plumb the depths of her credibility. ” More recently , several women have come forward saying they were uncomfortable with the way Biden touched them . “ I feel Joe Biden put his hands on my shoulders , get up very close to me from behind , lean in , smell my hair and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head. ” Biden responded on Twitter . “ The boundaries of protected personal space have been reset and I get it . I will be more mindful and respectful of people ’ s personal space . So , how has Biden taken on President Trump ? They ’ ve had their share of fighting words . “ If we were in high school , I ’ d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him. ” Trump shot back on Twitter , and said Biden “ would go down fast and hard , crying all the way. ” Biden later said he regretted his comments . So , what are Biden ’ s odds ? He entered the race as an instant front-runner and he ’ s already leading in early polls . But as a white man in his late 70s , Biden ’ s test will be whether his popularity can outweigh the party ’ s thirst for generational change .
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A former vice president known for — “My love affair with Amtrak.” “Back on Amtrak” — and his famous friend. “This also gives the internet one last chance to talk about our bromance.” Joe Biden is running for president. “Today, I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States. He’s tried it before. “And with the grace of God and the support of the American people, I mean to be that kind of president.” Twice. “This is not about experience. It’s not about change. It’s about action.” So, why does he think the third time’s a charm? Biden may be betting that in this politically tumultuous time, voters are looking for a familiar face. He arrived in Washington before C-Span existed and before these members of Congress were born. His credentials are unmatched in the Democratic Party. He served two terms as vice president, 36 years in the Senate and has chaired powerful congressional committees. And he’s earned himself a few nicknames along the way. “Working-Class Joe.” “Working-Class Joe Biden.” “Old Uncle Joe Biden.” “Crazy Uncle Joe Biden, just being Biden.” So, what are Biden’s priorities? He’s a moderate Democrat and is likely to focus on: expanding health care, investing in education and rebuilding relationships with allies. “The America I see does not wish to turn our back on the world or our allies. We will be back.” But his decadeslong record comes with some baggage, including his support for the Iraq war. “President Bush is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein’s relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.” Tough anti-crime policies. “First, we have to join together to ensure that drug dealers are punished swiftly, surely and severely.” And his role in the Anita Hill hearing. “It is appropriate to ask Professor Hill anything any member wishes to ask her to plumb the depths of her credibility.” More recently, several women have come forward saying they were uncomfortable with the way Biden touched them. “I feel Joe Biden put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind, lean in, smell my hair and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head.” Biden responded on Twitter. “The boundaries of protected personal space have been reset and I get it. I will be more mindful and respectful of people’s personal space. So, how has Biden taken on President Trump? They’ve had their share of fighting words. “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” Trump shot back on Twitter, and said Biden “would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.” Biden later said he regretted his comments. So, what are Biden’s odds? He entered the race as an instant front-runner and he’s already leading in early polls. But as a white man in his late 70s, Biden’s test will be whether his popularity can outweigh the party’s thirst for generational change.
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NPR Online News
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/21/401214629/captain-in-deadly-migrant-boat-sinking-is-charged-with-manslaughter
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Captain In Deadly Migrant Boat Sinking Is Charged With Manslaughter
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2015-04-21
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Bill Chappell
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Italian authorities have arrested the captain and a crew member of the boat that capsized in the Mediterranean Sea over the weekend . The pair are among the boat 's 28 survivors ; the United Nations says more than 800 would-be migrants died after cramming themselves onto the 66-foot boat .
Tunisian captain Mohammed Ali Malek , 27 , and Syrian crew member Mahmud Bikhit , 25 , face charges of multiple manslaughter and aiding illegal immigration in the calamity that struck this weekend . Along with some other survivors , they were brought to Catania , Sicily , where the two are now in custody .
Citing sources with knowledge of the inquiry , Italian news agency ANSA says , `` The survivors said that the trafficker who was at the command of the boat piloted it carelessly in the final moments as he was trying to hide and not be recognized as a smuggler . ''
`` Prosecutors said hundreds of migrants were locked in the hold unable to escape when the boat tipped over , '' NPR 's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome . `` Migrants on deck are believed to have rushed to one side of the boat when they saw a merchant vessel approaching . ''
We 're also learning more about the passengers of the doomed fishing boat , from the U.N . Refugee Agency :
`` According to survivors interviewed by UNHCR , the boat departed from Tripoli in Libya on Saturday morning with some 850 people on board , including 350 Eritreans as well as people from Syria , Somalia , Sierra Leone , Mali , Senegal , Gambia , Ivory Coast and Ethiopia . ''
An estimated 21,000 migrants have survived similar journeys to Europe in 2015 , the International Organization for Migration says . Depending on the death toll from this weekend 's sinking , at least 1,800 have died .
Smugglers can make huge amounts of money from the migrants ' desperation . The IOM 's Leonard Doyle told All Things Considered Monday , `` We hear reports that one over-packed shipping vessel could bring in revenue in the order of between 4 and 7 million dollars . It depends , obviously , on the size of the vessel and the numbers of people aboard . ''
In Madrid , NPR 's Lauren Frayer reports that European countries are promising to change how they approach the flood of immigrants leaving North Africa in the hopes of a better life in the European Union . After an emergency meeting Monday , the EU announced a 10-point plan .
`` It includes trying to destroy human traffickers ' boats in North Africa , before they take off , '' Lauren tells our Newscast unit , `` and beefing up search and rescue operations — paid for by Europe . That 's something some EU states have been opposed to , for fear it 'll encourage more migration . ''
On Monday , U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the migrants ' deaths a `` shock to the global conscience . ''
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Captain In Deadly Migrant Boat Sinking Charged With Manslaughter
Enlarge this image toggle caption Alessandro Bianchi /Reuters /Landov Alessandro Bianchi /Reuters /Landov
Italian authorities have arrested the captain and a crew member of the boat that capsized in the Mediterranean Sea over the weekend. The pair are among the boat's 28 survivors; the United Nations says more than 800 would-be migrants died after cramming themselves onto the 66-foot boat.
Tunisian captain Mohammed Ali Malek, 27, and Syrian crew member Mahmud Bikhit, 25, face charges of multiple manslaughter and aiding illegal immigration in the calamity that struck this weekend. Along with some other survivors, they were brought to Catania, Sicily, where the two are now in custody.
Citing sources with knowledge of the inquiry, Italian news agency ANSA says, "The survivors said that the trafficker who was at the command of the boat piloted it carelessly in the final moments as he was trying to hide and not be recognized as a smuggler."
Enlarge this image toggle caption Reuters /Landov Reuters /Landov
"Prosecutors said hundreds of migrants were locked in the hold unable to escape when the boat tipped over," NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome. "Migrants on deck are believed to have rushed to one side of the boat when they saw a merchant vessel approaching."
We're also learning more about the passengers of the doomed fishing boat, from the U.N. Refugee Agency:
"According to survivors interviewed by UNHCR, the boat departed from Tripoli in Libya on Saturday morning with some 850 people on board, including 350 Eritreans as well as people from Syria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast and Ethiopia."
An estimated 21,000 migrants have survived similar journeys to Europe in 2015, the International Organization for Migration says. Depending on the death toll from this weekend's sinking, at least 1,800 have died.
Smugglers can make huge amounts of money from the migrants' desperation. The IOM's Leonard Doyle told All Things Considered Monday, "We hear reports that one over-packed shipping vessel could bring in revenue in the order of between 4 and 7 million dollars. It depends, obviously, on the size of the vessel and the numbers of people aboard."
In Madrid, NPR's Lauren Frayer reports that European countries are promising to change how they approach the flood of immigrants leaving North Africa in the hopes of a better life in the European Union. After an emergency meeting Monday, the EU announced a 10-point plan.
"It includes trying to destroy human traffickers' boats in North Africa, before they take off," Lauren tells our Newscast unit, "and beefing up search and rescue operations — paid for by Europe. That's something some EU states have been opposed to, for fear it'll encourage more migration."
On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the migrants' deaths a "shock to the global conscience."
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www.npr.org
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The Guardian
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/orlando-shooting-pulse-nightclub-omar-mateen-wife
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Omar Mateen's wife may be charged if she knew he was planning Orlando shooting
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2016-06-14
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David Smith
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Noor Zahi Salman said she feared Omar Mateen would attack Pulse nightclub and tried to talk him out of it but did not contact law enforcement , reports say
The wife of the gunman who carried out the deadliest mass shooting on American soil could face criminal charges if investigators conclude that she knew of the attack in advance but failed to warn police .
Noor Zahi Salman told that FBI that her husband , Omar Mateen , had said he was going out to see friends , but she feared he was going to attack a gay nightclub , NBC News reported on Wednesday . She tried to talk him out of it but did not contact law enforcement agencies .
Wielding an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and a handgun , Mateen opened fire at the Pulse club in Orlando , Florida , early on Sunday in a three-hour shooting rampage and hostage siege that ended when a Swat team smashed its way in and killed him . There were 49 people killed and 53 were injured .
Angus King , a member of the Senate intelligence committee , which received a briefing on the attack , told CNN : “ It appears she [ Salman ] had some knowledge of what was going on . She definitely is , I guess you would say , a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information . ”
Peter King , chairman of the House homeland security subcommittee on counterintelligence and terrorism , told MSNBC : “ If it ’ s true that she did know that it was going to happen and she tried to talk him out of it , then it ’ s possible criminal action ( could be taken ) against her , and again there might be more involvement by her , so all that has to be investigated . ”
The possibility that Mateen , 29 , did not act alone but received support from other individuals or groups is now central to the FBI ’ s inquiry , King added . “ If there ’ s anybody else that he was dealing with , anyone else he was talking with , anyone else who may have known about this , this is all where the investigation is going now . ”
Media reports also suggested that Salman was with her husband when he bought ammunition and a holster . She allegedly told the FBI that she once drove him to Pulse , nearly a two-hour drive from their home in Fort Pierce , Florida , because he wanted to scope it out . Mateen is said to have browsed militant Islamist material on the internet for at least two years before the mass shooting .
As detectives tried to piece together Mateen ’ s last movements on Saturday night , Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer , who opened a family assistance centre in a stadium on Wednesday , said : “ What I know concretely is that he was driving around that evening and visited several locations . ”
The FBI director , James Comey , has said the agency is trying to determine whether Mateen had recently visited Disney World , one of the Orlando ’ s celebrated theme parks , to consider it as a potential target .
Disney , which is donating $ 1m to an official fund for victims of the shooting , installed metal detectors last December but declined to comment on the Mateen case . A spokesperson said : “ Unfortunately we ’ ve all been living in a world of uncertainty , and we have been increasing our security measures across our properties for some time , adding such visible safeguards as magnetometers , additional canine units , and law enforcement officers on site , as well as less visible systems that employ state-of-the-art security technologies . ”
Salman will be key to the ongoing investigation as conflicting narratives emerge , including evidence he had been influenced by militant Islamist ideas and reports he might have struggled with his own sexual identity .
FBI to investigate if Orlando gunman 's sexuality was a motive in shooting Read more
A survivor of the massacre , Patience Carter , suggested on Tuesday that Mateen had an overt political motive . Cowering in a bathroom , she heard him demand that Americans “ stop bombing his country ” and pledge allegiance to Islamic State , she said .
Carter , 20 , who is African American , told reporters at Florida Hospital : “ He even spoke to us directly in the bathroom . He said , ‘ Are there any black people in here ? ’ I was too afraid to answer but there was an African American male in the stall , where the majority of my body was , who had answered and he said , ‘ Yes , there are about six or seven of us , ’ and the gunman responded back to him and said : ‘ You know , I don ’ t have a problem with black people . This is about my country . You guys suffered enough . ’ ”
The account chimed with previous FBI statements that Mateen had called the 911 emergency service and made reference to both Isis and the Tsarnaev brothers , who were responsible for the Boston bombings . Investigators have said Mateen was probably self-radicalised and there is no evidence that he received any instruction or aid from outside groups such as Isis .
Mateen also called a local 24-hour cable news channel , News 13 , the station revealed on its website on Wednesday . Matthew Gentili , who was the producer on duty at the time , recalled that Mateen said : “ I ’ m the shooter . It ’ s me . I am the shooter ... I did it for Isis . I did it for the Islamic State . ”
Soon after the attack , Mateen ’ s father indicated that his son had strong anti-gay feelings . He recounted an incident when his son became angry when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami while out with his wife and young son .
Several media reports quoted men as saying they had seen Mateen at Pulse many times or that he had contacted them via gay dating apps , such as Grindr and Jack ’ d . But Pulse denied that he had ever been a patron . “ Untrue and totally ridiculous , ” spokeswoman Sara Brady said in an email to Reuters .
Mateen ’ s ex-wife , Sitora Yusufiy , told CNN she did not know if he was gay but added : “ Well , when we had gotten married , he confessed to me about his past that was recent at that time and that he very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife and there was a lot of pictures of him . ”
“ I feel like it ’ s a side of him or a part of him that he lived but probably didn ’ t want everybody to know about . ”
Asked by ███ about rumours his son was gay , Mateen ’ s father Seddique Mateen said : “ It ’ s not true . Why , if he was gay , would he do this ? ”
Seddique Mateen declined to comment specifically on the investigation on Wednesday , saying : “ The FBI , they always do a professional job and to the maximum extent of my ability I will support them . ”
Mateen , investigated twice by the FBI , was on the government ’ s terrorist watchlist for 10 months before being taken off . G4S , the security company that employed Mateen , only psychologically evaluated him once , at the start of his nine-year employment with the company and not again after the company was made aware he had been interviewed by the FBI .
Thirty-three people remain in hospital , including six in critical condition . On Tuesday , the first of the seriously injured to speak of their trauma was Angel Colon at the Orlando Regional Medical Center . “ He ’ s shooting everyone that ’ s already dead on the floor , making sure they ’ re dead , ” he said , speaking from a wheelchair . “ I look over , and he shoots the girl next to me . And I ’ m just there laying down and I ’ m thinking : ‘ I ’ m next , I ’ m dead . ’
“ So I don ’ t know how , but by the glory of God , he shoots toward my head but it hits my hand , and then he shoots me again and it hits the side of my hip . I had no reaction . I was just prepared to just stay there laying down so he won ’ t know that I ’ m alive . ”
Orlando terror attack : shooter 's father speaks about his son 's ‘ horrible act ’ Read more
The attending trauma surgeon on call that night , Dr Chadwick Smith , said : “ It was singularly the worst day of my career and the best day of my career . And I think you can say that of pretty much every person standing up here . ”
The atrocity continued to reverberate in Washington DC , where Senate Democrats demanded tighter gun controls . Donald Trump , the Republican presumptive nominee , broke ranks with the party by saying he would meet the influential National Rifle Association lobbying group , which has endorsed him , to discuss an idea for restricting gun purchases by people on terrorism watchlists .
Barack Obama , who will visit Orlando on Thursday , launched a blistering assault against Trump over the candidate ’ s anti-Muslim rhetoric , which the president described as dangerous and contrary to American values .
“ Where does this stop ? The Orlando killer , one of the San Bernardino killers , the Fort Hood killer , [ they ] were all US citizens . Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently ? ... Putting them under surveillance ? ”
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Noor Zahi Salman said she feared Omar Mateen would attack Pulse nightclub and tried to talk him out of it but did not contact law enforcement, reports say
The wife of the gunman who carried out the deadliest mass shooting on American soil could face criminal charges if investigators conclude that she knew of the attack in advance but failed to warn police.
Noor Zahi Salman told that FBI that her husband, Omar Mateen, had said he was going out to see friends, but she feared he was going to attack a gay nightclub, NBC News reported on Wednesday. She tried to talk him out of it but did not contact law enforcement agencies.
Wielding an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and a handgun, Mateen opened fire at the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida, early on Sunday in a three-hour shooting rampage and hostage siege that ended when a Swat team smashed its way in and killed him. There were 49 people killed and 53 were injured.
Angus King, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, which received a briefing on the attack, told CNN: “It appears she [Salman] had some knowledge of what was going on. She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information.”
Peter King, chairman of the House homeland security subcommittee on counterintelligence and terrorism, told MSNBC: “If it’s true that she did know that it was going to happen and she tried to talk him out of it, then it’s possible criminal action (could be taken) against her, and again there might be more involvement by her, so all that has to be investigated.”
The possibility that Mateen, 29, did not act alone but received support from other individuals or groups is now central to the FBI’s inquiry, King added. “If there’s anybody else that he was dealing with, anyone else he was talking with, anyone else who may have known about this, this is all where the investigation is going now.”
Media reports also suggested that Salman was with her husband when he bought ammunition and a holster. She allegedly told the FBI that she once drove him to Pulse, nearly a two-hour drive from their home in Fort Pierce, Florida, because he wanted to scope it out. Mateen is said to have browsed militant Islamist material on the internet for at least two years before the mass shooting.
As detectives tried to piece together Mateen’s last movements on Saturday night, Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer, who opened a family assistance centre in a stadium on Wednesday, said: “What I know concretely is that he was driving around that evening and visited several locations.”
The FBI director, James Comey, has said the agency is trying to determine whether Mateen had recently visited Disney World, one of the Orlando’s celebrated theme parks, to consider it as a potential target.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mourners pay their respects at a memorial for the shooting victims. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Disney, which is donating $1m to an official fund for victims of the shooting, installed metal detectors last December but declined to comment on the Mateen case. A spokesperson said: “Unfortunately we’ve all been living in a world of uncertainty, and we have been increasing our security measures across our properties for some time, adding such visible safeguards as magnetometers, additional canine units, and law enforcement officers on site, as well as less visible systems that employ state-of-the-art security technologies.”
Salman will be key to the ongoing investigation as conflicting narratives emerge, including evidence he had been influenced by militant Islamist ideas and reports he might have struggled with his own sexual identity.
FBI to investigate if Orlando gunman's sexuality was a motive in shooting Read more
A survivor of the massacre, Patience Carter, suggested on Tuesday that Mateen had an overt political motive. Cowering in a bathroom, she heard him demand that Americans “stop bombing his country” and pledge allegiance to Islamic State, she said.
Carter, 20, who is African American, told reporters at Florida Hospital: “He even spoke to us directly in the bathroom. He said, ‘Are there any black people in here?’ I was too afraid to answer but there was an African American male in the stall, where the majority of my body was, who had answered and he said, ‘Yes, there are about six or seven of us,’ and the gunman responded back to him and said: ‘You know, I don’t have a problem with black people. This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.’”
The account chimed with previous FBI statements that Mateen had called the 911 emergency service and made reference to both Isis and the Tsarnaev brothers, who were responsible for the Boston bombings. Investigators have said Mateen was probably self-radicalised and there is no evidence that he received any instruction or aid from outside groups such as Isis.
Mateen also called a local 24-hour cable news channel, News 13, the station revealed on its website on Wednesday. Matthew Gentili, who was the producer on duty at the time, recalled that Mateen said: “I’m the shooter. It’s me. I am the shooter ... I did it for Isis. I did it for the Islamic State.”
Soon after the attack, Mateen’s father indicated that his son had strong anti-gay feelings. He recounted an incident when his son became angry when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami while out with his wife and young son.
Several media reports quoted men as saying they had seen Mateen at Pulse many times or that he had contacted them via gay dating apps, such as Grindr and Jack’d. But Pulse denied that he had ever been a patron. “Untrue and totally ridiculous,” spokeswoman Sara Brady said in an email to Reuters.
Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, told CNN she did not know if he was gay but added: “Well, when we had gotten married, he confessed to me about his past that was recent at that time and that he very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife and there was a lot of pictures of him.”
“I feel like it’s a side of him or a part of him that he lived but probably didn’t want everybody to know about.”
Asked by the Guardian about rumours his son was gay, Mateen’s father Seddique Mateen said: “It’s not true. Why, if he was gay, would he do this?”
Seddique Mateen declined to comment specifically on the investigation on Wednesday, saying: “The FBI, they always do a professional job and to the maximum extent of my ability I will support them.”
Mateen, investigated twice by the FBI, was on the government’s terrorist watchlist for 10 months before being taken off. G4S, the security company that employed Mateen, only psychologically evaluated him once, at the start of his nine-year employment with the company and not again after the company was made aware he had been interviewed by the FBI.
Thirty-three people remain in hospital, including six in critical condition. On Tuesday, the first of the seriously injured to speak of their trauma was Angel Colon at the Orlando Regional Medical Center. “He’s shooting everyone that’s already dead on the floor, making sure they’re dead,” he said, speaking from a wheelchair. “I look over, and he shoots the girl next to me. And I’m just there laying down and I’m thinking: ‘I’m next, I’m dead.’
“So I don’t know how, but by the glory of God, he shoots toward my head but it hits my hand, and then he shoots me again and it hits the side of my hip. I had no reaction. I was just prepared to just stay there laying down so he won’t know that I’m alive.”
Orlando terror attack: shooter's father speaks about his son's ‘horrible act’ Read more
The attending trauma surgeon on call that night, Dr Chadwick Smith, said: “It was singularly the worst day of my career and the best day of my career. And I think you can say that of pretty much every person standing up here.”
The atrocity continued to reverberate in Washington DC, where Senate Democrats demanded tighter gun controls. Donald Trump, the Republican presumptive nominee, broke ranks with the party by saying he would meet the influential National Rifle Association lobbying group, which has endorsed him, to discuss an idea for restricting gun purchases by people on terrorism watchlists.
Barack Obama, who will visit Orlando on Thursday, launched a blistering assault against Trump over the candidate’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, which the president described as dangerous and contrary to American values.
“Where does this stop? The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer, [they] were all US citizens. Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently? ... Putting them under surveillance?”
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healthcare
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Washington Times
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/28/obamacare-sends-health-premiums-skyrocketing-by-as/
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Obamacare sends health premiums skyrocketing by as much as 78 percent
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2014-10-28
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Valerie Richardson
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The Affordable Care Act was supposed to make health care more affordable , but a study of insurance policies before and after Obamacare shows that average premiums have skyrocketed , for some groups by as much as 78 percent .
Average insurance premiums in the sought-after 23-year-old demographic rose most dramatically , with men in that age group seeing an average 78.2 percent price increase before factoring in government subsidies , and women having their premiums rise 44.9 percent , according to a report by HealthPocket scheduled for release Wednesday .
The study , which was shared Tuesday with The ███ , examined average health insurance premiums before the implementation of Obamacare in 2013 and then afterward in 2014 . The research focused on people of three ages — 23 , 30 and 63 — using data for nonsmoking men and women with no spouses or children .
The premium increases for 30-year-olds were almost as high as for 23-year-olds — 73.4 percent for men and 35.1 percent for women — said the study , titled “ Without Subsidies Women & Men , Old & Young Average Higher Monthly Premiums with Obamacare . ”
“ It ’ s very eye-opening in terms of the transformation occurring within the individual health insurance market , ” said Kev Coleman , head of research and data at HealthPocket , a nonpartisan , independently managed subsidiary of Health Insurance Innovations in Sunnyvale , California .
“ I was surprised in general to see the differences in terms of the average premiums in the pre-reform and post-reform markets , ” Mr. Coleman said . “ It was a higher amount than I had anticipated . ”
The eye-popping increases among younger insurance buyers could be a problem for Obamacare ’ s long-term solvency given that young people need to enroll to offset the higher costs associated with older policyholders .
“ Obviously they ’ re very important , and as much as they ’ re healthier , they tend to use health care less , so you want to try and have as many of those people enrolled as possible . And the cost for them went up very [ steeply ] , ” Mr. Coleman said .
The price increases for 63-year-olds were less dramatic : a 37.5 percent increase on average for women and 22.7 percent for men .
The study doesn ’ t include the federal premium subsidies offered to those earning 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty limit , but Mr. Coleman points out that not everyone in that bracket qualifies because their premiums must exceed a certain percentage of their income .
“ So you still have this issue of health insurance rising for that very young group and , depending on where they are with respect to income and premium , they may not qualify for a subsidy , ” Mr. Coleman said . “ That ’ s what we like to refer to as a subsidy gap . ”
The report also notes that somebody pays for the subsidy , even if it ’ s not the policyholder .
“ Another important consideration in the discussion of subsidized premiums is that the subsidized portion of the premium still must be paid by the government through the money it collects from the nation , ” says the study . “ In other words , the subsidized costs of health insurance do not disappear but instead change payers . ”
A spokeswoman with the Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment because she had not seen the report .
The reasons for the premium increases start with the Affordable Care Act ’ s prohibition on rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions , which means that insurance companies must account for the additional costs of covering chronically ill or disabled people .
Another cost driver is the heightened benefit mandate . The Affordable Care Act requires insurance policies to include 10 “ essential health benefits , ” including pediatric dental and vision care , maternity care and newborn care , even for policyholders with no children or whose children are adults .
“ If you ’ re expanding the services you ’ re covering , and you ’ re increasing the number of less healthy people in your risk pools , that ’ s going to increase costs , ” Mr. Coleman said . “ Attendant to that would be an increase in premiums to be able to appropriately cover those costs . ”
He also noted that the study doesn ’ t weigh policies based on enrollment , meaning that it includes the costs of insurance plans that may have few enrollees .
The report examines premium costs from the two largest metropolitan areas of each state , using data from public insurance records obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services .
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The Affordable Care Act was supposed to make health care more affordable, but a study of insurance policies before and after Obamacare shows that average premiums have skyrocketed, for some groups by as much as 78 percent.
Average insurance premiums in the sought-after 23-year-old demographic rose most dramatically, with men in that age group seeing an average 78.2 percent price increase before factoring in government subsidies, and women having their premiums rise 44.9 percent, according to a report by HealthPocket scheduled for release Wednesday.
The study, which was shared Tuesday with The Washington Times, examined average health insurance premiums before the implementation of Obamacare in 2013 and then afterward in 2014. The research focused on people of three ages — 23, 30 and 63 — using data for nonsmoking men and women with no spouses or children.
The premium increases for 30-year-olds were almost as high as for 23-year-olds — 73.4 percent for men and 35.1 percent for women — said the study, titled “Without Subsidies Women & Men, Old & Young Average Higher Monthly Premiums with Obamacare.”
“It’s very eye-opening in terms of the transformation occurring within the individual health insurance market,” said Kev Coleman, head of research and data at HealthPocket, a nonpartisan, independently managed subsidiary of Health Insurance Innovations in Sunnyvale, California.
“I was surprised in general to see the differences in terms of the average premiums in the pre-reform and post-reform markets,” Mr. Coleman said. “It was a higher amount than I had anticipated.”
PHOTOS: Celebrity mugshots: Stars behind bars
The eye-popping increases among younger insurance buyers could be a problem for Obamacare’s long-term solvency given that young people need to enroll to offset the higher costs associated with older policyholders.
“Obviously they’re very important, and as much as they’re healthier, they tend to use health care less, so you want to try and have as many of those people enrolled as possible. And the cost for them went up very [steeply],” Mr. Coleman said.
The price increases for 63-year-olds were less dramatic: a 37.5 percent increase on average for women and 22.7 percent for men.
The study doesn’t include the federal premium subsidies offered to those earning 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty limit, but Mr. Coleman points out that not everyone in that bracket qualifies because their premiums must exceed a certain percentage of their income.
“So you still have this issue of health insurance rising for that very young group and, depending on where they are with respect to income and premium, they may not qualify for a subsidy,” Mr. Coleman said. “That’s what we like to refer to as a subsidy gap.”
The report also notes that somebody pays for the subsidy, even if it’s not the policyholder.
“Another important consideration in the discussion of subsidized premiums is that the subsidized portion of the premium still must be paid by the government through the money it collects from the nation,” says the study. “In other words, the subsidized costs of health insurance do not disappear but instead change payers.”
A spokeswoman with the Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment because she had not seen the report.
The reasons for the premium increases start with the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition on rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions, which means that insurance companies must account for the additional costs of covering chronically ill or disabled people.
Another cost driver is the heightened benefit mandate. The Affordable Care Act requires insurance policies to include 10 “essential health benefits,” including pediatric dental and vision care, maternity care and newborn care, even for policyholders with no children or whose children are adults.
“If you’re expanding the services you’re covering, and you’re increasing the number of less healthy people in your risk pools, that’s going to increase costs,” Mr. Coleman said. “Attendant to that would be an increase in premiums to be able to appropriately cover those costs.”
He also noted that the study doesn’t weigh policies based on enrollment, meaning that it includes the costs of insurance plans that may have few enrollees.
The report examines premium costs from the two largest metropolitan areas of each state, using data from public insurance records obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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www.washingtontimes.com
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Daily Beast
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-sabotages-his-own-coronavirus-mission-accomplished-moment
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Trump Sabotages His Own Coronavirus ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment
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2020-05-11
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Hunter Woodall, Erin Banco, Politics Reporter, National Security Reporter
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It had all the trappings of a “ Mission Accomplished ” moment : the banner , the presidential pomp , and a message that wasn ’ t true .
But what President Donald Trump wanted Monday to be a show of strength over his administration ’ s coronavirus testing push , complete with a banner touting “ AMERICA leads the world in testing , ” ended under tough questioning by reporters , causing the president to storm off abruptly .
When CBS reporter Weijia Jiang asked Trump why it was a competition to the president with those around the globe as the death toll climbs and cases increase , the president used his answer to go on the attack .
“ Well , they ’ re losing their lives everywhere in the world , ” Trump said . “ And maybe that ’ s a question you should ask China . Don ’ t ask me , ask China that question , OK ? When you ask them that question , you may get a very unusual answer . ”
When another female reporter , CNN ’ s Kaitlan Collins , tried to ask a question , the president got into a brief exchange before ending the event .
Trump declared Monday that the United States had “ prevailed ” on testing , saying the nation will “ transition into greatness . ”
“ We have met the moment and we have prevailed , ” Trump said . Just two weeks ago , in another press conference , the president said that while his administration had made significant progress in scaling testing , it still had work to do . Monday ’ s announcement seems to indicate that the president thinks his team did all it needed to on testing in the last 14 days .
On Monday night , the nation ’ s coronavirus death toll had surpassed 80,000 , according to Johns Hopkins University .
The United States trails countries like Denmark , Italy , and New Zealand for the total number of COVID-19 tests per 1,000 people , according to Our World in Data , as well as the daily number of tests per 1,000 people . While the U.S. is testing a great many people , according to Vox , it is also a large country , with a great many people to test .
In other words , the U.S. is hardly the global testing leader Trump portrayed it to be .
And the testing number touted by Trump on Monday evening is also behind schedule . In March , Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that by the middle of the month the administration would have shipped 4 million tests . He suggested that the country would , too , test that many people by the end of the month . “ Before the end of this week , another 4 million tests will be distributed , ” he said . That never happened .
When pressed by reporters at a press conference last month , Pence said the media was confused—that he meant the administration would facilitate the shipment of those tests and it was up to the states to administer them . It was yet another indication that the administration ’ s promises on testing fell short of expectations .
Testing for the virus has continued to be a sore spot for Trump during the pandemic , as the public ’ s ability to actually get tested for the virus has proven to be difficult .
For the past two months , state and local officials have pleaded with the federal government for assistance on testing , claiming they simply did not have enough tests or supplies to administer them to safely and completely reopen their economies . Trump has deflected criticism , claiming the federal government has gone above and beyond to help states get back on their feet . Trump ’ s son-in-law , Jared Kushner , earlier this month even called the federal government ’ s response a “ success story . ”
But that rosy picture is a far cry from the reality on the ground in local communities , especially those in hot spot areas . In Jersey City , New Jersey , the mayor and his team fought the state and the federal government for additional testing resources before settling on the idea that they would never have enough tests no matter how much they asked for help . And in other communities officials say that they do not have the staff or supplies to administer the tests they have on hand .
These anecdotes seem to have blowon past officials in the White House , including the president and Kushner , who have spent the majority of the last two weeks publicly praising each other .
States across the country have continued to reopen , despite concerns from some local officials about the speed of restrictions being eased and testing shortage worries .
Slides used by officials during the briefing touted the “ historic scaling of testing , ” along with the administration ’ s announcement that $ 11 billion was being sent to the states , via the CARES Act legislation , to be “ devoted to testing capability . ”
Trump also struggled to strike a balance at times during Monday ’ s briefing .
To one reporter ’ s question , Trump said , “ If somebody wants to be tested right now , they ’ ll be able to be tested . ”
Minutes later , Trump echoed again that “ if people want to get tested , they get tested , ” before bragging about the nation ’ s testing capacity .
“ If people want to get tested , they get tested , ” Trump said . “ But for the most part , they shouldn ’ t want to get tested . There ’ s no reason . They feel good , they don ’ t have sniffles , they don ’ t have sore throats . They don ’ t have any problem . ”
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It had all the trappings of a “Mission Accomplished” moment: the banner, the presidential pomp, and a message that wasn’t true.
But what President Donald Trump wanted Monday to be a show of strength over his administration’s coronavirus testing push, complete with a banner touting “AMERICA leads the world in testing,” ended under tough questioning by reporters, causing the president to storm off abruptly.
When CBS reporter Weijia Jiang asked Trump why it was a competition to the president with those around the globe as the death toll climbs and cases increase, the president used his answer to go on the attack.
“Well, they’re losing their lives everywhere in the world,” Trump said. “And maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, OK? When you ask them that question, you may get a very unusual answer.”
When another female reporter, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, tried to ask a question, the president got into a brief exchange before ending the event.
Trump declared Monday that the United States had “prevailed” on testing, saying the nation will “transition into greatness.”
“We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” Trump said. Just two weeks ago, in another press conference, the president said that while his administration had made significant progress in scaling testing, it still had work to do. Monday’s announcement seems to indicate that the president thinks his team did all it needed to on testing in the last 14 days.
On Monday night, the nation’s coronavirus death toll had surpassed 80,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The United States trails countries like Denmark, Italy, and New Zealand for the total number of COVID-19 tests per 1,000 people, according to Our World in Data, as well as the daily number of tests per 1,000 people. While the U.S. is testing a great many people, according to Vox, it is also a large country, with a great many people to test.
In other words, the U.S. is hardly the global testing leader Trump portrayed it to be.
And the testing number touted by Trump on Monday evening is also behind schedule. In March, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that by the middle of the month the administration would have shipped 4 million tests. He suggested that the country would, too, test that many people by the end of the month. “Before the end of this week, another 4 million tests will be distributed,” he said. That never happened.
When pressed by reporters at a press conference last month, Pence said the media was confused—that he meant the administration would facilitate the shipment of those tests and it was up to the states to administer them. It was yet another indication that the administration’s promises on testing fell short of expectations.
Testing for the virus has continued to be a sore spot for Trump during the pandemic, as the public’s ability to actually get tested for the virus has proven to be difficult.
For the past two months, state and local officials have pleaded with the federal government for assistance on testing, claiming they simply did not have enough tests or supplies to administer them to safely and completely reopen their economies. Trump has deflected criticism, claiming the federal government has gone above and beyond to help states get back on their feet. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, earlier this month even called the federal government’s response a “success story.”
But that rosy picture is a far cry from the reality on the ground in local communities, especially those in hot spot areas. In Jersey City, New Jersey, the mayor and his team fought the state and the federal government for additional testing resources before settling on the idea that they would never have enough tests no matter how much they asked for help. And in other communities officials say that they do not have the staff or supplies to administer the tests they have on hand.
These anecdotes seem to have blowon past officials in the White House, including the president and Kushner, who have spent the majority of the last two weeks publicly praising each other.
States across the country have continued to reopen, despite concerns from some local officials about the speed of restrictions being eased and testing shortage worries.
Slides used by officials during the briefing touted the “historic scaling of testing,” along with the administration’s announcement that $11 billion was being sent to the states, via the CARES Act legislation, to be “devoted to testing capability.”
Trump also struggled to strike a balance at times during Monday’s briefing.
To one reporter’s question, Trump said, “ If somebody wants to be tested right now, they’ll be able to be tested.”
Minutes later, Trump echoed again that “if people want to get tested, they get tested,” before bragging about the nation’s testing capacity.
“If people want to get tested, they get tested,” Trump said. “But for the most part, they shouldn’t want to get tested. There’s no reason. They feel good, they don’t have sniffles, they don’t have sore throats. They don’t have any problem.”
—With additional reporting from Noah Shachtman and Sam Stein
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National Review
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https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-where-are-all-the-grown-ups/
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On Coronavirus, Where Are All the Grownups?
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2020-03-09
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David Harsanyi, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Zachary Evans, John Fund, Rich Lowry, Kevin D. Williamson, David L. Bahnsen
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President Donald Trump delivers remarks alonside HHS Secretary Alex Azar ( left ) , Centers for Disease Control CDC Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield , and Associate Director for Laboratory Science and Safety Steve Monroe during a tour of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta , Ga. , March 6 , 2020 . ( Tom Brenner/Reuters )
That ’ s a rhetorical question , actually . The grownups , it seems , are in our local schools , in our hospitals , and running our local businesses , definitely not in our newsrooms or in our political institutions .
No one has any clue how the coronavirus will end up affecting our lives . Though I believe there is some evidence that we ’ re overreacting , unlike the hundreds of pundits who have attained virology PhDs over the past couple of weeks , I don ’ t claim to possess any special insight into the matter . You probably don ’ t , either . We both may be wrong . In this regard , though , social media could have been immensely beneficial in helping navigate the virus — allaying some of the public ’ s irrational fears , helping debunk rumors , and offering beneficial information — but , instead , it ’ s mostly a cesspool of brainless partisanship and hysteria .
Is “ Wuhan virus ” a racist term ? As I write this , that utterly idiotic question is being debated on Twitter . Before a single case of the virus had even been reported in the United States , some in the media were stoking fear . The Global Health Security Index found late last year that the U.S. was the “ best prepared ” to deal with a pandemic , but you might already believe it is “ Trump ’ s Chernobyl. ” Then there are the pundits and journalists who can barely contain their glee at the potential market crash — which might help them win an election , but will cost jobs and deplete the retirement and college funds of millions Americans . It ’ s simply deranged .
Yet even if some are overreacting , and even if the United States is as prepared as it can be , and even if some Democrats are happy to fuel panic , the tone-deafness with which President Trump has handled the outbreak — sending out pictures of himself fiddling like Nero and downplaying concerns , even as tens of millions of older and immunocompromised Americans have serious worries about their welfare — is also dangerous . There is a vast space between panic-mongering and flippant dismissal , and it ’ s not very difficult to find that ground .
Anyway , there are a lot more important things than politics . It ’ s heartening to see adults in the real world act accordingly .
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President Donald Trump delivers remarks alonside HHS Secretary Alex Azar (left), Centers for Disease Control CDC Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield, and Associate Director for Laboratory Science and Safety Steve Monroe during a tour of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Ga., March 6, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)
That’s a rhetorical question, actually. The grownups, it seems, are in our local schools, in our hospitals, and running our local businesses, definitely not in our newsrooms or in our political institutions.
No one has any clue how the coronavirus will end up affecting our lives. Though I believe there is some evidence that we’re overreacting, unlike the hundreds of pundits who have attained virology PhDs over the past couple of weeks, I don’t claim to possess any special insight into the matter. You probably don’t, either. We both may be wrong. In this regard, though, social media could have been immensely beneficial in helping navigate the virus — allaying some of the public’s irrational fears, helping debunk rumors, and offering beneficial information — but, instead, it’s mostly a cesspool of brainless partisanship and hysteria.
Advertisement
Is “Wuhan virus” a racist term? As I write this, that utterly idiotic question is being debated on Twitter. Before a single case of the virus had even been reported in the United States, some in the media were stoking fear. The Global Health Security Index found late last year that the U.S. was the “best prepared” to deal with a pandemic, but you might already believe it is “Trump’s Chernobyl.” Then there are the pundits and journalists who can barely contain their glee at the potential market crash — which might help them win an election, but will cost jobs and deplete the retirement and college funds of millions Americans. It’s simply deranged.
Yet even if some are overreacting, and even if the United States is as prepared as it can be, and even if some Democrats are happy to fuel panic, the tone-deafness with which President Trump has handled the outbreak — sending out pictures of himself fiddling like Nero and downplaying concerns, even as tens of millions of older and immunocompromised Americans have serious worries about their welfare — is also dangerous. There is a vast space between panic-mongering and flippant dismissal, and it’s not very difficult to find that ground.
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Anyway, there are a lot more important things than politics. It’s heartening to see adults in the real world act accordingly.
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Vox
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/29/18194574/2020-democrats-presidential-race-wall-street-actblue
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Democrats weigh whether Wall Street money is still allowed in 2020
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2019-01-29
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Emily Stewart
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Share All sharing options for : Democrats weigh whether Wall Street money is still allowed in 2020
Raising money from Wall Street for a presidential campaign might be becoming a liability , especially for Democrats .
“ This whole thing is coming to a historic moment where the Democrats have to say if they ’ re going to be the Wall Street party or the party of small-dollar donors , ” Waleed Shahid , a spokesperson for the activist group Justice Democrats , told me .
In 2016 , the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue took in nearly $ 800 million in small-dollar donations ; in 2018 , a non-presidential year , campaigns raised $ 1.6 billion through ActBlue . Sen. Bernie Sanders ( I-VT ) proved you could run a real presidential campaign around grassroots support , and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ( D-NY ) used similar tactics last year . Republicans have launched Patriot Pass , their answer to ActBlue .
But as important as small-dollar donations have become , some Democrats are still reportedly heading to Wall Street as they get their campaigns up and running .
“ Short of calling Exxon Mobil executives , I don ’ t think there ’ s anything worse you could do than stake your campaign out as a Wall Street campaign in 2019 , ” said one progressive Democratic strategist , who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity .
In recent weeks , I spoke with multiple strategists and fundraisers — mostly Democrats , but some Republicans — to ask whether going to Wall Street for backing in politics was still allowed . Opinions were split about eschewing cash from Wall Street — and corporate America more broadly — entirely . Those in the more progressive wing of the party said any perceived alignment was a nonstarter and unwise , even immoral . But in a competitive race with as many as 30 candidates , some are reluctant to give up any edge .
“ Do you want to entirely disarm against a Republican Koch brothers-funded Death Star ? ” said Amanda Litman , the co-founder of Run for Something , an organization that supports young candidates running for office .
Most agreed that small-dollar fundraising is at least the most important avenue for candidates : The ability to generate enthusiasm among a big pool of individual donors translates to enthusiasm for the campaign overall . Plus , people who give small amounts of money to a campaign are likelier to volunteer for those candidates , tell their friends about them , and vote for them . Sen. Kamala Harris ’ s ( D-CA ) campaign celebrated that she had received online contributions from all 50 states within half an hour of announcing her presidential bid .
NEWS : In the first 30 minutes after she announced she was running for president , @ KamalaHarris received individual online contributions from all 50 states . — Ian Sams ( @ IanSams ) January 21 , 2019
“ Money in politics isn ’ t going anywhere anytime soon , ” Adam Parkhomenko , a Democratic strategist who served as the national field director for the Democratic National Committee in 2016 , said . “ I don ’ t think there ’ s any reason why any Democrat needs to unilaterally disarm when it comes to fundraising . ”
Wall Street ties were a big deal in 2016 . We don ’ t know if they will be in 2020 .
Sens . Kirsten Gillibrand ( D-NY ) and Cory Booker ( D-NJ ) have come under scrutiny for their perceived ties to big financial interests , while Sens . Elizabeth Warren ( D-MA ) and Sanders are positioned as the anti-Wall Street candidates . It could turn into a dynamic similar to the one between Hillary Clinton and Sanders in 2016 , but whether it will is unclear .
“ I ’ m not sure that Wall Street has the same sort of salience as a villain that it may have had in the last few cycles , ” David Gold , director of research at the public affairs firm Global Strategy Group , said .
To a certain extent , Gillibrand and Booker have similar plausible explanations to Clinton as to their Wall Street ties : As they are New York and New Jersey lawmakers , many of their constituents work in finance . Still , that defense didn ’ t help Clinton shake questions about her loyalties .
Of course , it also comes down to candidates ’ records . “ Sanders did a good job of manipulating the campaign narrative ” in 2016 , Erik Smith , a partner at the strategy firm Blue Engine Message & Media , said . “ I ’ m not willing to tell you what that will be next time , because we don ’ t know who the candidates are . ”
Even if Wall Street isn ’ t the villain , small-dollar donations are going to be more important .
“ It ’ s a sign of health for their campaign , ” Mindy Finn , a Republican strategist , said . “ It also frees up a candidate to spend more of their time connecting with voters on the ground and less of their time having to cater to the wealthiest set of Americans . ”
If a candidate isn ’ t succeeding in online fundraising , it ’ s likely that he or she isn ’ t resonating .
“ You ’ re seeing the valuation of a candidate ’ s strength based on their ability to do small-dollar fundraising , ” said Toby Fallsgraff , a digital strategist who worked on Barack Obama ’ s and Hillary Clinton ’ s campaigns .
Gillibrand and Harris , both of whom have launched exploratory committees , have said they won ’ t take corporate PAC money , as have Warren , Booker , and Sanders . It ’ s likely most , if not all , Democrats in the race will do the same .
One important sign on that front : The DNC this year will include in its primary debate criteria a candidate ’ s “ grassroots fundraising . ”
That means that even candidates who do plan to use traditional methods of fundraising will have to do small-dollar as well . That might especially spell trouble for the potential self-funders , such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg and former Starbucks executive Howard Schultz . ( Schultz reportedly might run as an independent . )
While grassroots donations are probably the better way for candidates to go over taking Wall Street and corporation money , there are a lot of details and subtleties to the topic that make it a lot less cut and dried than it seems .
“ It gets more nuanced , and that makes the debate a little bit more difficult , ” Adam Bozzi , the communications director at End Citizens United , said . “ There ’ s a difference between a bank teller and a corporate executive at a bank . ”
This means a $ 2,700 maximum donation from a Wall Street executive and 100 $ 27 donations from employees of that executive ’ s company tell very different stories , but it ’ s not always reported that way . You ’ ll often see reports that certain candidates got a lot of money from the banking industry , for example , but that money is often coming from employees , not executives .
Beto O ’ Rourke , who is from Texas , got a lot of donations from the oil and gas industry because there are a lot of people who work in that sector where he ’ s from . Donors in the securities and investment industry were the No . 4 givers to Ocasio-Cortez ’ s congressional campaign .
Focusing on small-dollar donations and saying no to corporate PAC checks and Wall Street bundlers seem obvious , but how to approach Super PACs might be a bit more complicated . Candidates can ’ t always control what outside money is spent on them , and if they shun Super PACs — including those with some Wall Street money — they may be at an important disadvantage in the general election .
Most Democratic candidates oppose the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision , which opened the door to outside spending — but like it or not , it ’ s the lay of the land for now . Saying no to Super PACs , including ones fueled by Wall Street money , may mean trouble .
“ It ’ s not worth cutting off your legs to take a philosophical and moral position that will potentially cost you any shot at the nomination , ” Ryan Williams , a Republican strategist at Targeted Victory , said .
That ’ s the calculation both Clinton and Obama made in their elections in 2016 and 2012 .
“ We ’ re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back , ” Jim Messina , Obama ’ s reelection campaign manager in 2012 , told the New York Times of Obama ’ s decision to accept backing from an outside Super PAC .
It is also the case that candidates can ’ t always control what outside money is spent on them . Many 2020 Democrats say they ’ ll reject Super PAC support , but such groups may be able to spend on them anyway . A nurses union Super PAC backed Sanders in 2016 , even as he slammed Clinton for her Super PAC ties .
But no matter what , it ’ s clear the fundraising landscape has changed for good .
“ It seems like the days when your fundraising relied entirely on keeping a relatively small group of high-dollar donors happy are gone , ” Fallsgraff said .
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Share All sharing options for: Democrats weigh whether Wall Street money is still allowed in 2020
Raising money from Wall Street for a presidential campaign might be becoming a liability, especially for Democrats.
“This whole thing is coming to a historic moment where the Democrats have to say if they’re going to be the Wall Street party or the party of small-dollar donors,” Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for the activist group Justice Democrats, told me.
In 2016, the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue took in nearly $800 million in small-dollar donations; in 2018, a non-presidential year, campaigns raised $1.6 billion through ActBlue. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proved you could run a real presidential campaign around grassroots support, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) used similar tactics last year. Republicans have launched Patriot Pass, their answer to ActBlue.
But as important as small-dollar donations have become, some Democrats are still reportedly heading to Wall Street as they get their campaigns up and running.
“Short of calling Exxon Mobil executives, I don’t think there’s anything worse you could do than stake your campaign out as a Wall Street campaign in 2019,” said one progressive Democratic strategist, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity.
In recent weeks, I spoke with multiple strategists and fundraisers — mostly Democrats, but some Republicans — to ask whether going to Wall Street for backing in politics was still allowed. Opinions were split about eschewing cash from Wall Street — and corporate America more broadly — entirely. Those in the more progressive wing of the party said any perceived alignment was a nonstarter and unwise, even immoral. But in a competitive race with as many as 30 candidates, some are reluctant to give up any edge.
“Do you want to entirely disarm against a Republican Koch brothers-funded Death Star?” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run for Something, an organization that supports young candidates running for office.
Most agreed that small-dollar fundraising is at least the most important avenue for candidates: The ability to generate enthusiasm among a big pool of individual donors translates to enthusiasm for the campaign overall. Plus, people who give small amounts of money to a campaign are likelier to volunteer for those candidates, tell their friends about them, and vote for them. Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) campaign celebrated that she had received online contributions from all 50 states within half an hour of announcing her presidential bid.
NEWS: In the first 30 minutes after she announced she was running for president, @KamalaHarris received individual online contributions from all 50 states. — Ian Sams (@IanSams) January 21, 2019
“Money in politics isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist who served as the national field director for the Democratic National Committee in 2016, said. “I don’t think there’s any reason why any Democrat needs to unilaterally disarm when it comes to fundraising.”
Especially when it comes to taking out President Trump.
Wall Street ties were a big deal in 2016. We don’t know if they will be in 2020.
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have come under scrutiny for their perceived ties to big financial interests, while Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sanders are positioned as the anti-Wall Street candidates. It could turn into a dynamic similar to the one between Hillary Clinton and Sanders in 2016, but whether it will is unclear.
“I’m not sure that Wall Street has the same sort of salience as a villain that it may have had in the last few cycles,” David Gold, director of research at the public affairs firm Global Strategy Group, said.
To a certain extent, Gillibrand and Booker have similar plausible explanations to Clinton as to their Wall Street ties: As they are New York and New Jersey lawmakers, many of their constituents work in finance. Still, that defense didn’t help Clinton shake questions about her loyalties.
Of course, it also comes down to candidates’ records. “Sanders did a good job of manipulating the campaign narrative” in 2016, Erik Smith, a partner at the strategy firm Blue Engine Message & Media, said. “I’m not willing to tell you what that will be next time, because we don’t know who the candidates are.”
Grassroots fundraising is overtaking traditional methods
Even if Wall Street isn’t the villain, small-dollar donations are going to be more important.
“It’s a sign of health for their campaign,” Mindy Finn, a Republican strategist, said. “It also frees up a candidate to spend more of their time connecting with voters on the ground and less of their time having to cater to the wealthiest set of Americans.”
If a candidate isn’t succeeding in online fundraising, it’s likely that he or she isn’t resonating.
“You’re seeing the valuation of a candidate’s strength based on their ability to do small-dollar fundraising,” said Toby Fallsgraff, a digital strategist who worked on Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
Gillibrand and Harris, both of whom have launched exploratory committees, have said they won’t take corporate PAC money, as have Warren, Booker, and Sanders. It’s likely most, if not all, Democrats in the race will do the same.
One important sign on that front: The DNC this year will include in its primary debate criteria a candidate’s “grassroots fundraising.”
That means that even candidates who do plan to use traditional methods of fundraising will have to do small-dollar as well. That might especially spell trouble for the potential self-funders, such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg and former Starbucks executive Howard Schultz. (Schultz reportedly might run as an independent.)
The conversation requires some nuance
While grassroots donations are probably the better way for candidates to go over taking Wall Street and corporation money, there are a lot of details and subtleties to the topic that make it a lot less cut and dried than it seems.
“It gets more nuanced, and that makes the debate a little bit more difficult,” Adam Bozzi, the communications director at End Citizens United, said. “There’s a difference between a bank teller and a corporate executive at a bank.”
This means a $2,700 maximum donation from a Wall Street executive and 100 $27 donations from employees of that executive’s company tell very different stories, but it’s not always reported that way. You’ll often see reports that certain candidates got a lot of money from the banking industry, for example, but that money is often coming from employees, not executives.
Beto O’Rourke, who is from Texas, got a lot of donations from the oil and gas industry because there are a lot of people who work in that sector where he’s from. Donors in the securities and investment industry were the No. 4 givers to Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign.
The Super PAC debate is still hard
Focusing on small-dollar donations and saying no to corporate PAC checks and Wall Street bundlers seem obvious, but how to approach Super PACs might be a bit more complicated. Candidates can’t always control what outside money is spent on them, and if they shun Super PACs — including those with some Wall Street money — they may be at an important disadvantage in the general election.
Most Democratic candidates oppose the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, which opened the door to outside spending — but like it or not, it’s the lay of the land for now. Saying no to Super PACs, including ones fueled by Wall Street money, may mean trouble.
“It’s not worth cutting off your legs to take a philosophical and moral position that will potentially cost you any shot at the nomination,” Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist at Targeted Victory, said.
That’s the calculation both Clinton and Obama made in their elections in 2016 and 2012.
“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” Jim Messina, Obama’s reelection campaign manager in 2012, told the New York Times of Obama’s decision to accept backing from an outside Super PAC.
It is also the case that candidates can’t always control what outside money is spent on them. Many 2020 Democrats say they’ll reject Super PAC support, but such groups may be able to spend on them anyway. A nurses union Super PAC backed Sanders in 2016, even as he slammed Clinton for her Super PAC ties.
But no matter what, it’s clear the fundraising landscape has changed for good.
“It seems like the days when your fundraising relied entirely on keeping a relatively small group of high-dollar donors happy are gone,” Fallsgraff said.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/11/16/peter-kassig-islamic-state-claims-beheading-syria/19128067/
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U.S. review of Islamic State video confirms American's death
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2014-11-16
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The Islamic State militant group released a video Sunday that shows American aid worker Peter Kassig was beheaded , along with a dozen Syrian soldiers , in the latest killings the group has posted on the Internet .
The White House later said a review of the video confirms Kassig 's death .
President Obama , in a statement issued as he flew back to Washington from Australia , said the Islamic State , also known as ISIL or ISIS , `` revels in the slaughter of innocents , including Muslims , and is bent only on sowing death and destruction . ''
Obama said Kassig `` was a humanitarian who worked to save the lives of Syrians injured and dispossessed '' by war . He called Kassig 's death `` an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity . ''
The president offered condolences to Kassig 's family . `` We can not begin to imagine their anguish at this painful time , '' he said .
Earlier during his flight , Obama was briefed about the video by national security adviser Susan Rice , White House spokesman Josh Earnest said .
Kassig , 26 , a former U.S. Army Ranger from Indianapolis , worked for charity groups in Lebanon and Syria and was captured in Syria by militants in October last year .
During his captivity , his family said Kassig converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul-Rahman , which means `` servant of the most merciful . ''
The video released Sunday is over 15 minutes long and appears to show a dozen Syrian soldiers being beheaded . A militant clad in black with a concealed face is pictured next to a severed head that he says belongs to Kassig . His actual beheading was not shown .
`` Here we are , eagerly awaiting for the remainder of your crusading armies to arrive , '' Kassig 's purported executioner says in the video , addressing Obama and the West .
The U.S. and coalition forces have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq for weeks , but no ground troops are deployed .
Kassig 's parents , Ed and Paula Kassig , released a statement Sunday that they are `` heartbroken '' by the news and pledged `` to keep his legacy alive . ''
`` We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family , not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause , '' his parents also said .
Last month Kassig 's parents released parts of a letter written to them by their son .
`` Do n't worry dad , if I go down , I wo n't go thinking anything but what I know to be true . That you and mom love me more than the moon and the stars , '' Peter Kassig wrote .
Over the weekend , the Daily Mail newspaper reported that the British-accented terrorist — dubbed `` Jihadi John '' by British media — alleged to be the executioner of two British and two American hostages was wounded in a coalition airstrike against Islamic State . The British government said it was investigating the report .
The man who speaks in the video released Sunday talks in similarly British-accented English .
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday he was `` horrified '' by the apparent `` cold-blooded murder '' of Kassig .
Kassig is the third American , after journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff , to be beheaded by the group , whose tactics are so extreme that al-Qaeda disavowed it earlier this year .
British journalist John Cantile , 43 , remains an Islamic State hostage . He last appeared in a video from the group at the end of last month .
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Kim Hjelmgaard
USA TODAY
The Islamic State militant group released a video Sunday that shows American aid worker Peter Kassig was beheaded, along with a dozen Syrian soldiers, in the latest killings the group has posted on the Internet.
The White House later said a review of the video confirms Kassig's death.
President Obama, in a statement issued as he flew back to Washington from Australia, said the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, "revels in the slaughter of innocents, including Muslims, and is bent only on sowing death and destruction."
Obama said Kassig "was a humanitarian who worked to save the lives of Syrians injured and dispossessed" by war. He called Kassig's death "an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity."
The president offered condolences to Kassig's family. "We cannot begin to imagine their anguish at this painful time," he said.
Earlier during his flight, Obama was briefed about the video by national security adviser Susan Rice,White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Kassig, 26, a former U.S. Army Ranger from Indianapolis, worked for charity groups in Lebanon and Syria and was captured in Syria by militants in October last year.
During his captivity, his family said Kassig converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul-Rahman, which means "servant of the most merciful."
The video released Sunday is over 15 minutes long and appears to show a dozen Syrian soldiers being beheaded. A militant clad in black with a concealed face is pictured next to a severed head that he says belongs to Kassig. His actual beheading was not shown.
"Here we are, eagerly awaiting for the remainder of your crusading armies to arrive," Kassig's purported executioner says in the video, addressing Obama and the West.
The U.S. and coalition forces have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq for weeks, but no ground troops are deployed.
Kassig's parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, released a statement Sunday that they are "heartbroken" by the news and pledged "to keep his legacy alive."
"We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family, not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause," his parents also said.
Last month Kassig's parents released parts of a letter written to them by their son.
"Don't worry dad, if I go down, I won't go thinking anything but what I know to be true. That you and mom love me more than the moon and the stars," Peter Kassig wrote.
Over the weekend, the Daily Mail newspaper reported that the British-accented terrorist — dubbed "Jihadi John" by British media — alleged to be the executioner of two British and two American hostages was wounded in a coalition airstrike against Islamic State. The British government said it was investigating the report.
The man who speaks in the video released Sunday talks in similarly British-accented English.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday he was "horrified" by the apparent "cold-blooded murder" of Kassig.
Kassig is the third American, after journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, to be beheaded by the group, whose tactics are so extreme that al-Qaeda disavowed it earlier this year.
British journalist John Cantile, 43, remains an Islamic State hostage. He last appeared in a video from the group at the end of last month.
Contributing: David Jackson
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http://www.infowars.com/who-is-behind-the-riots-charlotte-police-says-70-of-arrested-protesters-had-out-of-state-ids/
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Charlotte police says 70% of arrested protesters had out of state IDs
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2016-09-23
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Confirming what many had suspected when viewing the sudden and intense collapse into anrchy that occurred in Charlotte this week , Todd Walther , spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police told CNN ’ s Erin Burnett :
“ This is not Charlotte that ’ s out here . These are outside entities that are coming in and causing these problems . These are not protestors , these are criminals. ” “ We ’ ve got the instigators that are coming in from the outside . They were coming in on buses from out of state . If you go back and look at some of the arrests that were made last night . I can about say probably 70 % of those had out-of-state IDs . They ’ re not coming from Charlotte . ”
# Charlotte police : 70 % of arrested protesters had out of state ID 's , outside entities are causing these problems https : //t.co/Kwya2xXerk — OutFrontCNN ( @ OutFrontCNN ) September 22 , 2016
As shocking as this statement is , it should not be a total surprise . 18 months ago , as the riots flared in Ferguson , there was one man pulling the strings of this ‘ domestic false flag ’ … George Soros . In an apparent effort to “ keep the media ’ s attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August , ” liberal billionaire George Soros donated $ 33million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint .
strong > There ’ s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement . No , it ’ s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson . It ’ s not even the Rev . Al Sharpton , despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets . Rather , it ’ s liberal billionaire George Soros , who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy , not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org . Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S. , according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times .
Still not buying it ? As The New American recently reported , Ken Zimmerman , the director of U.S. programs at Soros ’ s Open Society Foundations ( OSF ) , denied last year that Soros had funded BLM , saying it was just a rumor .
That was before hackers with DCLeaks.com published OSF documents showing that the Soros group had already given at least $ 650,000 directly to BLM .
Those same documents reveal the reason for OSF bankrolling BLM : the “ dismantling ” of America so that it can be recast according to the vision of Soros and his leftist cohorts . The communist-on-its-face nature of these and other demands of the organizations under the BLM umbrella are a clear indicator of the real intent of BLM . The deep-pocketed funding by the likes of Soros , the Center for American Progress , the Ford Foundation , and Borealis Philanthropy show that BLM is the means , not the end . BLM is little more than a tool of social revolutionaries hell-bent on destroying America so they can build their long awaited dystopia which they attempt to pass off as a utopia .
So with Hillary ’ s poll numbers decling rapidly , and a debate looming that she would desperately like to be focused on domestic division as opposed to every email , pay-to-play , foreign policy misstep , and cough or stumble she has taken ; is anyone shocked that ‘ out of state ’ protesters would turn up in Charlotte suddenly turning a peaceful but angry protest into tear-gas-filled deadly riots ? And who is a big donor to Clinton ?
Financier George Soros founded what would become the Quantum Fund in 1969 with $ 12 million . According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index , he ’ s now worth $ 24.7 billion and continues to invest through Soros Fund Management , a family firm . As a political donor , Soros has been mercurial . In 2004 , he contributed $ 23.5 million to organizations opposing George W. Bush ’ s reelection effort . In 2008 , he donated $ 2,300 to both Clinton and Barack Obama , and that was it . Soros ’ s Open Society Policy Center , the advocacy arm of his philanthropic network , spent $ 8.2 million on lobbying Washington in 2015 . It focuses on international human rights , immigration , foreign aid , public health and criminal justice reform , among other issues . Since 2003 , Soros has contributed $ 54 million to federal candidates and committees .
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Confirming what many had suspected when viewing the sudden and intense collapse into anrchy that occurred in Charlotte this week, Todd Walther, spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police told CNN’s Erin Burnett:
“This is not Charlotte that’s out here. These are outside entities that are coming in and causing these problems. These are not protestors, these are criminals.” “We’ve got the instigators that are coming in from the outside. They were coming in on buses from out of state. If you go back and look at some of the arrests that were made last night. I can about say probably 70% of those had out-of-state IDs. They’re not coming from Charlotte.”
#Charlotte police: 70% of arrested protesters had out of state ID's, outside entities are causing these problems https://t.co/Kwya2xXerk — OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) September 22, 2016
As shocking as this statement is, it should not be a total surprise. 18 months ago, as the riots flared in Ferguson, there was one man pulling the strings of this ‘domestic false flag’… George Soros. In an apparent effort to “keep the media’s attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August,” liberal billionaire George Soros donated $33million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint.
As The Washington Times explains,
strong>There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets. Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org. Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times.
Still not buying it? As The New American recently reported, Ken Zimmerman, the director of U.S. programs at Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), denied last year that Soros had funded BLM, saying it was just a rumor.
That was before hackers with DCLeaks.com published OSF documents showing that the Soros group had already given at least $650,000 directly to BLM.
Those same documents reveal the reason for OSF bankrolling BLM: the “dismantling” of America so that it can be recast according to the vision of Soros and his leftist cohorts. The communist-on-its-face nature of these and other demands of the organizations under the BLM umbrella are a clear indicator of the real intent of BLM. The deep-pocketed funding by the likes of Soros, the Center for American Progress, the Ford Foundation, and Borealis Philanthropy show that BLM is the means, not the end. BLM is little more than a tool of social revolutionaries hell-bent on destroying America so they can build their long awaited dystopia which they attempt to pass off as a utopia.
So with Hillary’s poll numbers decling rapidly, and a debate looming that she would desperately like to be focused on domestic division as opposed to every email, pay-to-play, foreign policy misstep, and cough or stumble she has taken; is anyone shocked that ‘out of state’ protesters would turn up in Charlotte suddenly turning a peaceful but angry protest into tear-gas-filled deadly riots? And who is a big donor to Clinton?
George Soros: $7 million
Financier George Soros founded what would become the Quantum Fund in 1969 with $12 million. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he’s now worth $24.7 billion and continues to invest through Soros Fund Management, a family firm. As a political donor, Soros has been mercurial. In 2004, he contributed $23.5 million to organizations opposing George W. Bush’s reelection effort. In 2008, he donated $2,300 to both Clinton and Barack Obama, and that was it. Soros’s Open Society Policy Center, the advocacy arm of his philanthropic network, spent $8.2 million on lobbying Washington in 2015. It focuses on international human rights, immigration, foreign aid, public health and criminal justice reform, among other issues. Since 2003, Soros has contributed $54 million to federal candidates and committees.
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USA TODAY
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/17/donald-trump-and-lawyers-blast-robert-mueller-one-year-anniversary/610676002/
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Donald Trump and lawyers blast Robert Mueller at Russia investigation one-year anniversary
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2018-05-17
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WASHINGTON — Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller marks one year on the job Thursday , but no one at the White House is celebrating — especially President Trump .
`` Congratulations America , we are now into the second year of the greatest Witch Hunt in American History ... and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction , '' the president tweeted early in the day .
Echoing the claim that the probe is interfering with his presidential duties , Trump later tweeted : `` Despite the disgusting , illegal and unwarranted Witch Hunt , we have had the most successful first 17 month Administration in U.S. history - by far ! Sorry to the Fake News Media and 'Haters , ' but that ’ s the way it is ! ''
The tweets were another part of an ongoing effort to pressure Mueller 's office into ending its super-secret investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 election , at least as it pertains to the president .
`` We are going to demand an answer , '' said Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani , speaking on Fox News ' The Ingraham Angle .
Indications are , however , that Trump and his supporters face a second year of uncertainty as they and their critics try to figure out what Mueller plans to do .
While Trump has repeatedly denounced the investigation as a `` witch hunt ; '' his critics say Mueller and his prosecutors are building a major case against the president and his aides — but the fact is no one beyond Mueller 's office knows for sure .
The Mueller team has leaked few if any details of the investigation , leaving observers to guess at what is happening , based on leaks from defense attorneys , grand jury witnesses , and the charges that have already been filed .
Reports that Trump 's personal finances are under scrutiny or that the FBI had a `` mole '' inside the GOP campaign — a theory that Trump himself tweeted about after attacking the investigation Thursday — are unverified .
Trump used the mole report to claim that the Obama administration somehow spied on his campaign , but there is no evidence for that . Mueller 's source , if he or she exists , could just as as easily be a voluntary informant , and the Special Counsel 's office has not commented one way or another .
`` Bob Mueller runs a very tight ship and that ship does not leak , '' said David Kris , an attorney and founder of Culper Partners consulting firm .
A former Department of Justice lawyer who has worked with Mueller in the past , Kris said `` he is the very opposite of a media hound . ''
More : Mike Pence to Robert Mueller : 'Wrap it up ' ( and we have nothing to do with Michael Cohen )
More : Donald Trump still subject of probe by special counsel Robert Mueller , but not a target
The president 's critics said he is trying to use the bully pulpit to intimidate Mueller , but they doubt he will be successful .
Citing the 19 indictments or guilty pleas that Mueller 's team has racked up , Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said he 's sure Trump `` wishes it would be over , but his attempts to cover it up force most people to wonder what he 's hiding . ''
Sen. Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y. , the Senate 's top Democrat , marked the anniversary with a floor speech saying that Trump and allies are spinning `` conspiracy theories '' about the special counsel for one reason : `` They ’ re afraid of what Mueller ’ s investigation will reveal . ''
Trump associates , meanwhile , believe the public is turning against Mueller , questioning the length of the investigation and some of the tactics used by investigators and prosecutors .
Sam Nunberg , a former long-time political adviser to Trump who testified before a grand jury in the Russia case , said `` I believe the Mueller investigation is in a precarious situation right now , from a political point of view . ''
Others point out that Mueller ca n't wrap up any time soon because he is missing key material : testimony from the president himself .
The two sides are negotiating rules for possible Trump testimony , amid concerns from the president 's team that prosecutors may try to lay a `` perjury trap . ''
Giuliani said last week he hoped to have some kind of agreement in place by Mueller 's one-year anniversary , but it looks like that may not happen .
The president 's lawyer also said he expects Mueller to file a report with the Justice Department on his findings . Giuliani has said that Mueller 's office agrees with his assessment that a sitting president can not be indicted if there is evidence of wrongdoing , which the president denies .
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller a year ago to investigate any connections between Trump 's campaign and Russians who sought to influence the 2016 election by hacking Democrats and pushing fake news about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton . Mueller picked up an investigation begun by the FBI in late July of 2016 .
The Mueller probe has come to include claims that Trump sought to obstruct justice by various means , including his dismissal of then-FBI Director James Comey . That also happened a year ago , a week before the Mueller appointment .
While denying collusion with the Russians and obstructing justice , Trump has frequently attacked Rosenstein and Mueller . Lawmakers have accused Trump of laying the groundwork for firing Mueller , though some Republicans have warned the president that such a move could trigger impeachment proceedings .
His office has indicted or obtained guilty pleas from 19 people , including 13 Russians and three Russian companies accused of funding a social media campaign designed to favor Trump over Clinton . Mueller has also charged prominent people in Trump 's orbit , some of whom are cooperating with prosecutors — a `` pretty substantial amount '' of work for a year on the job , Kris said .
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is charged with conspiracy , money laundering , false statements , and failure to disclose foreign assets related to his pre-election work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine . He has pleaded not guilty .
Long-time Manafort partner Rick Gates faced similar charges , but pleaded guilty to false statement and conspiracy charges . Gates is now cooperating with Mueller 's Russia investigation .
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements , as has campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos . They too are working with Mueller 's office .
While some attorneys said the Trump team 's attacks on Mueller could backfire , Giuliani said he and the president have no choice but to fight back .
`` Somebody has to defend the president , '' Giuliani said Thursday on Fox & Friends . `` That 's my job . ''
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David Jackson
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller marks one year on the job Thursday, but no one at the White House is celebrating — especially President Trump.
"Congratulations America, we are now into the second year of the greatest Witch Hunt in American History ... and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction," the president tweeted early in the day.
Echoing the claim that the probe is interfering with his presidential duties, Trump later tweeted: "Despite the disgusting, illegal and unwarranted Witch Hunt, we have had the most successful first 17 month Administration in U.S. history - by far! Sorry to the Fake News Media and 'Haters,' but that’s the way it is!"
The tweets were another part of an ongoing effort to pressure Mueller's office into ending its super-secret investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 election, at least as it pertains to the president.
"We are going to demand an answer," said Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, speaking on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle.
Indications are, however, that Trump and his supporters face a second year of uncertainty as they and their critics try to figure out what Mueller plans to do.
While Trump has repeatedly denounced the investigation as a "witch hunt;" his critics say Mueller and his prosecutors are building a major case against the president and his aides — but the fact is no one beyond Mueller's office knows for sure.
The Mueller team has leaked few if any details of the investigation, leaving observers to guess at what is happening, based on leaks from defense attorneys, grand jury witnesses, and the charges that have already been filed.
Reports that Trump's personal finances are under scrutiny or that the FBI had a "mole" inside the GOP campaign — a theory that Trump himself tweeted about after attacking the investigation Thursday — are unverified.
Trump used the mole report to claim that the Obama administration somehow spied on his campaign, but there is no evidence for that. Mueller's source, if he or she exists, could just as as easily be a voluntary informant, and the Special Counsel's office has not commented one way or another.
"Bob Mueller runs a very tight ship and that ship does not leak," said David Kris, an attorney and founder of Culper Partners consulting firm.
A former Department of Justice lawyer who has worked with Mueller in the past, Kris said "he is the very opposite of a media hound."
More:Mike Pence to Robert Mueller: 'Wrap it up' (and we have nothing to do with Michael Cohen)
More:Donald Trump still subject of probe by special counsel Robert Mueller, but not a target
The president's critics said he is trying to use the bully pulpit to intimidate Mueller, but they doubt he will be successful.
Citing the 19 indictments or guilty pleas that Mueller's team has racked up, Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said he's sure Trump "wishes it would be over, but his attempts to cover it up force most people to wonder what he's hiding."
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate's top Democrat, marked the anniversary with a floor speech saying that Trump and allies are spinning "conspiracy theories" about the special counsel for one reason: "They’re afraid of what Mueller’s investigation will reveal."
Trump associates, meanwhile, believe the public is turning against Mueller, questioning the length of the investigation and some of the tactics used by investigators and prosecutors.
Sam Nunberg, a former long-time political adviser to Trump who testified before a grand jury in the Russia case, said "I believe the Mueller investigation is in a precarious situation right now, from a political point of view."
Others point out that Mueller can't wrap up any time soon because he is missing key material: testimony from the president himself.
The two sides are negotiating rules for possible Trump testimony, amid concerns from the president's team that prosecutors may try to lay a "perjury trap."
Giuliani said last week he hoped to have some kind of agreement in place by Mueller's one-year anniversary, but it looks like that may not happen.
The president's lawyer also said he expects Mueller to file a report with the Justice Department on his findings. Giuliani has said that Mueller's office agrees with his assessment that a sitting president cannot be indicted if there is evidence of wrongdoing, which the president denies.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller a year ago to investigate any connections between Trump's campaign and Russians who sought to influence the 2016 election by hacking Democrats and pushing fake news about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Mueller picked up an investigation begun by the FBI in late July of 2016.
The Mueller probe has come to include claims that Trump sought to obstruct justice by various means, including his dismissal of then-FBI Director James Comey. That also happened a year ago, a week before the Mueller appointment.
While denying collusion with the Russians and obstructing justice, Trump has frequently attacked Rosenstein and Mueller. Lawmakers have accused Trump of laying the groundwork for firing Mueller, though some Republicans have warned the president that such a move could trigger impeachment proceedings.
In the meantime, Mueller's team is also pursuing cases.
His office has indicted or obtained guilty pleas from 19 people, including 13 Russians and three Russian companies accused of funding a social media campaign designed to favor Trump over Clinton. Mueller has also charged prominent people in Trump's orbit, some of whom are cooperating with prosecutors — a "pretty substantial amount" of work for a year on the job, Kris said.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is charged with conspiracy, money laundering, false statements, and failure to disclose foreign assets related to his pre-election work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. He has pleaded not guilty.
Long-time Manafort partner Rick Gates faced similar charges, but pleaded guilty to false statement and conspiracy charges. Gates is now cooperating with Mueller's Russia investigation.
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements, as has campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. They too are working with Mueller's office.
While some attorneys said the Trump team's attacks on Mueller could backfire, Giuliani said he and the president have no choice but to fight back.
"Somebody has to defend the president," Giuliani said Thursday on Fox & Friends. "That's my job."
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http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/1215/Hostage-crisis-unfolds-in-Australia-s-biggest-city-but-motivations-unclear
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Hostage crisis unfolds in Australia's biggest city, but motivations unclear
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2014-12-15
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John Zubrzycki
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Updated at noon Eastern time : Police in Sydney said early Tuesday the siege was over after armed officers were seen storming the cafe and gunshots were heard . Medical workers evacuated several casualties , but it was unclear if the hostage taker , identified as Man Haron Monis , an Iranian , was among them .
The financial and commercial heart of Australia ’ s largest city was in lockdown Monday night after an armed gunman took an unknown number of people hostage in a cafe .
Hundreds of police , many of them heavily armed , cordoned off the area in Sydney which was packed with Christmas shoppers and evacuated nearby buildings including the state parliament and the American consulate . About six hours into the siege , three people were seen running from the building housing the cafe . Two more followed about an hour later . It is not clear whether they escaped or were released . About a dozen people are believed to remain in the Lindt Chocolate Cafe .
Australia ’ s prime minister Tony Abbott stopped short of calling the hostage taking a terrorist attack but said it appeared to be politically motivated . “ This is a very disturbing incident , ” Mr Abbott said . “ It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation . ”
As dusk fell and commuters began leaving the central business district along gridlocked highways , police said they had started negotiating with the gunman . “ Our plan , our only goal tonight and for as long as this takes , is to get those people that are currently caught in that building , out of there safely . That remains our number one priority and nothing will change , ” New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters .
At present , almost nothing is publicly known about the situation , beyond that there is at least one gunman involved . A number of media outlets said they had received phone calls from the hostages conveying the gunman ’ s demands but were not broadcasting them at the request of police .
The media have published images showing some hostages holding against the window a black and white flag with a general expression of Islamic faith , the Shahada , printed on it : “ There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God. ” Although the Shahada is a general tenet of the faith , it has been co-opted by various jihadist groups .
Dozens of buildings in Sydney were evacuated after police received information that up to four bombs had been left around the city . The Lindt Cafe is located a few blocks from the state parliament , the Reserve Bank of Australia , and the headquarters of two of Australia 's largest banks .
The situation comes just three months after security agencies raised the country ’ s terror threat level to high . Shortly afterwards a man armed with a knife murdered a policeman in Melbourne in what was believed to be an Islamic State-inspired attack .
Australia has sent fighter jets to join the US-led coalition conducting airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq , prompting calls from militants for supporters to carry out “ lone wolf ” reprisal attacks . Australia ’ s Parliament recently passed a tough set of anti-terror laws including restrictions on media reporting and new powers to confiscate passports .
Professor Greg Barton of Monash University in Melbourne , who studies regional terrorist organizations , said the hostage taker ’ s use of a flag bearing the Shahada , suggests he is responding to that call by Islamic State to carry out attacks .
“ The new twist is the use of hostage taking . This is a very worrying development because these things tend to get copied , ” says Professor Barton . “ The big question that hangs in the air is whether this just one sporadic lone wolf attack or is it the beginning of a cascading wave of lone wolf attacks . No one knows the answer to that . ''
President Obama was briefed on the situation as world leaders including Stephen Harper of Canada , David Cameron of Britain , and Narendra Modi of India conveyed messages of support .
Local Muslim leaders were swift to condemn the hostage taking with Australia 's Grand Mufti , Ibrahim Abu Mohamed , saying the Islamic community was devastated by the incident . `` The Grand Mufti and the Australian National Imams Council condemn this criminal act unequivocally and reiterate that such actions are denounced in part and in whole in Islam , '' he said in a statement .
Justin Hastings , a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Sydney told ABC radio that the Sydney siege bore similar hallmarks to recent attacks in Ottawa and Montreal carried out by individuals apparently acting alone .
“ They are attacks that send a very strong message that there are terrorists among us and they ’ re very difficult to stop precisely because there is not much planning involved . ''
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox . By signing up , you agree to our Privacy Policy
More than 70 Australians are believed to be fighting for Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria and a similar number have had their passports cancelled to prevent them from traveling to conflict zones in the Middle East .
Last week security officials said at least 20 have died and there are growing concerns about youths becoming radicalized and mounting attacks at home .
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Updated at noon Eastern time: Police in Sydney said early Tuesday the siege was over after armed officers were seen storming the cafe and gunshots were heard. Medical workers evacuated several casualties, but it was unclear if the hostage taker, identified as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian, was among them.
The financial and commercial heart of Australia’s largest city was in lockdown Monday night after an armed gunman took an unknown number of people hostage in a cafe.
Hundreds of police, many of them heavily armed, cordoned off the area in Sydney which was packed with Christmas shoppers and evacuated nearby buildings including the state parliament and the American consulate. About six hours into the siege, three people were seen running from the building housing the cafe. Two more followed about an hour later. It is not clear whether they escaped or were released. About a dozen people are believed to remain in the Lindt Chocolate Cafe.
Australia’s prime minister Tony Abbott stopped short of calling the hostage taking a terrorist attack but said it appeared to be politically motivated. “This is a very disturbing incident,” Mr Abbott said. “It is profoundly shocking that innocent people should be held hostage by an armed person claiming political motivation.”
As dusk fell and commuters began leaving the central business district along gridlocked highways, police said they had started negotiating with the gunman. “Our plan, our only goal tonight and for as long as this takes, is to get those people that are currently caught in that building, out of there safely. That remains our number one priority and nothing will change,” New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters.
At present, almost nothing is publicly known about the situation, beyond that there is at least one gunman involved. A number of media outlets said they had received phone calls from the hostages conveying the gunman’s demands but were not broadcasting them at the request of police.
The media have published images showing some hostages holding against the window a black and white flag with a general expression of Islamic faith, the Shahada, printed on it: “There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God.” Although the Shahada is a general tenet of the faith, it has been co-opted by various jihadist groups.
Terror threat raised
Dozens of buildings in Sydney were evacuated after police received information that up to four bombs had been left around the city. The Lindt Cafe is located a few blocks from the state parliament, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the headquarters of two of Australia's largest banks.
The situation comes just three months after security agencies raised the country’s terror threat level to high. Shortly afterwards a man armed with a knife murdered a policeman in Melbourne in what was believed to be an Islamic State-inspired attack.
Australia has sent fighter jets to join the US-led coalition conducting airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq, prompting calls from militants for supporters to carry out “lone wolf” reprisal attacks. Australia’s Parliament recently passed a tough set of anti-terror laws including restrictions on media reporting and new powers to confiscate passports.
Professor Greg Barton of Monash University in Melbourne, who studies regional terrorist organizations, said the hostage taker’s use of a flag bearing the Shahada, suggests he is responding to that call by Islamic State to carry out attacks.
“The new twist is the use of hostage taking. This is a very worrying development because these things tend to get copied,” says Professor Barton. “The big question that hangs in the air is whether this just one sporadic lone wolf attack or is it the beginning of a cascading wave of lone wolf attacks. No one knows the answer to that."
World leaders briefed
President Obama was briefed on the situation as world leaders including Stephen Harper of Canada, David Cameron of Britain, and Narendra Modi of India conveyed messages of support.
Local Muslim leaders were swift to condemn the hostage taking with Australia's Grand Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, saying the Islamic community was devastated by the incident. "The Grand Mufti and the Australian National Imams Council condemn this criminal act unequivocally and reiterate that such actions are denounced in part and in whole in Islam," he said in a statement.
Justin Hastings, a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Sydney told ABC radio that the Sydney siege bore similar hallmarks to recent attacks in Ottawa and Montreal carried out by individuals apparently acting alone.
“They are attacks that send a very strong message that there are terrorists among us and they’re very difficult to stop precisely because there is not much planning involved."
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
More than 70 Australians are believed to be fighting for Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria and a similar number have had their passports cancelled to prevent them from traveling to conflict zones in the Middle East.
Last week security officials said at least 20 have died and there are growing concerns about youths becoming radicalized and mounting attacks at home.
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NPR Online News
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https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746475401/woman-charged-as-hacker-of-capital-one-data-that-exposes-over-100-million-custom
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Woman Charged As Hacker In Capital One Data Breach Exposing Over 100 Million Customers
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2019-07-30
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Scott Neuman
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Woman Charged As Hacker In Capital One Data Breach Exposing Over 100 Million Customers
A woman has been charged in connection with a hacking breach at Capital One bank that exposed information from more than 100 million credit applications over a 14-year period – what is thought to be one of the largest such attacks in recent years .
Authorities in Seattle have charged Paige A. Thompson , who also goes by the handle `` erratic , '' with a single count of computer fraud . She appeared in court on Monday and is scheduled for a detention hearing on Thursday .
Thompson is accused of hacking credit scores , balances , income information and Social Security numbers from a total of 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada .
Virginia-based Capital One , the nation 's seventh-largest bank , acknowledged the breach in a statement on Monday , but said it believed the hacked information was not used in any actual fraud .
`` While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught , I am deeply sorry for what has happened , '' said Richard D. Fairbank , chairman and CEO , in a statement . `` I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right . ''
The hacked data consists of information from credit card applications from individuals and small businesses , mostly from 2005 to early 2019 . That includes 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers from secured credit card consumers .
According to a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle , some of the information was posted to GitHub , a software development platform owned by Microsoft .
The complaint says Thompson boasted in Twitter direct message about having obtained the data , saying she had `` basically strapped myself with a bomb vest , [ expletive ] dropping capitol ones dox and admitting it . ''
`` I wan na distribute those buckets I think first , '' `` erratic '' wrote in a Twitter message late last month . `` There ssns ... with full name and dob . ''
According to the complaint , the FBI searched a bedroom believed to belong to Thompson and seized `` numerous digital devices . ''
`` During the initial search of some of these devices , agents observed files and items that referenced Capital One and the Cloud Computing Company , other entities that may have been the targets of attempted or actual network intrusions , and `` erratic '' aliases associated with Paige A . Thompson . ''
Capital One says it found a vulnerability in its system on July 19 , just two days after receiving an email alerting it that some of its data had appeared on Github . It then asked for the FBI 's help .
The bank says it will contact affected customers and make free credit monitoring and protection available to them .
Last week , credit bureau Equifax agreed to pay $ 700 million to consumers in connection with a similar breach that occurred two years ago .
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Woman Charged As Hacker In Capital One Data Breach Exposing Over 100 Million Customers
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jeff Chiu/AP Jeff Chiu/AP
A woman has been charged in connection with a hacking breach at Capital One bank that exposed information from more than 100 million credit applications over a 14-year period – what is thought to be one of the largest such attacks in recent years.
Authorities in Seattle have charged Paige A. Thompson, who also goes by the handle "erratic," with a single count of computer fraud. She appeared in court on Monday and is scheduled for a detention hearing on Thursday.
Thompson is accused of hacking credit scores, balances, income information and Social Security numbers from a total of 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada.
Virginia-based Capital One, the nation's seventh-largest bank, acknowledged the breach in a statement on Monday, but said it believed the hacked information was not used in any actual fraud.
"While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened," said Richard D. Fairbank, chairman and CEO, in a statement. "I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right."
The hacked data consists of information from credit card applications from individuals and small businesses, mostly from 2005 to early 2019. That includes 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers from secured credit card consumers.
According to a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle, some of the information was posted to GitHub, a software development platform owned by Microsoft.
The complaint says Thompson boasted in Twitter direct message about having obtained the data, saying she had "basically strapped myself with a bomb vest, [expletive] dropping capitol ones dox and admitting it."
"I wanna distribute those buckets I think first," "erratic" wrote in a Twitter message late last month. "There ssns ... with full name and dob."
toggle caption Department of Justice / Screenshot by NPR
According to the complaint, the FBI searched a bedroom believed to belong to Thompson and seized "numerous digital devices."
"During the initial search of some of these devices, agents observed files and items that referenced Capital One and the Cloud Computing Company, other entities that may have been the targets of attempted or actual network intrusions, and "erratic" aliases associated with Paige A. Thompson."
Capital One says it found a vulnerability in its system on July 19, just two days after receiving an email alerting it that some of its data had appeared on Github. It then asked for the FBI's help.
The bank says it will contact affected customers and make free credit monitoring and protection available to them.
Last week, credit bureau Equifax agreed to pay $700 million to consumers in connection with a similar breach that occurred two years ago.
Editor's note: Capital One is a financial sponsor of NPR.
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Guest Writer - Right
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/25/charlie-gerow-joe-biden-an-authentic-alternative-t/
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OPINION: Joe Biden: An authentic alternative to Hillary Clinton
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2015-08-25
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Charlie Gerow
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“ You can observe a lot by just watching ” — Yogi Berra or Joe Biden ?
The media fixation on the largest Republican field of presidential candidates in history misses the very real crisis Democrats are facing as their slam-dunk nominee ’ s campaign unravels before their eyes . A year ago virtually everyone agreed that Hillary Rodham Clinton would not only be easily nominated , but was the odds-on favorite to succeed President Obama . Now with the FBI on her tail , a string of less than inspiring appearances and interviews and polls showing her fading , Democrats are faced with the question of what to do if her campaign collapses .
Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders has been the main problem for her until recently . He ’ s surged in the polls on the strength of his populist-socialist message and closed the gap to just a few points in some early state polls . With Hillary ’ s approval ratings , especially on the issue of “ trustworthiness , ” in the tank , some in the Democratic Party , and especially the Obama White House , have been casting about for a more viable candidate . Many of them liken Mr. Sanders ’ challenge of Mrs. Clinton to Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy ’ s crusade against Lyndon Johnson in 1968 . By demonstrating that , in essence , the emperor wore no clothes , McCarthy opened the door to more serious alternatives to the failed president .
Vice president Joe Biden ’ s name is now being discussed as a potentially viable alternative — and not just by Joe and his friends . It is even believed by many in Washington that Mr. Obama ’ s political team which , like their boss , has never held Mrs. Clinton in high regard , have been periodically fueling the Biden speculation . Mr. Obama ’ s spokesperson has said that picking Joe Biden was the best political decision the president had ever made ; better , one can only assume , than selecting Mrs. Clinton as his secretary of state . It has even been reported that the president has given Mr. Biden his “ blessing ” to run .
If he runs and wins both the nomination and the presidency , Joe Biden would be the oldest American ever elected president , but to do that he would first have to overcome his well-earned reputation for political foot-in-mouth disease . Although Mr. Biden himself has been unusually restrained , he has made it clear that he is at least contemplating getting into the race .
The late Arlen Specter , who served with Mr. Biden in the Senate for years and rode the Amtrak train to Washington with him , used to quip that he didn ’ t get to start talking until after the train left Wilmington where Mr. Biden departed . It ’ s not just that Joe Biden talks . He ’ s the Yogi Berra , the loveable king of malaprops , of American politics . He ’ s a perpetual gaffe machine .
Remember , it was Joe who famously observed , “ The number one job facing the middle class happens to be , as Barack says , a three-letter word : jobs — J-O-B-S . ”
It was Joe who said , “ When the stock market crashed , Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn ’ t just talk about the princes of greed. ” Of course Franklin Roosevelt didn ’ t become president until long after the stock market crashed and television wasn ’ t even available to the public in 1929 .
Not all of Mr. Biden ’ s verbal miscues have been as humorous . It was Joe Biden who said , “ Stand up and let ‘ em see you , ” to a wheelchair-bound state senator . His famous lifting of a speech from a British Member of Parliament Neil Kinnock to use as part of his own biography made him a laughing stock and helped put an end to his presidential hopes in 1988 .
Like Yogi , for all of his famed verbal hiccups , Mr. Biden still comes across as affable , even likeable . It ’ s easy to see voters voting him the candidate with whom they ’ d most like to share a beer , but harder to envision them voting to put him in the Oval Office . Still , he might , like Donald Trump , be able to parlay his lack of verbal polish into electoral success this year with voters fed up with tightly scripted , vocally perfect candidates reading other people ’ s words .
The fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton won ’ t answer reporters ’ questions and is at her best only in prepackaged video pieces has become a real problem for her . Ultimately , voters will see the real Hillary and wonder who the heck she is .
Voters are looking for authenticity , and Mr. Biden ’ s shoot-from-the-lip style may be appealing . Maybe he ’ ll even be tempted to plagiarize from Yogi who once claimed , “ I never said most of the things I said . ”
Especially his famous , “ Make no mistake about this — Hillary Rodham Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America … and , quite frankly , it might have been a better pick than me . ”
There ’ s an old Chinese curse , popularized by Robert F. Kennedy and Junior Soprano , “ May you live in interesting times. ” The most interesting of political times will be 2016 .
As Yogi — or maybe Joe — would say , “ It ain ’ t over till it ’ s over . ”
• Charlie Gerow is a political and public relations consultant in Harrisburg , Pa .
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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
“You can observe a lot by just watching” — Yogi Berra or Joe Biden?
The media fixation on the largest Republican field of presidential candidates in history misses the very real crisis Democrats are facing as their slam-dunk nominee’s campaign unravels before their eyes. A year ago virtually everyone agreed that Hillary Rodham Clinton would not only be easily nominated, but was the odds-on favorite to succeed President Obama. Now with the FBI on her tail, a string of less than inspiring appearances and interviews and polls showing her fading, Democrats are faced with the question of what to do if her campaign collapses.
Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders has been the main problem for her until recently. He’s surged in the polls on the strength of his populist-socialist message and closed the gap to just a few points in some early state polls. With Hillary’s approval ratings, especially on the issue of “trustworthiness,” in the tank, some in the Democratic Party, and especially the Obama White House, have been casting about for a more viable candidate. Many of them liken Mr. Sanders’ challenge of Mrs. Clinton to Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s crusade against Lyndon Johnson in 1968. By demonstrating that, in essence, the emperor wore no clothes, McCarthy opened the door to more serious alternatives to the failed president.
Vice president Joe Biden’s name is now being discussed as a potentially viable alternative — and not just by Joe and his friends. It is even believed by many in Washington that Mr. Obama’s political team which, like their boss, has never held Mrs. Clinton in high regard, have been periodically fueling the Biden speculation. Mr. Obama’s spokesperson has said that picking Joe Biden was the best political decision the president had ever made; better, one can only assume, than selecting Mrs. Clinton as his secretary of state. It has even been reported that the president has given Mr. Biden his “blessing” to run.
If he runs and wins both the nomination and the presidency, Joe Biden would be the oldest American ever elected president, but to do that he would first have to overcome his well-earned reputation for political foot-in-mouth disease. Although Mr. Biden himself has been unusually restrained, he has made it clear that he is at least contemplating getting into the race.
The late Arlen Specter, who served with Mr. Biden in the Senate for years and rode the Amtrak train to Washington with him, used to quip that he didn’t get to start talking until after the train left Wilmington where Mr. Biden departed. It’s not just that Joe Biden talks. He’s the Yogi Berra, the loveable king of malaprops, of American politics. He’s a perpetual gaffe machine.
Remember, it was Joe who famously observed, “The number one job facing the middle class happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs — J-O-B-S.”
It was Joe who said, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed.” Of course Franklin Roosevelt didn’t become president until long after the stock market crashed and television wasn’t even available to the public in 1929.
Not all of Mr. Biden’s verbal miscues have been as humorous. It was Joe Biden who said, “Stand up and let ‘em see you,” to a wheelchair-bound state senator. His famous lifting of a speech from a British Member of Parliament Neil Kinnock to use as part of his own biography made him a laughing stock and helped put an end to his presidential hopes in 1988.
Like Yogi, for all of his famed verbal hiccups, Mr. Biden still comes across as affable, even likeable. It’s easy to see voters voting him the candidate with whom they’d most like to share a beer, but harder to envision them voting to put him in the Oval Office. Still, he might, like Donald Trump, be able to parlay his lack of verbal polish into electoral success this year with voters fed up with tightly scripted, vocally perfect candidates reading other people’s words.
The fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton won’t answer reporters’ questions and is at her best only in prepackaged video pieces has become a real problem for her. Ultimately, voters will see the real Hillary and wonder who the heck she is.
Voters are looking for authenticity, and Mr. Biden’s shoot-from-the-lip style may be appealing. Maybe he’ll even be tempted to plagiarize from Yogi who once claimed, “I never said most of the things I said.”
Especially his famous, “Make no mistake about this — Hillary Rodham Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America … and, quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.”
There’s an old Chinese curse, popularized by Robert F. Kennedy and Junior Soprano, “May you live in interesting times.” The most interesting of political times will be 2016.
As Yogi — or maybe Joe — would say, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
• Charlie Gerow is a political and public relations consultant in Harrisburg, Pa.
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Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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CNN (Web News)
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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/joe-biden-segregationists-cory-booker/index.html
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Biden defends comments about segregationist senators: 'There's not a racist bone in my body'
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2019-06-19
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Eric Bradner, Arlette Saenz, Caroline Kenny, Kate Sullivan
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( CNN ) An unapologetic Joe Biden defended his remarks about working with segregationist senators on Wednesday , telling reporters that `` there 's not a racist bone in my body . ''
`` Apologize for what ? '' Biden told CNN when asked about Booker 's call outside a fundraiser Wednesday evening in Rockville , Maryland .
`` Cory should apologize , '' he said . `` He knows better . There 's not a racist bone in my body . I 've been involved in civil rights my whole career . ''
Biden 's brief remarks were his first comments following a controversy that erupted after he pointed to two late segregationist senators as examples of colleagues he could work with during an era where `` at least there was some civility '' in the Senate .
At the fundraiser Tuesday , Biden recalled being a member of the Senate in the 1970s with Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights and desegregation . He specifically named Sens . James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia , who Biden called `` one of the meanest guys I ever knew . ''
`` I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland . He never called me 'boy , ' he always called me 'son , ' `` Biden told donors .
`` Well , guess what ? At least there was some civility . We got things done . We did n't agree on much of anything . We got things done . We got it finished , '' Biden said . `` But today , you look at the other side and you 're the enemy . Not the opposition , the enemy . We do n't talk to each other anymore . ''
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday evening , Biden said he `` could not have disagreed with Jim Eastland more '' and that he `` ran for the United States Senate because I disagreed with the views of the segregationists -- there were many of them in the Senate at the time . ''
`` The point I 'm making is you do n't have to agree . You do n't have to like the people in terms of their views , but you just simply make the case and you beat them . You beat them without changing the system , '' he said .
Booker shot back in an interview with Don Lemon on `` CNN Tonight '' later Wednesday evening .
`` I was raised to speak truth to power , '' Booker said . `` And that I will never apologize for doing that and Vice President Biden should n't need this lesson . ''
`` Somebody running for president of the United States , somebody running to be the leader of our party , should know that using the word 'boy ' in the way he did can cause hurt and pain . We need a presidential nominee and leader of our party to be sensitive to that , '' Booker added .
At a fundraiser Wednesday night , Biden brought up Eastland and Talmadge again -- but this time did not tout the civility of the era in which the two Southern segregationists were his Senate colleagues .
Instead , Biden pointed to the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy , a progressive icon , helping him land a spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee .
`` And we had to put up with the likes of like Jim Eastland and Hermy Talmadge and all those segregationists and all of that . And the fact of the matter is that we were able to do it because we were able to win -- we were able to beat them on everything they stood for , '' Biden said . `` We in fact detested what they stood for in terms of segregation and all the rest . ''
`` You do n't joke about calling black men 'boys . ' Men like James O. Eastland used words like that , and the racist policies that accompanied them , to perpetuate white supremacy and strip black Americans of our very humanity , '' Booker said in a statement .
`` Vice President Biden 's relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people , and for everyone . I have to tell Vice President Biden , as someone I respect , that he is wrong for using his relationships with Eastland and Talmadge as examples of how to bring our country together , '' he added . `` And frankly , I 'm disappointed that he has n't issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans . He should . ''
`` To coddle the reputations of segregationists , of people who if they had their way I would literally not be standing here as a member of the United States Senate , is -- I think it 's just it 's misinformed , '' Sen. Kamala Harris told reporters .
`` To suggest that individuals who literally made it their life 's work to take America back on the issue of race is a real problem for me , '' the California Democrat said .
`` I 'm not here to criticize other Democrats , but it 's never OK to celebrate segregationists . Never , '' said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts .
Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas said in an interview with `` Pod Save America '' that Biden 's remarks were not a good example of the civility the former vice president was calling for .
`` For the vice president to somehow say that what we 're seeing in this country today is a function of partisanship , or a lack of bipartisanship , completely ignores ... the legacy of slavery and the act of suppression of African Americans and communities of color right now , '' O'Rourke said .
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(CNN) An unapologetic Joe Biden defended his remarks about working with segregationist senators on Wednesday, telling reporters that "there's not a racist bone in my body."
"Apologize for what?" Biden told CNN when asked about Booker's call outside a fundraiser Wednesday evening in Rockville, Maryland.
"Cory should apologize," he said. "He knows better. There's not a racist bone in my body. I've been involved in civil rights my whole career."
Biden's brief remarks were his first comments following a controversy that erupted after he pointed to two late segregationist senators as examples of colleagues he could work with during an era where "at least there was some civility" in the Senate.
At the fundraiser Tuesday, Biden recalled being a member of the Senate in the 1970s with Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights and desegregation. He specifically named Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, who Biden called "one of the meanest guys I ever knew."
"I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy,' he always called me 'son,' " Biden told donors.
"Well, guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished," Biden said. "But today, you look at the other side and you're the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore."
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday evening, Biden said he "could not have disagreed with Jim Eastland more" and that he "ran for the United States Senate because I disagreed with the views of the segregationists -- there were many of them in the Senate at the time."
"The point I'm making is you don't have to agree. You don't have to like the people in terms of their views, but you just simply make the case and you beat them. You beat them without changing the system," he said.
Booker shot back in an interview with Don Lemon on "CNN Tonight" later Wednesday evening.
"I was raised to speak truth to power," Booker said. "And that I will never apologize for doing that and Vice President Biden shouldn't need this lesson."
"Somebody running for president of the United States, somebody running to be the leader of our party, should know that using the word 'boy' in the way he did can cause hurt and pain. We need a presidential nominee and leader of our party to be sensitive to that," Booker added.
At a fundraiser Wednesday night, Biden brought up Eastland and Talmadge again -- but this time did not tout the civility of the era in which the two Southern segregationists were his Senate colleagues.
Instead, Biden pointed to the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, a progressive icon, helping him land a spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"And we had to put up with the likes of like Jim Eastland and Hermy Talmadge and all those segregationists and all of that. And the fact of the matter is that we were able to do it because we were able to win -- we were able to beat them on everything they stood for," Biden said. "We in fact detested what they stood for in terms of segregation and all the rest."
Biden's Democratic presidential rivals sharply criticized his remarks Wednesday.
"You don't joke about calling black men 'boys.' Men like James O. Eastland used words like that, and the racist policies that accompanied them, to perpetuate white supremacy and strip black Americans of our very humanity," Booker said in a statement.
"Vice President Biden's relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people, and for everyone. I have to tell Vice President Biden, as someone I respect, that he is wrong for using his relationships with Eastland and Talmadge as examples of how to bring our country together," he added. "And frankly, I'm disappointed that he hasn't issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans. He should."
"To coddle the reputations of segregationists, of people who if they had their way I would literally not be standing here as a member of the United States Senate, is -- I think it's just it's misinformed," Sen. Kamala Harris told reporters.
"To suggest that individuals who literally made it their life's work to take America back on the issue of race is a real problem for me," the California Democrat said.
Other leading contenders were similarly critical Wednesday evening.
"I'm not here to criticize other Democrats, but it's never OK to celebrate segregationists. Never," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas said in an interview with "Pod Save America" that Biden's remarks were not a good example of the civility the former vice president was calling for.
"For the vice president to somehow say that what we're seeing in this country today is a function of partisanship, or a lack of bipartisanship, completely ignores ... the legacy of slavery and the act of suppression of African Americans and communities of color right now," O'Rourke said.
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Pelosi insists immigration plan include path to citizenship; some House Republicans vow to oppose major reform
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2014-01-29
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Washington ( CNN ) - As House Republicans headed to Maryland 's eastern shore to discuss their immigration reform principles , House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi drew a bright line on the most contentious issue in the debate , insisting , `` In our caucus , there has to be path to citizenship . ''
House Speaker John Boehner and a group of top Republican leaders , including GOP 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan , R-Wisconsin , are expected to release a set of principles this week to chart the party 's strategy forward on immigration legislation .
Boehner has said he plans to move forward on the issue , but there are deep divisions among House Republicans about how to deal with the approximately 11 million undocumented workers currently living in the United States .
While some Republicans and groups supporting major reform argue it will grow the economy by enlarging the work force , some party conservatives strongly disagree , arguing unemployment could go up if there is an influx of new immigrants .
`` Many of us…oppose tackling the issue of amnesty right now , '' Rep. John Fleming , R-Louisiana , a major opponent of enacting comprehensive reform right now , told CNN .
Opponents call a path to legalization for those 11 million amnesty . He believes a majority of House Republicans will not support major reform right now as he and others work to persuade the leadership now is not the time to move forward .
Staffs of 15 House conservatives met with aides to Sen. Jeff Sessions , R-Alabama , a vocal opponent of comprehensive reform , last week to help focus on the best arguments against moving forward and how to counter the push by proponents , several sources familiar with the meeting told CNN .
Sessions ' staff circulated a 30-page memo to all House Republicans on Wednesday laying out economic , political and moral arguments against comprehensive reform .
`` House Republicans , in crafting immigration principles , should reply to the President 's immigration campaign with a simple message : our focus is to help unemployed Americans get back to work – not grant amnesty or to answer the whims of immigration activists and CEOs , '' reads part of the memo obtained by CNN .
`` Significantly increasing the inflow of immigrants would adversely shock an already weak economy , lower average wages , increase unemployment , and decrease each American 's share of national output , '' also states the memo .
Groups supporting a major overhaul , including the Center for American Progress , countered the memo from Sessions ' office with their own projecting immigration reform would increase the nation 's growth rate and reduce the deficit .
The House Republican leaders are expected to present data with similar results on Thursday to the members at the retreat while opponents increase their efforts .
`` The last thing we want to have is an intramural battle within our party on immigration , '' Fleming said . `` It is going to be a rational discussion , a family discussion about what is best for America . ''
Many members say going on the record approving any plan to grant citizenship opens them up to primary challenges from candidates on the right who are adamantly opposed to major immigration legislation .
According to GOP sources familiar with the draft principles Boehner is crafting , they will propose a path to citizenship for children of undocumented parents in the U.S. now , but for adults House Republicans will say they should be eligible for legal status to stay in the country , not citizenship .
`` We 're not a country that says do our work but you can only have a limited legal status in our country , '' she said .
Fleming also dismissed that idea . `` If you start any form of legal pathway in any direction you will end up '' giving citizenship to many of them he argued .
One freshman House Democrat , Rep. Juan Vargas , D-California , said earlier this month he could accept a bill without citizenship , but Pelosi said he was an `` odd person out . ''
Pelosi said she spoke to Boehner , and he assured her the new GOP outline `` will be good '' and that the new proposals `` will be acceptable to probably all of us , and I hope that is the case . ''
But while she signaled House Democrats were open to a different path to citizenship than the one that was part of the bipartisan Senate bill that passed last year , Pelosi reiterated her opposition to efforts by the House GOP to push a measure that did n't include eventual citizenship .
`` It would n't be second class citizens , because they would n't be citizens . They would be second class residents of our country . I just ca n't subscribe to that . That 's not where our caucus is , nor our supporters on this issue , '' Pelosi said .
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6 years ago
Washington (CNN) - As House Republicans headed to Maryland's eastern shore to discuss their immigration reform principles, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi drew a bright line on the most contentious issue in the debate, insisting, "In our caucus, there has to be path to citizenship."
House Speaker John Boehner and a group of top Republican leaders, including GOP 2012 vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, are expected to release a set of principles this week to chart the party's strategy forward on immigration legislation.
Follow @deirdrewalshcnnFollow @KevinBohnCNN
Boehner has said he plans to move forward on the issue, but there are deep divisions among House Republicans about how to deal with the approximately 11 million undocumented workers currently living in the United States.
While some Republicans and groups supporting major reform argue it will grow the economy by enlarging the work force, some party conservatives strongly disagree, arguing unemployment could go up if there is an influx of new immigrants.
"Many of us…oppose tackling the issue of amnesty right now," Rep. John Fleming, R-Louisiana, a major opponent of enacting comprehensive reform right now, told CNN.
Opponents call a path to legalization for those 11 million amnesty. He believes a majority of House Republicans will not support major reform right now as he and others work to persuade the leadership now is not the time to move forward.
Staffs of 15 House conservatives met with aides to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, a vocal opponent of comprehensive reform, last week to help focus on the best arguments against moving forward and how to counter the push by proponents, several sources familiar with the meeting told CNN.
Sessions' staff circulated a 30-page memo to all House Republicans on Wednesday laying out economic, political and moral arguments against comprehensive reform.
"House Republicans, in crafting immigration principles, should reply to the President's immigration campaign with a simple message: our focus is to help unemployed Americans get back to work – not grant amnesty or to answer the whims of immigration activists and CEOs," reads part of the memo obtained by CNN.
"Significantly increasing the inflow of immigrants would adversely shock an already weak economy, lower average wages, increase unemployment, and decrease each American's share of national output," also states the memo.
Groups supporting a major overhaul, including the Center for American Progress, countered the memo from Sessions' office with their own projecting immigration reform would increase the nation's growth rate and reduce the deficit.
The House Republican leaders are expected to present data with similar results on Thursday to the members at the retreat while opponents increase their efforts.
"The last thing we want to have is an intramural battle within our party on immigration," Fleming said. "It is going to be a rational discussion, a family discussion about what is best for America."
Many members say going on the record approving any plan to grant citizenship opens them up to primary challenges from candidates on the right who are adamantly opposed to major immigration legislation.
According to GOP sources familiar with the draft principles Boehner is crafting, they will propose a path to citizenship for children of undocumented parents in the U.S. now, but for adults House Republicans will say they should be eligible for legal status to stay in the country, not citizenship.
Pelosi dismissed that approach.
"We're not a country that says do our work but you can only have a limited legal status in our country," she said.
Fleming also dismissed that idea. "If you start any form of legal pathway in any direction you will end up" giving citizenship to many of them he argued.
One freshman House Democrat, Rep. Juan Vargas, D-California, said earlier this month he could accept a bill without citizenship, but Pelosi said he was an "odd person out."
Pelosi said she spoke to Boehner, and he assured her the new GOP outline "will be good" and that the new proposals "will be acceptable to probably all of us, and I hope that is the case."
But while she signaled House Democrats were open to a different path to citizenship than the one that was part of the bipartisan Senate bill that passed last year, Pelosi reiterated her opposition to efforts by the House GOP to push a measure that didn't include eventual citizenship.
"It wouldn't be second class citizens, because they wouldn't be citizens. They would be second class residents of our country. I just can't subscribe to that. That's not where our caucus is, nor our supporters on this issue," Pelosi said.
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Jeff Sessions rips federal judges over anti-Trump bias
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2018-10-15
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Jeff Mordock
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions unleashed a blistering assault on federal judges Monday , saying anti-Trump bias has led some to abandon their role as legal referees and become “ political actors ” erecting roadblocks to the president ’ s policies .
In unusually stark language , Mr . Sessions suggested judges could soon face “ calls for their replacement ” if they don ’ t cool it .
He blasted one judge who called the president ’ s policy toward illegal immigrants “ heartless , ” and said another judge put “ the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary ’ s mind ” on trial to pave a path to block the government from asking about citizenship on the 2020 census .
“ Once we go down this road in American government , there is no turning back , ” Mr . Sessions said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation . “ We are seeing it in case after case . When a hot-button policy issue ends up in litigation , judges are starting to believe their role is to examine the entire process that led to the policy decision — to redo the entire political debate in their courtrooms .
Just ahead of the speech Mr . Sessions told The ███ that he saw anti-Trump resistance at play in some of the judges ’ moves .
“ I have to say I think some of it is , ” he said . “ I regret saying that , but I ’ m afraid it ’ s true in some of these cases and if so , it ’ s very wrong . ”
He added that unfair intervention from judges has left the administration in legal tangles , forcing the president to fight senseless and distracting cases .
“ He has monumental responsibilities and no court without serious cause should interrupt the function of government . It takes untold hours and time to deal with these things . It slows up multiple agencies of government , ” the attorney general told The Times .
Judges have been divided in their approach to Mr. Trump .
Some have delved into his Twitter account or looked back at statements he made during the campaign , citing them as evidence that justifies halting policy decisions made by Cabinet secretaries elsewhere in government .
Others , including a majority of justices on the Supreme Court in this year ’ s ruling upholding the president ’ s travel limits , looked chiefly at the policies themselves , saying that ’ s the crux of their judiciary ’ s role in the government overall .
In that case the majority in the 5-4 ruling said Mr. Trump was on firm national security grounds . The dissenters disagreed , with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the president overstepped security powers and illegally targeted Muslims .
Mr . Sessions didn ’ t mention that case , but most of the ones he did single out Monday stemmed from immigration-related fights .
He chided one judge who earlier this month issued an injunction blocking Homeland Security from phasing out special Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants from El Salvador , Haiti and elsewhere .
Federal law says the Homeland Security secretary ’ s TPS decisions can not be reviewed by courts , but the judge ruled he was reviewing the process by which the secretary reached the decision , not the decision itself .
One crux of his decision was Mr. Trump ’ s reported use of an insult to describe El Salvador and some African countries during a closed-door immigration meeting earlier this year , which U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen , an Obama appointee , said showed “ animus ” that could have poisoned the administration ’ s entire decision-making process .
In his speech Monday , Mr . Sessions also criticized U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis , who last year during a hearing told a Justice Department he couldn ’ t defend a policy “ that is so heartless . ”
Mr . Sessions criticized the judge at the time , telling him to stick to rulings on the law , not to opine about his political beliefs . The judge fired back , saying Mr . Sessions seemed “ to think the courts can not have an opinion . ”
The attorney general replied Monday evening that “ of course a judge can have political and policy opinions . But they should decide legal questions based on the law and the facts — not their policy preferences . ”
Mr . Sessions said that when Congress fails to act , that is a decision . And courts can not step in to do what Congress has decided not to do .
He called that “ judicial encroachment , ” and said it has become so bad that judges are trying to rehash the full decision-making of administrative actors in their courtrooms .
As part of that , judges are increasingly allowing intrusive legal “ discovery ” — the process of delving into records and decision-making to let judges review not just the final decision , but the way it was made .
Mr . Sessions said demanding handwritten notes from Cabinet secretaries or , in a case now before the Supreme Court , ordering the Commerce secretary to be deposed in the Census citizenship question case , goes too far .
“ The Census question — which has appeared in one form or another on the Census for over a hundred years — is either legal or illegal , ” the attorney general said . “ The words on the page don ’ t have a motive ; they are either permitted or they are not . But the judge has decided to hold a trial over the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary ’ s mind . ”
He said it would be the equivalent of forcing judges to reveal their conversations with their law clerks when they were deciding what to write in their opinions , or forcing members of Congress to divulge their discussions with their staffers .
“ Subjecting the executive branch to this kind of discovery is unacceptable . We intend to fight this and we intend to win , ” Mr . Sessions said .
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions unleashed a blistering assault on federal judges Monday, saying anti-Trump bias has led some to abandon their role as legal referees and become “political actors” erecting roadblocks to the president’s policies.
In unusually stark language, Mr. Sessions suggested judges could soon face “calls for their replacement” if they don’t cool it.
He blasted one judge who called the president’s policy toward illegal immigrants “heartless,” and said another judge put “the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary’s mind” on trial to pave a path to block the government from asking about citizenship on the 2020 census.
“Once we go down this road in American government, there is no turning back,” Mr. Sessions said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation. “We are seeing it in case after case. When a hot-button policy issue ends up in litigation, judges are starting to believe their role is to examine the entire process that led to the policy decision — to redo the entire political debate in their courtrooms.
Just ahead of the speech Mr. Sessions told The Washington Times that he saw anti-Trump resistance at play in some of the judges’ moves.
“I have to say I think some of it is,” he said. “I regret saying that, but I’m afraid it’s true in some of these cases and if so, it’s very wrong.”
He added that unfair intervention from judges has left the administration in legal tangles, forcing the president to fight senseless and distracting cases.
“He has monumental responsibilities and no court without serious cause should interrupt the function of government. It takes untold hours and time to deal with these things. It slows up multiple agencies of government,” the attorney general told The Times.
Judges have been divided in their approach to Mr. Trump.
Some have delved into his Twitter account or looked back at statements he made during the campaign, citing them as evidence that justifies halting policy decisions made by Cabinet secretaries elsewhere in government.
Others, including a majority of justices on the Supreme Court in this year’s ruling upholding the president’s travel limits, looked chiefly at the policies themselves, saying that’s the crux of their judiciary’s role in the government overall.
In that case the majority in the 5-4 ruling said Mr. Trump was on firm national security grounds. The dissenters disagreed, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the president overstepped security powers and illegally targeted Muslims.
Mr. Sessions didn’t mention that case, but most of the ones he did single out Monday stemmed from immigration-related fights.
He chided one judge who earlier this month issued an injunction blocking Homeland Security from phasing out special Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants from El Salvador, Haiti and elsewhere.
Federal law says the Homeland Security secretary’s TPS decisions cannot be reviewed by courts, but the judge ruled he was reviewing the process by which the secretary reached the decision, not the decision itself.
One crux of his decision was Mr. Trump’s reported use of an insult to describe El Salvador and some African countries during a closed-door immigration meeting earlier this year, which U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen, an Obama appointee, said showed “animus” that could have poisoned the administration’s entire decision-making process.
In his speech Monday, Mr. Sessions also criticized U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who last year during a hearing told a Justice Department he couldn’t defend a policy “that is so heartless.”
Mr. Sessions criticized the judge at the time, telling him to stick to rulings on the law, not to opine about his political beliefs. The judge fired back, saying Mr. Sessions seemed “to think the courts cannot have an opinion.”
The attorney general replied Monday evening that “of course a judge can have political and policy opinions. But they should decide legal questions based on the law and the facts — not their policy preferences.”
Mr. Sessions said that when Congress fails to act, that is a decision. And courts cannot step in to do what Congress has decided not to do.
He called that “judicial encroachment,” and said it has become so bad that judges are trying to rehash the full decision-making of administrative actors in their courtrooms.
As part of that, judges are increasingly allowing intrusive legal “discovery” — the process of delving into records and decision-making to let judges review not just the final decision, but the way it was made.
Mr. Sessions said demanding handwritten notes from Cabinet secretaries or, in a case now before the Supreme Court, ordering the Commerce secretary to be deposed in the Census citizenship question case, goes too far.
“The Census question — which has appeared in one form or another on the Census for over a hundred years — is either legal or illegal,” the attorney general said. “The words on the page don’t have a motive; they are either permitted or they are not. But the judge has decided to hold a trial over the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary’s mind.”
He said it would be the equivalent of forcing judges to reveal their conversations with their law clerks when they were deciding what to write in their opinions, or forcing members of Congress to divulge their discussions with their staffers.
“Subjecting the executive branch to this kind of discovery is unacceptable. We intend to fight this and we intend to win,” Mr. Sessions said.
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https://cnsnews.com/article/national/susan-jones/mcconnell-slap-dash-impeachment-will-be-dumped-senate
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McConnell: 'A Slap-Dash' Impeachment Will Be 'Dumped' on the Senate
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2019-12-17
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Susan Jones
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( ███ ) - `` The most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history is about to wind down after just 12 weeks , '' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ( R-Ky. ) said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday , one day before the anticipated vote by the full House to impeach President Donald Trump .
A slap-dash work product will be dumped on us over here in the Senate . I will have much more to say to our colleagues and the American people if and when the House does move ahead . But as we speak today , House Democrats still have the opportunity to do the right thing for the country and avoid setting this toxic new precedent . The House can turn back from a cliff and not deploy this constitutional remedy of last resort to deliver a pre-determined partisan outcome .
McConnell also addressed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( D-N.Y. ) , who set out his vision of the anticipated impeachment trial in an eleven-paragraph letter , delivered to McConnell `` by way of the news media . ''
`` The Democratic leader 's letter is an interesting document from the very beginning , '' McConnell said . `` For example , in the second of its 11 paragraphs , our colleague literally misquotes the Constitution . That error actually aligns with our colleague 's apparent confusion about some of the deeper questions . ''
In his letter to McConnell , Schumer said the Senate should exercise its `` sole power of impeachment under the Constitution with integrity and dignity . ''
McConnell noted that Schumer `` attributed to the Senate , quote , 'the sole power of impeachment . '
`` Well , there is his problem ... That 's the role the Constitution gives actually to the House , not to the Senate . They give it to the House . Article 1 , section 2 says the House of Representatives 'shall have the sole power of impeachment . ' Does n't sound ambiguous to me . ''
McConnell noted that Article 1 , section 3 says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments . `` We do n't create impeachments over here , Mr. President , we judge them , '' McConnell clarified .
Schumer , in his letter to McConnell , requested that the Senate call four witnesses , including former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and two other men who worked with Bolton and Mulvaney .
McConnell seemed to dismiss that request on Tuesday , as follows :
`` The House chose this road . It is their duty to investigate . It is their duty to meet the very high bar for undoing a national election . As Speaker Pelosi herself once said , it is the House 's obligation to quote , 'build an iron-clad case to act . ' That 's speaker Pelosi . 'It 's the House 's obligation to build an iron-clad case to act , ' end quote . If they fail , they fail .
`` It 's not the Senate 's job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to guilty , '' McConnell continued :
In fact , our colleague is already desperate to sign up the Senate for new fact-finding , which House Democrats themselves were too impatient to see through . Well , that suggests something to me . It suggests that even Democrats who do not like this president are beginning to realize how dramatically insufficient the House 's rushed process has been . Look , I hope the House of Representatives sees that , too . If House Democrats ' case is this deficient , this thin , the answer is not for the judge and jury to cure it over here in the Senate . The answer is the House should not impeach on this basis in the first place . But if the House plows ahead , if they send it up here in the Senate , we certainly do not need jurors to start brainstorming witness lists for the prosecution and demanding to lock them in before we 've even heard opening arguments .
McConnell said he looks forward to meeting with Schumer `` very soon and getting our important conversation back on the right foot . ''
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) (Photo: Screen capture)
(CNSNews.com) - "The most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history is about to wind down after just 12 weeks," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, one day before the anticipated vote by the full House to impeach President Donald Trump.
A slap-dash work product will be dumped on us over here in the Senate. I will have much more to say to our colleagues and the American people if and when the House does move ahead. But as we speak today, House Democrats still have the opportunity to do the right thing for the country and avoid setting this toxic new precedent. The House can turn back from a cliff and not deploy this constitutional remedy of last resort to deliver a pre-determined partisan outcome.
McConnell also addressed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who set out his vision of the anticipated impeachment trial in an eleven-paragraph letter, delivered to McConnell "by way of the news media."
"The Democratic leader's letter is an interesting document from the very beginning," McConnell said. "For example, in the second of its 11 paragraphs, our colleague literally misquotes the Constitution. That error actually aligns with our colleague's apparent confusion about some of the deeper questions."
In his letter to McConnell, Schumer said the Senate should exercise its "sole power of impeachment under the Constitution with integrity and dignity."
McConnell noted that Schumer "attributed to the Senate, quote, 'the sole power of impeachment.'
"Well, there is his problem...That's the role the Constitution gives actually to the House, not to the Senate. They give it to the House. Article 1, section 2 says the House of Representatives 'shall have the sole power of impeachment.' Doesn't sound ambiguous to me."
McConnell noted that Article 1, section 3 says the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. "We don't create impeachments over here, Mr. President, we judge them," McConnell clarified.
Schumer, in his letter to McConnell, requested that the Senate call four witnesses, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and two other men who worked with Bolton and Mulvaney.
McConnell seemed to dismiss that request on Tuesday, as follows:
"The House chose this road. It is their duty to investigate. It is their duty to meet the very high bar for undoing a national election. As Speaker Pelosi herself once said, it is the House's obligation to quote, 'build an iron-clad case to act.' That's speaker Pelosi. 'It's the House's obligation to build an iron-clad case to act,' end quote. If they fail, they fail.
"It's not the Senate's job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to guilty," McConnell continued:
In fact, our colleague is already desperate to sign up the Senate for new fact-finding, which House Democrats themselves were too impatient to see through. Well, that suggests something to me. It suggests that even Democrats who do not like this president are beginning to realize how dramatically insufficient the House's rushed process has been. Look, I hope the House of Representatives sees that, too. If House Democrats' case is this deficient, this thin, the answer is not for the judge and jury to cure it over here in the Senate. The answer is the House should not impeach on this basis in the first place. But if the House plows ahead, if they send it up here in the Senate, we certainly do not need jurors to start brainstorming witness lists for the prosecution and demanding to lock them in before we've even heard opening arguments.
McConnell said he looks forward to meeting with Schumer "very soon and getting our important conversation back on the right foot."
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/30/dem-state-officials-refusing-to-cooperate-with-trump-voter-fraud-probe.html
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Dem state officials refusing to cooperate with Trump voter fraud probe
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2017-06-30
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Judson Berger
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Democratic state officials already are refusing to cooperate with the voter fraud investigation ordered by President Trump , saying they will not hand over the extensive “ voter roll data ” the commission is seeking .
The response comes after Kris Kobach , the Kansas secretary of state serving as vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity , wrote to all 50 states this week asking for their input as well as voter registration data .
“ I have no intention of honoring this request . Virginia conducts fair , honest , and democratic elections , and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia , ” Virginia Democratic Gov . Terry McAuliffe countered in a statement Thursday , claiming the commission is based on the “ specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November . ”
Trump created the panel via executive order in May to review alleged voter fraud , after making the explosive claim that 3 million to 5 million people illegally voted in the 2016 presidential election .
In his letter , Kobach had asked for recommendations on how to improve election integrity and for guidance on which laws “ hinder ” that goal . But what rankled Democratic officials was his request for voter information including names , dates of birth , political party , the last four digits of Social Security numbers , voter history ( “ elections voted in ” ) , felony convictions , military status and more .
Kobach specified in the letter he would only request “ publicly-available voter roll data ” under each state ’ s laws .
Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said in a statement that her office would provide such information “ in the spirit of transparency. ” But , suggesting some of the requested data would not be sharable under state law , she said she would ensure “ the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data. ” Merrill also voiced concern that state officials “ have not been told precisely what the Commission is looking for . ”
McAuliffe , a former Democratic National Committee chairman and longtime Clinton family ally , said , “ At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump ’ s alternative election facts , and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression . ”
The governor declared he would not “ divert resources ” to this .
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla struck a similar chord , saying in a statement he would “ not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally . ”
He added , “ California 's participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President , the Vice President , and Mr. Kobach . ”
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes – a Democratic official in a state with a Republican governor – also said she does “ not intend to release Kentuckians ' sensitive personal data to the federal government . ”
“ Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country , ” she said in a statement .
Kobach told The Kansas City Star he 's just looking for the `` best data possible . ''
He rejected as `` nonsense '' any claims that the data could be used to suppress the vote , saying , “ The purpose of the commission is to quantify different forms of voter fraud and registration fraud and offer solutions . And so you have to have this data in order to do any meaningful research . ”
Trump ’ s voter fraud claims and commission have been controversial from the start .
He originally called for a major investigation into voter fraud back in January , after telling congressional leaders that 3 million to 5 million people illegally voted in the November election .
Trump said the probe would focus on those registered to vote in two states , “ those who are illegal ” and registered voters who are actually dead .
The commission was not created until months later and was panned by critics as a vehicle to pursue his claim about millions voting illegally . Trump won the Electoral College vote , and with it the presidency , but lost the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by about 3 million votes .
House Speaker Paul Ryan said back in January he had seen “ no evidence ” to back up Trump ’ s claim of millions of illegal votes . Trump has since said the issue mostly revolves around voter registration problems .
A 2012 Pew study indeed found evidence of outdated voter registration forms , though the author of that study tweeted earlier this year there is “ zero evidence ” of fraud .
There have been some documented cases of voter fraud , however , including cases Kobach has pursued in Kansas .
Kobach told ███ ' “ Sunday Morning Futures ” in May that the commission , chaired by Vice President Pence , would look beyond the 2016 election to cover voting irregularities and fraud and registration problems .
“ We 'll be gathering data from all 50 states and we 'll be using the federal government 's databases which can been very valuable , ” he said at the time .
Asked Friday about the state-level pushback , Pence Press Secretary Marc Lotter said the commission is “ seeking publicly available information per state law ” and noted that no one on the bipartisan commission itself objected .
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Democratic state officials already are refusing to cooperate with the voter fraud investigation ordered by President Trump, saying they will not hand over the extensive “voter roll data” the commission is seeking.
The response comes after Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state serving as vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, wrote to all 50 states this week asking for their input as well as voter registration data.
“I have no intention of honoring this request. Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia,” Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe countered in a statement Thursday, claiming the commission is based on the “specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November.”
Trump created the panel via executive order in May to review alleged voter fraud, after making the explosive claim that 3 million to 5 million people illegally voted in the 2016 presidential election.
TRUMP LAUNCHES VOTER FRAUD PROBE
In his letter, Kobach had asked for recommendations on how to improve election integrity and for guidance on which laws “hinder” that goal. But what rankled Democratic officials was his request for voter information including names, dates of birth, political party, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, voter history (“elections voted in”), felony convictions, military status and more.
Kobach specified in the letter he would only request “publicly-available voter roll data” under each state’s laws.
Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said in a statement that her office would provide such information “in the spirit of transparency.” But, suggesting some of the requested data would not be sharable under state law, she said she would ensure “the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data.” Merrill also voiced concern that state officials “have not been told precisely what the Commission is looking for.”
Virginia and California were more brazen in their response.
ACLU SEEKS EVIDENCE FOR TRUMP VOTER FRAUD CLAIMS
McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and longtime Clinton family ally, said, “At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.”
The governor declared he would not “divert resources” to this.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla struck a similar chord, saying in a statement he would “not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.”
He added, “California's participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach.”
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes – a Democratic official in a state with a Republican governor – also said she does “not intend to release Kentuckians' sensitive personal data to the federal government.”
“Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country,” she said in a statement.
Kobach told The Kansas City Star he's just looking for the "best data possible."
He rejected as "nonsense" any claims that the data could be used to suppress the vote, saying, “The purpose of the commission is to quantify different forms of voter fraud and registration fraud and offer solutions. And so you have to have this data in order to do any meaningful research.”
Trump’s voter fraud claims and commission have been controversial from the start.
He originally called for a major investigation into voter fraud back in January, after telling congressional leaders that 3 million to 5 million people illegally voted in the November election.
Trump said the probe would focus on those registered to vote in two states, “those who are illegal” and registered voters who are actually dead.
The commission was not created until months later and was panned by critics as a vehicle to pursue his claim about millions voting illegally. Trump won the Electoral College vote, and with it the presidency, but lost the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by about 3 million votes.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said back in January he had seen “no evidence” to back up Trump’s claim of millions of illegal votes. Trump has since said the issue mostly revolves around voter registration problems.
A 2012 Pew study indeed found evidence of outdated voter registration forms, though the author of that study tweeted earlier this year there is “zero evidence” of fraud.
There have been some documented cases of voter fraud, however, including cases Kobach has pursued in Kansas.
Kobach told Fox News' “Sunday Morning Futures” in May that the commission, chaired by Vice President Pence, would look beyond the 2016 election to cover voting irregularities and fraud and registration problems.
“We'll be gathering data from all 50 states and we'll be using the federal government's databases which can been very valuable,” he said at the time.
Asked Friday about the state-level pushback, Pence Press Secretary Marc Lotter said the commission is “seeking publicly available information per state law” and noted that no one on the bipartisan commission itself objected.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/13/michael-bloomberg-trump-2020-1167159
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Michael Bloomberg’s $500 million anti-Trump moonshot
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2019-02-13
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Marc Caputo, Christopher Cadelago, Russell Arben Fox
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Billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is preparing to spend at least $ 500 million from his own pocket to deny President Donald Trump a second term , according to Democratic operatives briefed on his plans .
Bloomberg has not yet announced whether he will run in the Democratic primary . If he runs , he will use that half-billion-dollar stake — roughly $ 175 million more than the Trump campaign spent over the course of the entire 2016 election cycle — to fuel his campaign through the 2020 primary season , with the expectation that the sum represents a floor , not a ceiling , on his potential spending .
If Bloomberg declines to seek the presidency , his intention is to run an unprecedented data-heavy campaign designed to operate as a shadow political party for the eventual Democratic nominee .
“ That ’ ll get us through the first few months , ” Kevin Sheekey , a top adviser to the former New York mayor , told ███ when asked about the $ 500 million plan , which is just 1 percent of Bloomberg ’ s estimated net worth .
“ Mike spent $ 100 million in his last New York City election . And you can do the math as you think more broadly but New York City is 3 percent of the national population , ” Sheekey said . “ I ’ m not suggesting it ’ s straight math . But I ’ m suggesting that when Mike Bloomberg is committed to making a difference and seeing something though , generally speaking he ’ s pretty unabashed in doing so . ”
███ Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the # 1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from ███ . You can unsubscribe at any time . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply .
To that end , Bloomberg has assembled a political team that , since late November , has been meeting at least once weekly in the Manhattan headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies to consider what some aides have called “ Plan A ” and “ Plan B . ”
Plan A is straightforward : Bloomberg runs for president as a Democrat , not as an independent candidate as he had mused privately in the past . According to Plan B , Bloomberg uses all the data — ranging from meticulously researched profiles of voters to polling data on the top issues that move the electorate — and field staff to help the otherwise-outgunned Democratic Party nominee to end Trump ’ s presidency .
Bloomberg said Friday at an event in Orlando , Fla. , that he ’ ll make a decision in “ three more weeks . ”
He also made clear that he ’ s not waiting on former Vice President Joe Biden , who ’ s also mulling a bid for president and who , Bloomberg advisers acknowledge , could draw from the same pool of moderate primary voters .
`` My decision does n't depend on what other people are going to do , '' Bloomberg told The Associated Press . `` My decision depends on whether or not I think I can make a difference . ''
Still , the subject of Biden has come up in discussions with those who have discussed Bloomberg ’ s options with his team .
In those conversations , Democratic operatives say , Bloomberg ’ s team members have indicated that they ’ re polling and conducting focus groups , and are familiar with the primary election calendar and the complicated politics of wringing delegates from various states . They ’ re also under no illusions about the difficulties of a Democratic Party newcomer running as a centrist in a progressive primary .
But Bloomberg ’ s aides are operating under the assumption that while the billionaire can ’ t buy the nomination , hundreds of millions of dollars can put him in contention .
“ Five hundred million is just an obscene amount of money . It ’ s crazy , enough to buy up all the TV ad inventory in the seven or eight states that really matter in a primary , ” said a Democratic consultant familiar with the plans who privately shared information from a conversation with a top Bloomberg adviser .
The consultant said it was unclear what Bloomberg would ultimately decide . But the mission would be similar either way .
“ They ’ re going to do the infrastructure and logistical work to fill in the gaps for the state and national parties so that whoever the nominee is would inherit a state-of-the-art , fully functioning infrastructure , ” the consultant said . “ It ’ s being done with a clear and specific purpose : stopping Donald Trump . ”
Bloomberg ’ s team knows the former mayor would need every penny to make his case to a Democratic electorate that ’ s shifting ever-leftward and that ’ s increasingly suspicious of billionaires and older white males .
Progressives also doubt his Democratic bona fides for having backed Republican candidates in the past , supporting the stop-and-frisk New York City policing policies that disproportionately targeted African-Americans and supporting gas and oil pipelines that leave some Democrats doubting his commitment to fight climate change — despite his commitment of $ 218 million to help cities reduce their carbon footprint while also financing the Sierra Club ’ s unprecedented Beyond Coal campaign that has shuttered 282 coal-fired electricity plants .
Though raised a Democrat , Bloomberg , 76 , was elected to the first of his three New York mayoral terms as a Republican , became an independent in 2007 before he left office in 2013 and registered last year as a Democrat .
But if Bloomberg runs , his polling would likely show there ’ s a path for a centrist in a field of progressives , who presumably would cannibalize the progressive base . Surveys from Bloomberg ’ s longtime pollster , Doug Schoen , shows that 80 percent of Democratic primary voters respond positively to Bloomberg ’ s biography .
“ When people learn about his involvement in climate change activism and gun safety , and when they learn that he ’ s not just a billionaire — but he came from a middle-class background and his dad never earned more than $ 6,000 a year , and you talk about the work he ’ s done on the ground and his philanthropy — Dem primary voters view him favorably , ” said one Democrat familiar with the polling .
With a net worth of $ 50 billion , Bloomberg contributed so much last year to charity — $ 767 million — that he was the nation ’ s second-biggest philanthropist behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos . Bloomberg ’ s charitable causes also overlap top issues for the Democratic electorate , such as climate change and gun control .
His giving provides a ripe area for contrast : the Bloomberg Philanthropies ’ compared with the Donald J. Trump Foundation . Bloomberg ’ s charity has given away and pledged at least $ 8.2 billion to actual charities . Trump ’ s foundation agreed last year to dissolve amid an investigation from New York ’ s attorney general , who said it was “ functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump ’ s business and political interests [ and engaged in ] a shocking pattern of illegality . ”
In a primary , Bloomberg ’ s deep pockets would enable an extended run with adequate resources , said Sheekey , a longtime political adviser .
“ The pressure for most people is two things : the need to raise money and the need to find the best and most-competitive staff , ” he said . “ Obviously , the first is not a problem for Mike and since we started this process , we ’ ve put together a core staff that we ’ re very happy with that is committed to staying with Mike as long as he wants , partly because Mike has talked about , if he doesn ’ t run , going down a separate path and having the kind of impact on a larger scale than he did in the last midterm . ”
Sheekey , who makes the case for Bloomberg for president better than Bloomberg himself , runs the weekly data-and-strategy meetings with Howard Wolfson , who oversaw Bloomberg ’ s political operation last year — when the former mayor contributed $ 110 million to 24 Democratic congressional candidates , 21 of whom won .
His top adviser at City Hall and the executive director of Bloomberg Philanthropies , Patti Harris , rounds out the inner circle ’ s troika .
A data-driven effort like the one the Bloomberg operation envisions , as first reported by the Atlantic , hearkens back to the roots of the billionaire ’ s wealth . A self-made man , he parlayed a small Wall Street fortune into a mammoth financial data and information services firm that branched out into a fully functioning media empire .
Yet Bloomberg has had what appears to be paralysis by analysis . He had planned to announce his decision on whether to run at the beginning of the month . But he needed more time and more numbers to decide by March — a date that ’ s still not set in stone .
“ The data , ” Sheekey said , “ is a little more complicated than what he initially envisioned . And I think he also realized he ’ s not under any pressure to decide . ”
|
Michael Bloomberg’s team knows the former New York City mayor would need every penny to make his case to a Democratic electorate. | Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies 2020 elections Michael Bloomberg’s $500 million anti-Trump moonshot The sum represents a floor, not a ceiling, on the billionaire’s potential spending to defeat the president in 2020.
Billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is preparing to spend at least $500 million from his own pocket to deny President Donald Trump a second term, according to Democratic operatives briefed on his plans.
Bloomberg has not yet announced whether he will run in the Democratic primary. If he runs, he will use that half-billion-dollar stake — roughly $175 million more than the Trump campaign spent over the course of the entire 2016 election cycle — to fuel his campaign through the 2020 primary season, with the expectation that the sum represents a floor, not a ceiling, on his potential spending.
Story Continued Below
If Bloomberg declines to seek the presidency, his intention is to run an unprecedented data-heavy campaign designed to operate as a shadow political party for the eventual Democratic nominee.
“That’ll get us through the first few months,” Kevin Sheekey, a top adviser to the former New York mayor, told POLITICO when asked about the $500 million plan, which is just 1 percent of Bloomberg’s estimated net worth.
“Mike spent $100 million in his last New York City election. And you can do the math as you think more broadly but New York City is 3 percent of the national population,” Sheekey said. “I’m not suggesting it’s straight math. But I’m suggesting that when Mike Bloomberg is committed to making a difference and seeing something though, generally speaking he’s pretty unabashed in doing so.”
POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
To that end, Bloomberg has assembled a political team that, since late November, has been meeting at least once weekly in the Manhattan headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies to consider what some aides have called “Plan A” and “Plan B.”
Plan A is straightforward: Bloomberg runs for president as a Democrat, not as an independent candidate as he had mused privately in the past. According to Plan B, Bloomberg uses all the data — ranging from meticulously researched profiles of voters to polling data on the top issues that move the electorate — and field staff to help the otherwise-outgunned Democratic Party nominee to end Trump’s presidency.
Bloomberg said Friday at an event in Orlando, Fla., that he’ll make a decision in “ three more weeks .”
He also made clear that he’s not waiting on former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s also mulling a bid for president and who, Bloomberg advisers acknowledge, could draw from the same pool of moderate primary voters.
"My decision doesn't depend on what other people are going to do," Bloomberg told The Associated Press. "My decision depends on whether or not I think I can make a difference."
Still, the subject of Biden has come up in discussions with those who have discussed Bloomberg’s options with his team.
In those conversations, Democratic operatives say, Bloomberg’s team members have indicated that they’re polling and conducting focus groups, and are familiar with the primary election calendar and the complicated politics of wringing delegates from various states. They’re also under no illusions about the difficulties of a Democratic Party newcomer running as a centrist in a progressive primary.
But Bloomberg’s aides are operating under the assumption that while the billionaire can’t buy the nomination, hundreds of millions of dollars can put him in contention.
“Five hundred million is just an obscene amount of money. It’s crazy, enough to buy up all the TV ad inventory in the seven or eight states that really matter in a primary,” said a Democratic consultant familiar with the plans who privately shared information from a conversation with a top Bloomberg adviser.
The consultant said it was unclear what Bloomberg would ultimately decide. But the mission would be similar either way.
“They’re going to do the infrastructure and logistical work to fill in the gaps for the state and national parties so that whoever the nominee is would inherit a state-of-the-art, fully functioning infrastructure,” the consultant said. “It’s being done with a clear and specific purpose: stopping Donald Trump.”
Bloomberg’s team knows the former mayor would need every penny to make his case to a Democratic electorate that’s shifting ever-leftward and that’s increasingly suspicious of billionaires and older white males.
Progressives also doubt his Democratic bona fides for having backed Republican candidates in the past, supporting the stop-and-frisk New York City policing policies that disproportionately targeted African-Americans and supporting gas and oil pipelines that leave some Democrats doubting his commitment to fight climate change — despite his commitment of $218 million to help cities reduce their carbon footprint while also financing the Sierra Club’s unprecedented Beyond Coal campaign that has shuttered 282 coal-fired electricity plants.
Though raised a Democrat, Bloomberg, 76, was elected to the first of his three New York mayoral terms as a Republican, became an independent in 2007 before he left office in 2013 and registered last year as a Democrat.
But if Bloomberg runs, his polling would likely show there’s a path for a centrist in a field of progressives, who presumably would cannibalize the progressive base. Surveys from Bloomberg’s longtime pollster, Doug Schoen, shows that 80 percent of Democratic primary voters respond positively to Bloomberg’s biography.
“When people learn about his involvement in climate change activism and gun safety, and when they learn that he’s not just a billionaire — but he came from a middle-class background and his dad never earned more than $6,000 a year, and you talk about the work he’s done on the ground and his philanthropy — Dem primary voters view him favorably,” said one Democrat familiar with the polling.
With a net worth of $50 billion, Bloomberg contributed so much last year to charity — $767 million — that he was the nation’s second-biggest philanthropist behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg’s charitable causes also overlap top issues for the Democratic electorate, such as climate change and gun control.
His giving provides a ripe area for contrast: the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ compared with the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Bloomberg’s charity has given away and pledged at least $8.2 billion to actual charities. Trump’s foundation agreed last year to dissolve amid an investigation from New York’s attorney general, who said it was “functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests [and engaged in] a shocking pattern of illegality.”
In a primary, Bloomberg’s deep pockets would enable an extended run with adequate resources, said Sheekey, a longtime political adviser.
“The pressure for most people is two things: the need to raise money and the need to find the best and most-competitive staff,” he said. “Obviously, the first is not a problem for Mike and since we started this process, we’ve put together a core staff that we’re very happy with that is committed to staying with Mike as long as he wants, partly because Mike has talked about, if he doesn’t run, going down a separate path and having the kind of impact on a larger scale than he did in the last midterm.”
Sheekey, who makes the case for Bloomberg for president better than Bloomberg himself, runs the weekly data-and-strategy meetings with Howard Wolfson, who oversaw Bloomberg’s political operation last year — when the former mayor contributed $110 million to 24 Democratic congressional candidates, 21 of whom won.
His top adviser at City Hall and the executive director of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Patti Harris, rounds out the inner circle’s troika.
A data-driven effort like the one the Bloomberg operation envisions, as first reported by the Atlantic, hearkens back to the roots of the billionaire’s wealth. A self-made man, he parlayed a small Wall Street fortune into a mammoth financial data and information services firm that branched out into a fully functioning media empire.
Yet Bloomberg has had what appears to be paralysis by analysis. He had planned to announce his decision on whether to run at the beginning of the month. But he needed more time and more numbers to decide by March — a date that’s still not set in stone.
“The data,” Sheekey said, “is a little more complicated than what he initially envisioned. And I think he also realized he’s not under any pressure to decide.”
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1ntXwiIe9U6DUlD2
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terrorism
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The Guardian
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/01/isis-note-new-york-attack-suspect-truck
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Isis note found in New York attacker's truck, governor says
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2017-11-01
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Joanna Walters, Ed Pilkington
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Investigators at the scene of a terrorist attack in New York , where a man mowed people down by driving a rented truck down a popular cycle path on Tuesday afternoon , have found a note at the scene referencing Islamic State , the governor of New York said on Wednesday morning .
Trump criticizes Democrats after reports visa program admitted alleged attacker Read more
Andrew Cuomo told CBS the investigation into the attack was continuing but said law enforcement officers had possession of the note .
It was reportedly found inside the truck and mentioned Isis .
The man who rented a pickup truck and drove it for about a mile on the bike lane on the west side of Manhattan was in critical condition in a New York City hospital after being shot in the abdomen by a police officers , but is expected to survive .
Cuomo called him a “ depraved coward ” , and insisted the attack “ did not instill terror ” among New Yorkers .
The stretch of cycle lane in lower Manhattan near the site of the 9/11 attack remained sealed off on Wednesday morning . Although the bodies of the eight dead and the 11 injured had been quickly taken away after the attack , mangled bicycles were still strewn along the approximately one-mile length of path where people were struck .
The truck was also still at the scene , with its smashed front visible . It had collided with a school bus at the corner of Chambers Street , bringing the rampage to a halt . The school bus had been removed .
Almost two miles of the cycle lane , which is heavily used by joggers and cyclists for commuting and leisure , was blocked off , as were some adjoining roads .
The site is just a few blocks from the One World Trade Center skyscraper that was only recently completed on the site of the original Twin Towers , destroyed in the terrorist attack of September 11 , 2001 , killing almost 3,000 people .
Tuesday ’ s attack represented the highest death toll from a terrorist incident in the city since 9/11 . In the intervening years there have been a number of attempted attacks and smaller incidents , including a bombing just over a year ago , for which the perpetrator was just convicted , but none taking as many as the eight lives lost on Tuesday .
Despite statements of defiance from public officials and displays of resilience in the city as residents went about their day and attended the Halloween Parade on Tuesday evening , there were still some rattled nerves .
A gun incident in the East Village in Manhattan on Wednesday morning left two people shot and lying injured on the ground close to the busy intersection at Astor Place .
The police reported that a man and a woman had been shot near the Cooper Union college there , and social media lit up with reports of “ bodies strewn across the concrete , taken to hospital moments later . ”
Meanwhile police and the FBI urged members of the public to give them any photos or video of the attack that could help .
Donald Trump took aim at Democrats and an immigration lottery program in the wake of the attack – prompting accusations he was immediately politicising the tragedy .
In a press conference on Tuesday evening , the New York police commissioner , James O ’ Neill , asked about reports that the driver of the truck shouted “ Allahu Akbar ” , meaning “ God is great ” in Arabic , after carrying out his attack , said that while he could not confirm that , the way the incident unfolded was significant . “ The MO [ modus operandi ] of the attack is consistent with what has been going on , ” O ’ Neill said .
The victims reflected a city that is a melting pot and a magnet for visitors : one of the dead was from Belgium ; five were from Argentina and were celebrating the 30th anniversary of a school graduation , according to officials . The injured included students and staffers on a school bus that the driver rammed .
“ This was an act of terror , and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians , aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them , ” said Mayor Bill de Blasio , a Democrat .
The suspect in the attack is 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov , a national of Uzbekistan who immigrated to the US in 2010 and was a driver for the car service Uber , living in New Jersey .
The president of Uzbekistan , Shavkat Mirziyoyev , has sent his condolences to Donald Trump and offered his country ’ s assistance in investigating the attack . Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan and is one of the most closed-off post-Soviet republics .
Investigators converged on an apartment building in Patterson , New Jersey , where the suspect is understood to have lived .
|
Investigators at the scene of a terrorist attack in New York, where a man mowed people down by driving a rented truck down a popular cycle path on Tuesday afternoon, have found a note at the scene referencing Islamic State, the governor of New York said on Wednesday morning.
Trump criticizes Democrats after reports visa program admitted alleged attacker Read more
Andrew Cuomo told CBS the investigation into the attack was continuing but said law enforcement officers had possession of the note.
It was reportedly found inside the truck and mentioned Isis.
The man who rented a pickup truck and drove it for about a mile on the bike lane on the west side of Manhattan was in critical condition in a New York City hospital after being shot in the abdomen by a police officers, but is expected to survive.
Cuomo called him a “depraved coward”, and insisted the attack “did not instill terror” among New Yorkers.
The stretch of cycle lane in lower Manhattan near the site of the 9/11 attack remained sealed off on Wednesday morning. Although the bodies of the eight dead and the 11 injured had been quickly taken away after the attack, mangled bicycles were still strewn along the approximately one-mile length of path where people were struck.
The truck was also still at the scene, with its smashed front visible. It had collided with a school bus at the corner of Chambers Street, bringing the rampage to a halt. The school bus had been removed.
Almost two miles of the cycle lane, which is heavily used by joggers and cyclists for commuting and leisure, was blocked off, as were some adjoining roads.
The site is just a few blocks from the One World Trade Center skyscraper that was only recently completed on the site of the original Twin Towers, destroyed in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, killing almost 3,000 people.
Tuesday’s attack represented the highest death toll from a terrorist incident in the city since 9/11. In the intervening years there have been a number of attempted attacks and smaller incidents, including a bombing just over a year ago, for which the perpetrator was just convicted, but none taking as many as the eight lives lost on Tuesday.
Despite statements of defiance from public officials and displays of resilience in the city as residents went about their day and attended the Halloween Parade on Tuesday evening, there were still some rattled nerves.
A gun incident in the East Village in Manhattan on Wednesday morning left two people shot and lying injured on the ground close to the busy intersection at Astor Place.
The police reported that a man and a woman had been shot near the Cooper Union college there, and social media lit up with reports of “bodies strewn across the concrete, taken to hospital moments later.”
Meanwhile police and the FBI urged members of the public to give them any photos or video of the attack that could help.
Donald Trump took aim at Democrats and an immigration lottery program in the wake of the attack – prompting accusations he was immediately politicising the tragedy.
In a press conference on Tuesday evening, the New York police commissioner, James O’Neill, asked about reports that the driver of the truck shouted “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is great” in Arabic, after carrying out his attack, said that while he could not confirm that, the way the incident unfolded was significant. “The MO [modus operandi] of the attack is consistent with what has been going on,” O’Neill said.
The victims reflected a city that is a melting pot and a magnet for visitors: one of the dead was from Belgium; five were from Argentina and were celebrating the 30th anniversary of a school graduation, according to officials. The injured included students and staffers on a school bus that the driver rammed.
“This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.
The suspect in the attack is 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, a national of Uzbekistan who immigrated to the US in 2010 and was a driver for the car service Uber, living in New Jersey.
The president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has sent his condolences to Donald Trump and offered his country’s assistance in investigating the attack. Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan and is one of the most closed-off post-Soviet republics.
Investigators converged on an apartment building in Patterson, New Jersey, where the suspect is understood to have lived.
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www.theguardian.com
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The Flip Side
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https://www.theflipside.io/archives/ceasefire-extended-in-syria
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Ceasefire Extended in Syria
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The left supports eliminating the electoral college , arguing that all votes should count equally regardless of which state they 're from .
“ What makes America unique as a global power is that we have allies who share our interests and values — and amplify our power at a low cost to us — while Russia and China have only client states , like Syria , and customers… ‘ If the Germans and Japanese conclude that America ’ s security guarantees are no longer valid , they will each get nuclear weapons — which we don ’ t want and they don ’ t want ’ … [ this ] will not make for a more stable world or a cheaper U.S. foreign policy . ”
“ The U.S. still needs to keep ISIS from threatening U.S. interests , even as it manages the departure of American troops and tries to help create a path forward through the new dynamics on the ground…
“ The U.S.-led coalition should work with Turkey , Jordan , and Iraq to reinforce their borders and ensure that no escaped ISIS fighters or family members are able to cross . With the small presence remaining at Syria ’ s al-Tanf Garrison as well as other bases in the region , the U.S. can still use its intelligence assets along the Iraq-Syria , Jordan-Syria , and Turkey-Syria borders to monitor ISIS movements . The U.S. will also need to maintain its battlefield communications channel with Russia , the Syrian government ’ s ally , to ensure that , when necessary , it has the ability to strike ISIS or extremist targets from Syrian airspace . ”
“ Putin wants to bring about a world where Russia regains the global prestige and influence it lost after the Cold War . In the Middle East , at least , Putin ’ s Russia is well on its way… Yet if Russia is a great power , the U.S. is still the superpower…
“ Russia can say that it is fighting terrorism in Syria and elsewhere , but only the U.S. really has the capability to keep groups like the Islamic State at bay . Moscow can change the trajectory of the Syrian civil war , but it can ’ t unlock the flow of international aid dollars that will eventually be needed to rebuild that country — only Washington , in partnership with Europe , can . In short , Russia can chip away at the American-led order in the region , but only the U.S. can destroy that order altogether . Right now , Washington is doing a pretty good job of that . ”
Some argue , “ One of the criticisms leveled at President Donald Trump ’ s actions in Syria is that they represent a gain for Russia . That , however , begs the question : What is Russia gaining that threatens or diminishes U.S. interests ? … Russia has tried to be friendly with everyone in the Middle East , Syria and Turkey , Iran and Saudi Arabia , Israel and those who want to see it destroyed . That was possible so long as the United States was the dominant outside power in the region . Russia could be the understanding shoulder whenever Middle Eastern countries had disagreements or disappointments with the U.S…
“ That ’ s not possible to the extent Russia becomes the dominant outside power , as it is in Syria . As second fiddle , you can dance around the edges of the snake pit of Middle East geopolitics . As first chair , you are in the pit . The others in the pit hate each other . And they periodically shoot at each other… There are plenty of reasons to worry about [ Trump ’ s foreign policy ] . A larger role for Russia in the Middle East isn ’ t one of them . ”
Finally , some worry that “ the opportunity to trash Trump will revive an interventionist temper among Democrats… The problem with the revived interventionist position is that it makes little sense . The United States has been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 years with no end in sight . The U.S. position in Syria — an armed occupation by a token force inside a foreign country without permission or legal mandate — was eroding long before Trump acted . Neither the Syrians nor the Turks were about to allow the Kurds to consolidate an independent region within Syria . If either decided to act , the United States had no desire to escalate to stop them…
“ What is clear in Afghanistan and Syria is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans , neither Obama nor Trump , neither the Democratic House nor the Republican Senate , neither Biden nor Buttigieg is prepared to commit the forces and resources needed to ‘ win. ’ Instead , they will spend enough in lives and resources to avoid losing . Trump ’ s toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance , his desire to pose as both the tough guy and the peacemaker are truly destructive . But so , too , is the establishment assumption that the United States can police the world with a ‘ light footprint ’ without finding ourselves mired in endless wars for which we lack the will either to win or to end . ”
“ Trump ’ s defenders will say this evidence is all circumstantial . But circumstantial evidence is not weak evidence : it ’ s simply evidence based on the circumstances in which an act of wrongdoing is committed — such as the license plate of a car that speeds away from a bank just after that bank is robbed . Criminals are convicted on such evidence all the time . They will also say that there ’ s no explicit quid pro quo proposal here . But… ‘ even when a corrupt deal is struck implicitly , the government can still prosecute extortion on a quid pro quo basis . Circumstantial evidence can be enough to prove a criminal exchange. ’ … “ In the absence of an explicit quid pro quo over restarting aid , the context and circumstances are what will become the focus of the investigation . There is enough here to support impeachment . Whether it is also enough to convince Republicans and lead to removal is another matter . ”
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From the Left
The left supports eliminating the electoral college, arguing that all votes should count equally regardless of which state they're from.
“What makes America unique as a global power is that we have allies who share our interests and values — and amplify our power at a low cost to us — while Russia and China have only client states, like Syria, and customers… ‘If the Germans and Japanese conclude that America’s security guarantees are no longer valid, they will each get nuclear weapons — which we don’t want and they don’t want’… [this] will not make for a more stable world or a cheaper U.S. foreign policy.”
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
“The U.S. still needs to keep ISIS from threatening U.S. interests, even as it manages the departure of American troops and tries to help create a path forward through the new dynamics on the ground…
“The U.S.-led coalition should work with Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq to reinforce their borders and ensure that no escaped ISIS fighters or family members are able to cross. With the small presence remaining at Syria’s al-Tanf Garrison as well as other bases in the region, the U.S. can still use its intelligence assets along the Iraq-Syria, Jordan-Syria, and Turkey-Syria borders to monitor ISIS movements. The U.S. will also need to maintain its battlefield communications channel with Russia, the Syrian government’s ally, to ensure that, when necessary, it has the ability to strike ISIS or extremist targets from Syrian airspace.”
Joseph Votel and Elizabeth Dent, The Atlantic
“Putin wants to bring about a world where Russia regains the global prestige and influence it lost after the Cold War. In the Middle East, at least, Putin’s Russia is well on its way… Yet if Russia is a great power, the U.S. is still the superpower…
“Russia can say that it is fighting terrorism in Syria and elsewhere, but only the U.S. really has the capability to keep groups like the Islamic State at bay. Moscow can change the trajectory of the Syrian civil war, but it can’t unlock the flow of international aid dollars that will eventually be needed to rebuild that country — only Washington, in partnership with Europe, can. In short, Russia can chip away at the American-led order in the region, but only the U.S. can destroy that order altogether. Right now, Washington is doing a pretty good job of that.”
Hal Brands, Bloomberg
Some argue, “One of the criticisms leveled at President Donald Trump’s actions in Syria is that they represent a gain for Russia. That, however, begs the question: What is Russia gaining that threatens or diminishes U.S. interests?… Russia has tried to be friendly with everyone in the Middle East, Syria and Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Israel and those who want to see it destroyed. That was possible so long as the United States was the dominant outside power in the region. Russia could be the understanding shoulder whenever Middle Eastern countries had disagreements or disappointments with the U.S…
“That’s not possible to the extent Russia becomes the dominant outside power, as it is in Syria. As second fiddle, you can dance around the edges of the snake pit of Middle East geopolitics. As first chair, you are in the pit. The others in the pit hate each other. And they periodically shoot at each other… There are plenty of reasons to worry about [Trump’s foreign policy]. A larger role for Russia in the Middle East isn’t one of them.”
Robert Robb, Arizona Republic
Finally, some worry that “the opportunity to trash Trump will revive an interventionist temper among Democrats… The problem with the revived interventionist position is that it makes little sense. The United States has been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 years with no end in sight. The U.S. position in Syria — an armed occupation by a token force inside a foreign country without permission or legal mandate — was eroding long before Trump acted. Neither the Syrians nor the Turks were about to allow the Kurds to consolidate an independent region within Syria. If either decided to act, the United States had no desire to escalate to stop them…
“What is clear in Afghanistan and Syria is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, neither Obama nor Trump, neither the Democratic House nor the Republican Senate, neither Biden nor Buttigieg is prepared to commit the forces and resources needed to ‘win.’ Instead, they will spend enough in lives and resources to avoid losing. Trump’s toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance, his desire to pose as both the tough guy and the peacemaker are truly destructive. But so, too, is the establishment assumption that the United States can police the world with a ‘light footprint’ without finding ourselves mired in endless wars for which we lack the will either to win or to end.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post
“Trump’s defenders will say this evidence is all circumstantial. But circumstantial evidence is not weak evidence: it’s simply evidence based on the circumstances in which an act of wrongdoing is committed — such as the license plate of a car that speeds away from a bank just after that bank is robbed. Criminals are convicted on such evidence all the time. They will also say that there’s no explicit quid pro quo proposal here. But… ‘even when a corrupt deal is struck implicitly, the government can still prosecute extortion on a quid pro quo basis. Circumstantial evidence can be enough to prove a criminal exchange.’… “In the absence of an explicit quid pro quo over restarting aid, the context and circumstances are what will become the focus of the investigation. There is enough here to support impeachment. Whether it is also enough to convince Republicans and lead to removal is another matter.”
Noah Feldman, Bloomberg
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fbi
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The Hill
| 11
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http://thehill.com/homenews/house/379228-gop-leaders-back-second-special-counsel
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GOP leaders back second special counsel
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2018-03-20
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House GOP leaders are starting to come out in strong support of a second special counsel to investigate conservative allegations of bias and abuse at the FBI .
Majority Whip Steve Scalise Stephen ( Steve ) Joseph ScaliseLive updates on impeachment : Schiff fires warning at GOP over whistleblower Bottom Line Trump allies assail impeachment on process while House Democrats promise open hearings soon MORE ( R-La . ) said Monday he backs the appointment of another special counsel to look at how law enforcement has handled the Russia probe . Scalise ’ s statement echoed similar calls from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Kevin Owen McCarthyHouse Republicans prepare for public impeachment proceedings with mock hearing Live updates on impeachment : Schiff fires warning at GOP over whistleblower Congress hunts for path out of spending stalemate MORE ( R-Calif. ) over the weekend .
The moves align the No . 2 and No . 3 House GOP leaders with President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump faces high stakes in meeting with Erdoğan amid impeachment drama Democrats worry they do n't have right candidate to beat Trump Trump threatening to fire Mulvaney : report MORE , who could be a factor in a future leadership race between the two friendly rivals .
Neither Scalise nor McCarthy wants any daylight between themselves and Trump in the event Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis Ryan Retirees should say 'no thanks ' to Romney 's Social Security plan California Governor Newsom and family dress as 2020 Democrats for Halloween DC 's liaison to rock ' n ' roll MORE ( R-Wis. ) calls it quits after the November midterm elections .
“ I agree with the many others who have called for the appointment of an additional special counsel , ” Scalise said in a statement Monday .
“ We need a second special counsel , ” McCarthy told Fox News on Saturday .
Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison ( Mitch ) Mitchell McConnellMcConnell protege emerges as Kentucky 's next rising star Hillicon Valley : Schumer questions Army over use of TikTok | Federal court rules against random searches of travelers ' phones | Groups push for election security funds in stopgap bill | Facebook 's new payment feature | Disney+ launch hit by glitches McConnell , GOP leaders say they wo n't be watching House impeachment hearing MORE ( R-Ky. ) have not endorsed the idea of a second probe nor criticized special counsel Robert Mueller Robert ( Bob ) Swan MuellerSpeier says impeachment inquiry shows 'very strong case of bribery ' by Trump Gowdy : I '100 percent ' still believe public congressional hearings are ' a circus ' Comey : Mueller 'did n't succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency ' MORE ’ s investigation , despite growing calls from rank-and-file members .
Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong did not respond to questions about other GOP leaders calling for another special counsel , but said Ryan continues to back Mueller ’ s investigation .
“ As the Speaker has always said , Mr. Mueller and his team should be able to do their job , ” Strong said in a statement .
McConnell has not publicly weighed in on the issue , and a spokesman did not return a request for comment .
The creation of a second special counsel would almost certainly muddy the waters surrounding Mueller ’ s investigation and could undermine it by raising questions about his evidence . At the same time , it could chill suggestions that Mueller should be fired by Trump , a maneuver many Republicans see as a huge political risk and the White House insists is not in play .
Democrats argue the creation of a second investigation would be a smokescreen designed to shift criticism toward 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonDemocrats worry they do n't have right candidate to beat Trump Krystal Ball credits Gabbard 's upswing in 2020 race to 'feckless ' Democratic establishment Outsider candidates outpoll insider candidates MORE , whom Trump has repeatedly blamed for the instigation of the probe .
“ The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime , ” Trump tweeted on Saturday in a message notable for calling Mueller out by name .
“ It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the [ Democratic National Committee ] , and improperly used in [ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ] COURT for surveillance of my campaign . WITCH HUNT ! ”
The tweet references the “ Steele dossier , ” a collection of opposition research produced by retired British spy Christopher Steele , and funded by Clinton ’ s campaign and the Democratic National Committee . The dossier was then used in an application to obtain a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page .
“ That appears to be a political distraction machine , ” Rep. Joaquin Castro Joaquin CastroDemocrats face make-or-break moment on impeachment Speier : Hearing transcripts will likely be released in next five days Sondland emerges as key target after Vindman testimony MORE ( D-Texas ) said of the growing calls for a second special counsel . “ I think that ’ s the point of it , for them to try to equate everything , basically try to paint a picture as though everybody messed up , or everybody ’ s bad , therefore nobody ’ s bad . ”
Castro expressed concern that Trump would fire Mueller regardless of whether there is a second special counsel in place .
“ My sense is that ultimately , if the special counsel gets close to people around the president , that the president will fire Bob Mueller , ” Castro said .
Trump ’ s legal team wants the second special counsel to investigate whether FBI and Justice Department officials abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ( FISA ) by using the dossier to justify spying on Page as part of the Russia probe .
Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson ( Jeff ) Beauregard SessionsMedill dean 'deeply troubled by the vicious bullying and badgering ' of student journalists Trump has considered firing official who reported whistleblower complaint to Congress : report Northwestern student paper apologizes for coverage of 'traumatic ' Jeff Sessions event MORE last week revealed he has tapped a former official outside the Beltway to review the need for a second special counsel , suggesting the idea is receiving a serious look .
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Rod RosensteinDemocrats ask judge to force McGahn to comply with subpoena Democrats ask court to force DOJ 's hand on Mueller grand jury materials Washington celebrates diplomacy — and baseball — at Meridian Ball MORE appointed Mueller to investigate Trump campaign associates ’ ties to Russia after Sessions recused himself from the investigation last year .
McCarthy and Scalise have joined a growing chorus of powerful GOP lawmakers who support another special counsel .
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte Robert ( Bob ) William GoodlatteUSCIS chief Cuccinelli blames Paul Ryan for immigration inaction Immigrant advocacy groups should n't be opposing Trump 's raids Top Republican releases full transcript of Bruce Ohr interview MORE ( R-Va. ) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy Harold ( Trey ) Watson GowdyFive landmark moments of testimony to Congress Conway spars with Wallace on whether White House will cooperate with impeachment inquiry after formal vote Gowdy : I '100 percent ' still believe public congressional hearings are ' a circus ' MORE ( R-S.C. ) have called on Sessions and Rosenstein to appoint a second special counsel to investigate “ potential criminality ” related to the surveillance warrant application for Page .
They also called for a review of any evidence of “ bias ” by Justice Department or FBI employees , as well as whether there was any “ extraneous influence ” on the surveillance process .
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley Charles ( Chuck ) Ernest GrassleyOvernight Health Care : Top health official defends contract payments to Trump allies | Vaping advocates confident Trump will turn from flavor ban | Sanders gets endorsement from nurses union McConnell , GOP leaders say they wo n't be watching House impeachment hearing Poll : 1 in 5 US adults report trouble affording prescription drugs MORE ( R-Iowa ) and Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamGraham says Trump should be allowed to undo DACA order ███ 's 12:30 Report : Dems , GOP dig in for public impeachment hearings ███ 's Morning Report - Witness transcripts plow ground for public impeachment testimony MORE ( R-S.C. ) sent a letter to Sessions and Rosenstein last week asking for a special counsel to “ gather all the facts . ”
The Justice Department ’ s inspector general , Michael Horowitz , is already investigating potential FISA abuses . But Republicans argue the inspector general does not have the prosecutorial authority needed to conduct a full investigation of the FBI ’ s actions .
“ An inspector general does not have subpoena power , ” McCarthy said . “ We need somebody to look at this , and not from the inside — because you can ’ t trust what ’ s happening right now . ”
In his statement , Scalise argued it ’ s the only way to ensure the public has full faith in Mueller ’ s findings .
“ The credibility of the Mueller investigation will be in doubt unless we get to the bottom of the many serious questions regarding the FBI ’ s handling of their investigation of the Trump campaign , ” Scalise said .
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House GOP leaders are starting to come out in strong support of a second special counsel to investigate conservative allegations of bias and abuse at the FBI.
Majority Whip Steve Scalise Stephen (Steve) Joseph ScaliseLive updates on impeachment: Schiff fires warning at GOP over whistleblower Bottom Line Trump allies assail impeachment on process while House Democrats promise open hearings soon MORE (R-La.) said Monday he backs the appointment of another special counsel to look at how law enforcement has handled the Russia probe. Scalise’s statement echoed similar calls from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Kevin Owen McCarthyHouse Republicans prepare for public impeachment proceedings with mock hearing Live updates on impeachment: Schiff fires warning at GOP over whistleblower Congress hunts for path out of spending stalemate MORE (R-Calif.) over the weekend.
The moves align the No. 2 and No. 3 House GOP leaders with President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump faces high stakes in meeting with Erdoğan amid impeachment drama Democrats worry they don't have right candidate to beat Trump Trump threatening to fire Mulvaney: report MORE, who could be a factor in a future leadership race between the two friendly rivals.
ADVERTISEMENT
Neither Scalise nor McCarthy wants any daylight between themselves and Trump in the event Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis Ryan Retirees should say 'no thanks' to Romney's Social Security plan California Governor Newsom and family dress as 2020 Democrats for Halloween DC's liaison to rock 'n' roll MORE (R-Wis.) calls it quits after the November midterm elections.
“I agree with the many others who have called for the appointment of an additional special counsel,” Scalise said in a statement Monday.
“We need a second special counsel,” McCarthy told Fox News on Saturday.
Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellMcConnell protege emerges as Kentucky's next rising star Hillicon Valley: Schumer questions Army over use of TikTok | Federal court rules against random searches of travelers' phones | Groups push for election security funds in stopgap bill | Facebook's new payment feature | Disney+ launch hit by glitches McConnell, GOP leaders say they won't be watching House impeachment hearing MORE (R-Ky.) have not endorsed the idea of a second probe nor criticized special counsel Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) Swan MuellerSpeier says impeachment inquiry shows 'very strong case of bribery' by Trump Gowdy: I '100 percent' still believe public congressional hearings are 'a circus' Comey: Mueller 'didn't succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency' MORE’s investigation, despite growing calls from rank-and-file members.
Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong did not respond to questions about other GOP leaders calling for another special counsel, but said Ryan continues to back Mueller’s investigation.
“As the Speaker has always said, Mr. Mueller and his team should be able to do their job,” Strong said in a statement.
McConnell has not publicly weighed in on the issue, and a spokesman did not return a request for comment.
The creation of a second special counsel would almost certainly muddy the waters surrounding Mueller’s investigation and could undermine it by raising questions about his evidence. At the same time, it could chill suggestions that Mueller should be fired by Trump, a maneuver many Republicans see as a huge political risk and the White House insists is not in play.
Democrats argue the creation of a second investigation would be a smokescreen designed to shift criticism toward 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonDemocrats worry they don't have right candidate to beat Trump Krystal Ball credits Gabbard's upswing in 2020 race to 'feckless' Democratic establishment Outsider candidates outpoll insider candidates MORE, whom Trump has repeatedly blamed for the instigation of the probe.
“The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” Trump tweeted on Saturday in a message notable for calling Mueller out by name.
“It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the [Democratic National Committee], and improperly used in [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!”
The tweet references the “Steele dossier,” a collection of opposition research produced by retired British spy Christopher Steele, and funded by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The dossier was then used in an application to obtain a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“That appears to be a political distraction machine,” Rep. Joaquin Castro Joaquin CastroDemocrats face make-or-break moment on impeachment Speier: Hearing transcripts will likely be released in next five days Sondland emerges as key target after Vindman testimony MORE (D-Texas) said of the growing calls for a second special counsel. “I think that’s the point of it, for them to try to equate everything, basically try to paint a picture as though everybody messed up, or everybody’s bad, therefore nobody’s bad.”
Castro expressed concern that Trump would fire Mueller regardless of whether there is a second special counsel in place.
“My sense is that ultimately, if the special counsel gets close to people around the president, that the president will fire Bob Mueller,” Castro said.
Trump’s legal team wants the second special counsel to investigate whether FBI and Justice Department officials abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by using the dossier to justify spying on Page as part of the Russia probe.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsMedill dean 'deeply troubled by the vicious bullying and badgering' of student journalists Trump has considered firing official who reported whistleblower complaint to Congress: report Northwestern student paper apologizes for coverage of 'traumatic' Jeff Sessions event MORE last week revealed he has tapped a former official outside the Beltway to review the need for a second special counsel, suggesting the idea is receiving a serious look.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Rod RosensteinDemocrats ask judge to force McGahn to comply with subpoena Democrats ask court to force DOJ's hand on Mueller grand jury materials Washington celebrates diplomacy — and baseball — at Meridian Ball MORE appointed Mueller to investigate Trump campaign associates’ ties to Russia after Sessions recused himself from the investigation last year.
McCarthy and Scalise have joined a growing chorus of powerful GOP lawmakers who support another special counsel.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte Robert (Bob) William GoodlatteUSCIS chief Cuccinelli blames Paul Ryan for immigration inaction Immigrant advocacy groups shouldn't be opposing Trump's raids Top Republican releases full transcript of Bruce Ohr interview MORE (R-Va.) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy Harold (Trey) Watson GowdyFive landmark moments of testimony to Congress Conway spars with Wallace on whether White House will cooperate with impeachment inquiry after formal vote Gowdy: I '100 percent' still believe public congressional hearings are 'a circus' MORE (R-S.C.) have called on Sessions and Rosenstein to appoint a second special counsel to investigate “potential criminality” related to the surveillance warrant application for Page.
They also called for a review of any evidence of “bias” by Justice Department or FBI employees, as well as whether there was any “extraneous influence” on the surveillance process.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley Charles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleyOvernight Health Care: Top health official defends contract payments to Trump allies | Vaping advocates confident Trump will turn from flavor ban | Sanders gets endorsement from nurses union McConnell, GOP leaders say they won't be watching House impeachment hearing Poll: 1 in 5 US adults report trouble affording prescription drugs MORE (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamGraham says Trump should be allowed to undo DACA order The Hill's 12:30 Report: Dems, GOP dig in for public impeachment hearings The Hill's Morning Report - Witness transcripts plow ground for public impeachment testimony MORE (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Sessions and Rosenstein last week asking for a special counsel to “gather all the facts.”
The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is already investigating potential FISA abuses. But Republicans argue the inspector general does not have the prosecutorial authority needed to conduct a full investigation of the FBI’s actions.
“An inspector general does not have subpoena power,” McCarthy said. “We need somebody to look at this, and not from the inside — because you can’t trust what’s happening right now.”
In his statement, Scalise argued it’s the only way to ensure the public has full faith in Mueller’s findings.
“The credibility of the Mueller investigation will be in doubt unless we get to the bottom of the many serious questions regarding the FBI’s handling of their investigation of the Trump campaign,” Scalise said.
Katie Bo Williams contributed.
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www.thehill.com
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gun_control_and_gun_rights
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Andrew Napolitano
| 22
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https://www.newsmax.com/andrewnapolitano/new-york-city-second-amendment/2019/12/05/id/944633/
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The Pre-Political Right to Keep and Bear Arms
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2019-12-05
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In a 2008 case called District of Columbia v. Heller , and again in a 2010 case called McDonald v. City of Chicago , the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment .
That amendment was written , the court ruled in both cases , to mandate the obligation of the federal government , as well as cities and states , to recognize , respect and permit the exercise of the right to self-defense , using the same level of technology as might be used against someone in the home .
Stated differently , the high court twice held in the past 11 years that the right to own and keep and — if necessary — to use a gun in the home is a personal pre-political right .
Its literal meaning is that whatever it is describing — here , the right to own a gun —preexisted the political order . It preexisted the government and the Constitution .
That 's like asking where free thought and free speech came from . The right to self-defense is a natural human right , like thought and speech . We can not be complete human beings enjoying life and liberty and pursuing happiness without the right to repel those who would harm us .
The court also ruled that the Second Amendment would be meaningless if it failed to protect the right to own and use weapons for self-defense of the same level of sophistication as an adversary — whether agents of a tyrant or a mob of thugs or a deranged killer .
One would expect that cities and states should have enacted laws to facilitate the exercise of that right . Instead , many have done the opposite , and none as absurd as New York City .
There , the government enacted a bizarre ordinance that prohibited lawful gun owners from transporting their guns to any place outside city limits .
The practical effect of such a law prohibited the transportation of an unloaded gun to a shooting range or gun shop or private home outside the city .
It also forced those gun owners who wished to remain skilled in the use of guns to practice their use only at any of three dingy , poorly equipped and out of the way gun ranges in the Bronx .
A group of New York City gun owners challenged the law as a material interference with their Second Amendment rights . Some of the owners had second homes in New Jersey and elsewhere in New York state where the ownership of their New York City-licensed guns is legal , but they could not lawfully transport their guns out of New York City .
After the ordinance challenge failed in a federal district court and again in a federal appellate court in Manhattan , the gun owners asked for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court , which was granted .
Then the city , fearing a reversal and invalidation of its ordinance , repealed the ordinance and enacted a new one in its place . The new ordinance permitted transportation of New York City-licensed guns to places outside of the city where the guns are lawful , but required the owners to transport them there without stopping , in one complete trip .
Can one stop for coffee , or for nature , or to visit mom ? No .
Does any of this sound as if the government of New York City recognizes and respects the right to keep and bear arms ? Of course not . So , why did the city change its gun ordinance ? Why did it give the gun owners at the last minute before their case was to be heard almost all they sought ? Because of the doctrine of `` standing . ''
`` Standing '' is a constitutional requirement of the existence of real adversity between litigants . Federal courts do not hear theoretical cases . They are required by the Constitution to hear cases and controversies in which the moving party can show that real harm has been caused by the responding party .
So , at the time of oral argument in the Supreme Court earlier this week , there was no such adversity between the gun owners and the city because the ordinance that the owners challenged no longer exists . Thus , the city asked the court to dismiss the appeal . Under usual circumstances , the court would do so .
In a famous New Jersey case , the lawyers finished oral argument before the Supreme Court and on their way out of the courthouse settled the case . That quick and amicable settlement divested the court of jurisdiction over the case because there was no longer a controversy and no one had standing to bring the appeal .
Will the New York City gun owners suffer the same fate ? Perhaps not .
There is a little-known and rarely used exception to the standing requirement — a judge-made exception — which holds that if a dispute repeatedly comes to the Supreme Court or if lower federal courts are repeatedly misinterpreting a Supreme Court decision , the Supreme Court will hear an appeal to stop the repeated appeals or to correct lower court misunderstandings , even if there is no adversity between the parties .
Have lower federal courts been misinterpreting the Heller and McDonald cases ?
By one study , they have ruled 96 % of the time in favor of city and state gun restrictions in the home and against the pre-political nature of the right to self-defense .
Heller and McDonald uphold the right to keep and bear arms only in and around one 's home .
If the gun owners in this New York City case prevail , that right could be extended to public places outside the home , where police acknowledge that armed and well-trained civilians are most valued today .
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano was the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of New Jersey . He is Fox News ’ senior judicial analyst . Napolitano has been published in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , and numerous other publications . He is the author of the best-seller , `` Lies the Government Told You : Myth , Power , and Deception in American History . '' For more of Judge Napolitano 's reports , Go Here Now .
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In a 2008 case called District of Columbia v. Heller, and again in a 2010 case called McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment.
That amendment was written, the court ruled in both cases, to mandate the obligation of the federal government, as well as cities and states, to recognize, respect and permit the exercise of the right to self-defense, using the same level of technology as might be used against someone in the home.
Stated differently, the high court twice held in the past 11 years that the right to own and keep and — if necessary — to use a gun in the home is a personal pre-political right.
"Pre-political" has a long and fascinating history.
Its literal meaning is that whatever it is describing — here, the right to own a gun —preexisted the political order. It preexisted the government and the Constitution.
So, where did it come from?
That's like asking where free thought and free speech came from. The right to self-defense is a natural human right, like thought and speech. We cannot be complete human beings enjoying life and liberty and pursuing happiness without the right to repel those who would harm us.
The court also ruled that the Second Amendment would be meaningless if it failed to protect the right to own and use weapons for self-defense of the same level of sophistication as an adversary — whether agents of a tyrant or a mob of thugs or a deranged killer.
One would expect that cities and states should have enacted laws to facilitate the exercise of that right. Instead, many have done the opposite, and none as absurd as New York City.
There, the government enacted a bizarre ordinance that prohibited lawful gun owners from transporting their guns to any place outside city limits.
The practical effect of such a law prohibited the transportation of an unloaded gun to a shooting range or gun shop or private home outside the city.
It also forced those gun owners who wished to remain skilled in the use of guns to practice their use only at any of three dingy, poorly equipped and out of the way gun ranges in the Bronx.
A group of New York City gun owners challenged the law as a material interference with their Second Amendment rights. Some of the owners had second homes in New Jersey and elsewhere in New York state where the ownership of their New York City-licensed guns is legal, but they could not lawfully transport their guns out of New York City.
After the ordinance challenge failed in a federal district court and again in a federal appellate court in Manhattan, the gun owners asked for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, which was granted.
Then the city, fearing a reversal and invalidation of its ordinance, repealed the ordinance and enacted a new one in its place. The new ordinance permitted transportation of New York City-licensed guns to places outside of the city where the guns are lawful, but required the owners to transport them there without stopping, in one complete trip.
Can one stop for coffee, or for nature, or to visit mom? No.
Does any of this sound as if the government of New York City recognizes and respects the right to keep and bear arms? Of course not. So, why did the city change its gun ordinance? Why did it give the gun owners at the last minute before their case was to be heard almost all they sought? Because of the doctrine of "standing."
"Standing" is a constitutional requirement of the existence of real adversity between litigants. Federal courts do not hear theoretical cases. They are required by the Constitution to hear cases and controversies in which the moving party can show that real harm has been caused by the responding party.
So, at the time of oral argument in the Supreme Court earlier this week, there was no such adversity between the gun owners and the city because the ordinance that the owners challenged no longer exists. Thus, the city asked the court to dismiss the appeal. Under usual circumstances, the court would do so.
In a famous New Jersey case, the lawyers finished oral argument before the Supreme Court and on their way out of the courthouse settled the case. That quick and amicable settlement divested the court of jurisdiction over the case because there was no longer a controversy and no one had standing to bring the appeal.
Will the New York City gun owners suffer the same fate? Perhaps not.
There is a little-known and rarely used exception to the standing requirement — a judge-made exception — which holds that if a dispute repeatedly comes to the Supreme Court or if lower federal courts are repeatedly misinterpreting a Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal to stop the repeated appeals or to correct lower court misunderstandings, even if there is no adversity between the parties.
Have lower federal courts been misinterpreting the Heller and McDonald cases?
Yes.
By one study, they have ruled 96% of the time in favor of city and state gun restrictions in the home and against the pre-political nature of the right to self-defense.
Are there constitutional implications in this case beyond standing?
Yes.
Heller and McDonald uphold the right to keep and bear arms only in and around one's home.
If the gun owners in this New York City case prevail, that right could be extended to public places outside the home, where police acknowledge that armed and well-trained civilians are most valued today.
Even New York City would need to respect that.
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano was the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of New Jersey. He is Fox News’ senior judicial analyst. Napolitano has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. He is the author of the best-seller, "Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History." For more of Judge Napolitano's reports, Go Here Now.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/27/the-education-of-donald-trump-237669
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The education of Donald Trump
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2017-04-27
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Shane Goldmacher, Alex Isenstadt, Michael Grunwald, David Siders, Josh Dawsey, Tara Palmeri
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Trump 's First 100 Days The education of Donald Trump The White House remains on a collision course between the president 's fixed habits and the demands of his new job .
The 70-year-old leader of the free world sat behind his desk in the Oval Office last Friday afternoon , doing what he ’ s done for years : selling himself . His 100th day in office was approaching , and Trump was eager to reshape the hardening narrative of a White House veering off course .
So he took it upon himself to explain that his presidency was actually on track , inviting a pair of ███ reporters into the Oval Office for an impromptu meeting . He sat at the Resolute desk , with his daughter Ivanka across from him . One aide said the chat was off-the-record , but Trump insisted , over objections from nervous-looking staffers , that he be quoted .
He addressed the idea that his senior aides weren ’ t getting along . He called out their names and , one by one , they walked in , each surprised to see reporters in the room—chief of staff Reince Priebus , then chief strategist Steve Bannon , and eventually senior adviser Jared Kushner . “ The team gets along really , really well , ” he said .
He turned to his relationships with world leaders . “ I have a terrific relationship with Xi , ” he said , referring to the Chinese president , who Trump recently invited for a weekend visit at his Mar-a-Lago resort .
Finally , he rattled off the biggest hits of his first three months and promised more to come .
It was classic Trump : Confident , hyperbolic and insistent on asserting control .
But interviews with nearly two dozen aides , allies , and others close to the president paint a different picture – one of a White House on a collision course between Trump ’ s fixed habits and his growing realization that this job is harder than he imagined when he won the election on Nov. 8 .
So far , Trump has led a White House gripped by paranoia and insecurity , paralyzed by internal jockeying for power . Mistrust between aides runs so deep that many now employ their own personal P.R . advisers — in part to ensure their own narratives get out . Trump himself has been deeply engaged with media figures , even huddling in the Oval Office with Matt Drudge .
Trump remains reliant as ever on his children and longtime friends for counsel . White House staff have learned to cater to the president ’ s image obsession by presenting decisions in terms of how they ’ ll play in the press . Among his first reads in the morning is still the New York Post . When Trump feels like playing golf , he does — at courses he owns . When Trump feels like eating out , he does — at hotels with his name on the outside .
As president , Trump has repeatedly reminded his audiences , both public and private , about his longshot electoral victory . That unexpected win gave him and his closest advisers the false sense that governing would be as easy to master as running a successful campaign turned out to be . It was a rookie mistake . From the indignity of judges halting multiple executive orders on immigration-related matters—most recently this week—to his responses to repeated episodes of North Korean belligerence , it ’ s all been more complicated than Trump had been prepared to believe .
“ I think he ’ s much more aware how complicated the world is , ” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich , who serves as an informal administration adviser . “ This will all be more uphill than he thought it would be because I think he had the old-fashioned American idea that you run for office , you win , then people behave as though you won . ”
Trump has had some successes . He nominated and saw confirmed a new Supreme Court justice , rolled back Obama-era regulations , and oversaw dramatic military actions in Syria and Afghanistan . He has signed rafts of executive actions , unilateral decisions familiar to the former Trump Organization president .
Yet he approaches the 100-day mark with record-low approval ratings and no major legislative accomplishment to his credit . Nothing hit Trump harder , according to senior White House officials , than the congressional defeat of his first major legislative package—the bill to repeal Obamacare . As he sat in the Oval Office last week , Trump seemed to concede that even having risen to fame through real estate and entertainment , the presidency represented something very different .
“ Making business decisions and buying buildings don ’ t involve heart , ” he said . “ This involves heart . These are heavy decisions . ”
More than 200 of Trump ’ s campaign promises are scribbled in marker on a whiteboard in Steve Bannon ’ s West Wing office , which he calls his “ war room. ” Other pledges are printed and taped beneath a poster that says : “ Make America Great Again . ”
“ Deport 2 million criminal illegal immigrants , ” reads one pledge . Others call for all of President Obama ’ s executive orders to be reversed and for the U.S. to exit the North American Free Trade Agreement , or NAFTA . A few have large check marks next to them . Another sign notes 11 have been delayed . It ’ s a visual encapsulation of how Bannon sees the presidency about keeping promises .
In Kushner ’ s office , just steps away , there ’ s no “ Make America Great Again ” memorabilia . Instead , the whiteboard lists deadlines for bipartisan projects in his newly-founded Office of American Innovation on infrastructure and veterans ’ affairs . Kushner often talks about the presidency like it ’ s a business , describing it privately as “ entrepreneurial ” and in “ beta mode. ” He often doesn ’ t mind when Trump flip-flops , if it ’ s in the service of striking a deal .
The gap in worldview and temperament between the two has produced the most combustible , and consequential , conflict in the West Wing . In the first days following Trump ’ s inauguration , it was Bannon who pushed to speed through a blitz of executive orders , including the ill-fated travel ban . And it ’ s been Kushner , a 36-year-old real estate scion , who ’ s leaned the other way , encouraging his capricious father-in-law to espouse less divisive positions .
“ It ’ s an ideas and ideology battle every day , ” one senior administration official said .
Perhaps the defining and unanswered question of the Trump presidency is what he truly believes in . Is he the inflexible immigration hardliner who described undocumented Mexican immigrants as “ rapists ” in his June 2015 kickoff speech or the president who recently said those brought here illegally as children should “ rest easy ” because he doesn ’ t plan to deport them ? Will he try to make deals with Democrats ? Or will he devote himself to Bannon ’ s nationalist agenda ? And , other than winning , what does Trump really want ?
No single day was more telling about the ambiguity of Trumpism than April 12 . It was that day that Trump not-so-quietly reversed himself on at least four of his campaign promises . He canceled a federal hiring freeze imposed in his first week . He flipped on labeling China a currency manipulator . He endorsed the Export-Import bank that he had called to eliminate . He declared NATO relevant , after trashing it repeatedly on the campaign trail .
“ I said it was obsolete , ” Trump said . “ It is no longer obsolete . ”
Trump ’ s critics and supporters alike are equally flummoxed about what this president stands for .
White House communications director Mike Dubke told staff in a recent meeting “ there is no Trump doctrine ” when it comes to foreign policy . The president was moved to send missiles into Syria in part based on gruesome images of dead Syrian children he saw on TV . But he ’ s maintained the same hardline that those suffering children should not be accepted into America as refugees . Trump has overseen the use of the largest bomb short of a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan and talks tough about obliterating the Islamic State . Yet in a recent chat in his West Wing office , Priebus backed away from the idea of greater troop engagement , saying the administration doesn ’ t want to engage in “ long-term ground wars in the Middle East . ”
“ He is not a movement conservative . He is definitely not an establishment Republican , ” said Ken Blackwell , who headed domestic policy during Trump ’ s transition . “ He ’ s transactional and makes calls based on his gut . Those of us who are accustomed to an ideological framework — it takes getting used to . ”
But Trump ’ s ideologically noncommittal approach has bumped up against the constraints of a hyperpartisan Washington where the letters on congressional vote cards — D or R — are paramount .
Some are whispering that Trump should work with Democrats on infrastructure . Others say he must forge ahead only with Republicans on health care . Maybe he should work with both on taxes . Trump , it seems , is just looking for success .
“ I am flexible , ” as Trump said recently in a Rose Garden appearance . “ And I ’ m proud of that flexibility . ”
When Donald Trump gets angry , he fumes . “ You can ’ t make them happy , ” he said . “ These people want more and more . ”
He was complaining to friends that he had negotiated for weeks with Freedom Caucus members and he couldn ’ t believe the group was still against the health care legislation . Trump and his advisers were buzzing about making an enemies list and wanted to force a vote . But it was Trump , a man who hates to show weakness , who had to blink . As support flagged , the bill was shelved .
“ I kind of pooh-poohed the experience stuff when I first got here , ” one White House official said of these early months . “ But this shit is hard . ”
Nowhere has Trump ’ s learning curve been steeper than Capitol Hill . According to people close to the president , Trump believed that in selecting Priebus as chief of staff he was getting a deeply connected Washington wise man , someone who could guide his agenda through Capitol Hill .
Between Priebus and Vice President Mike Pence , who once served in House leadership , Trump thought he had the experts he needed and wouldn ’ t have to worry about Congress that much . But Priebus is a political insider , not a congressional one . And Pence , who was governor of Indiana before joining Trump ’ s ticket , has been absent from the Hill during the rise of the House Freedom Caucus , the ideological hardliners who delivered Trump the most stinging defeat of his young presidency .
House Republicans ’ rejection of his plan to repeal-and-replace Obamacare served as a wake-up call — and a clarifying moment when he realized he couldn ’ t leave Congress to others , even Speaker Paul Ryan .
Trump had campaigned in generalities — “ repeal-and-replace with something terrific , ” he ’ d promised — and after the election Trump and his team decided to let Ryan take the lead on health care . Trump just wanted to sign a bill . He didn ’ t necessarily care what it said .
But the Freedom Caucus did . They felt left out of the process—and they hated Ryan ’ s bill . They complained to the White House almost every day and made threats . They seized on the bill ’ s anemic public approval .
So Trump personally got involved , just as he had long negotiated with business partners , offering a mix of wooing and threats . He even dispatched his budget director , Mick Mulvaney , a former House GOP hardliner himself , to threaten a particularly outspoken critic , Rep. Mark Sanford .
It backfired . Freedom Caucus members weren ’ t afraid to say no . In an embarrassing setback , Trump called to pull the bill .
President Donald Trump ’ s critics and supporters alike are equally flummoxed about what this president stands for . | Getty
White House officials played down the loss in recent conversations -- even as Trump has put immense pressure on Pence and Priebus to resuscitate the bill . “ The narrative that somehow or another a signature piece of legislation must be out of the House and Senate in 100 days is a ridiculous standard , ” Priebus said .
Trump seemed , at first , not to even understand the scope of his health care failure . He called reporters and spoke about moving on . Top-level aides bragged about his good mood . “ No bullshit , I think he ’ s actually pretty comfortable with the outcome , ” a senior White House official crowed .
After the health care fight , Marc Short , the president ’ s legislative director , had a meeting with his team on “ lessons learned , ” people familiar with the meeting say . Several administration officials said Trump has told them not to leave the Congressional details to Ryan and others – and that he eventually grasped how damaging the health care defeat could be to the rest of his agenda .
“ I don ’ t think they realized what a big issue this was for the grassroots , ” said Jenny Beth Martin , head of Tea Party Patriots , who had met with Trump .
Trump ’ s team now has another chance to pass the law . They spent several weeks wooing conservatives – and secured the backing Wednesday of the Freedom Caucus , which blocked the first bill from passing . They brought members and outside groups – including those funded by the conservative billionaire donors Charles and David Koch – to the White House .
They successfully convinced the conservatives who don ’ t like Ryan to get on board . But now , moderates concerned about making health benefits worse for their constituents are balking . White House officials are hoping to have a vote Friday or Saturday , just in time for Trump ’ s 100-day mark .
The defeat represented an early inflection point for a president who is openly more transactional than ideological . More than anything , it reinforced the president ’ s conviction that he could only trust the tight circle of people closest to him .
Now , Trump is forging ahead alone on taxes , rolling out a dramatic package of tax cuts on Wednesday without input from Hill leaders . “ We aren ’ t listening to anyone else on taxes , ” said one senior administration official , referring to Ryan . “ It ’ s our plan . ”
As Trump is beginning to better understand the challenges—and the limits—of the presidency , his aides are understanding better how to manage perhaps the most improvisational and free-wheeling president in history . “ If you ’ re an adviser to him , your job is to help him at the margins , ” said one Trump confidante . “ To talk him out of doing crazy things . ”
Interviews with White House officials , friends of Trump , veterans of his campaign and lawmakers paint a picture of a White House that has been slow to adapt to the demands of the most powerful office on earth .
“ Everyone is concerned that things are not running that well , ” said one senior official . “ There should be more structure in place so we know who is working on what and who is responsible for what , instead of everyone freelancing on everything . ”
But they ’ re learning . One key development : White House aides have figured out that it ’ s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy . Instead , the way to win Trump over , they say , is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press .
“ You don ’ t walk in with a traditional presentation , like a binder or a PowerPoint . He doesn ’ t care . He doesn ’ t consume information that way , ” said one senior administration official . “ You go in and tell him the pros and cons , and what the media coverage is going to be like . ”
Downplaying the downside risk of a decision can win out in the short term . But the risk is a presidential dressing-down—delivered in a yell . “ You don ’ t want to be the person who sold him on something that turned out to be a bad idea , ” the person said .
Advisers have tried to curtail Trump ’ s idle hours , hoping to prevent him from watching cable news or calling old friends and then tweeting about it . That only works during the workday , though—Trump ’ s evenings and weekends have remained largely his own .
“ It ’ s not like the White House doesn ’ t have a plan to fill his time productively but at the end of the day he ’ s in charge of his schedule , ” said one person close to the White House . “ He does not like being managed . ”
He also doesn ’ t like managing—or , rather , doesn ’ t mind stoking competition among his staffers . While his predecessor was known as “ no-drama Obama , ” Trump has presided over a series of melodramas involving his top aides , including Priebus , Bannon , counselor Kellyanne Conway and economic adviser Gary Cohn .
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“ He has always been a guy who loves the idea of being a royal surrounded by a court , ” said Michael D ’ Antonio , one of Trump ’ s biographers .
Many of those aides spent the opening weeks of the presidency pushing their own agendas – and sparring with one another . Priebus brought into the White House his chief of staff , chief operating officer and chief strategist from the RNC ; Bannon has his own P.R . person and two writers from Breitbart ; Kushner brought allies from the business world , and recently recruited his own publicity adviser ; Conway has her own chief of staff ; now Ivanka Trump has a chief of staff , too .
For now , all sides seem to have forged a delicate détente . Kushner and Bannon met earlier this month at Trump ’ s Mar-a-Lago estate and agreed to work out their differences . Trump aides now downplay talk of a shakeup involving Bannon – talk that , until just a few days ago , had reached a fever pitch . There have been a few changes here and there – Katie Walsh is out as deputy chief of staff , and KT McFarland has been moved off the national security team – but don ’ t expect any big personnel changes anytime soon , they say .
Yet there is little question that the months of infighting have taken a toll on Trump ’ s aides . Many are unaccustomed to working for a man who can consult with 20 outside associates a day , change his mind in a minute and change his mood even quicker .
Of late , some Republican National Committee members have become deeply concerned about Priebus , who was party chairman before joining Trump ’ s team . Priebus , who is distrusted by some rival White House factions and lacks the control previous chiefs of staff have had , has privately complained about the profound frustrations of the job .
Priebus , who is married and has two young children , has vented about the long hours he ’ s had to spend away from his family . In March , he missed an RNC donor retreat in Florida because , he told friends at the time , he needed to be at home to celebrate one of his children ’ s birthdays .
Trump the businessman and presidential candidate loved pitting top aides against one another . The internal competition ensured that the best ideas would rise to the top , he believed . Plus , he liked telling people , it made his employees work even harder to impress him .
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has developed a ritual of sorts : Just before going onstage for his televised briefings , he usually walks down the hall to the Oval Office to ask Trump what he wants to hear on TV that day . Cable news only occasionally carried press briefings from Obama ’ s secretaries in the later years of his presidency , but Spicer ’ s almost-daily outings have become a regular , wall-to-wall fixture .
His sessions with Trump were described by people familiar with them as part pep talk and part talking-point seminar . In the early days , Trump criticized Spicer fiercely , prompting him to upgrade his delivery at the podium as well as his wardrobe of suits . Now , people close to the president say , Trump brags about Spicer ’ s ratings .
Yet Trump continues to see himself as the best guardian of his own image . In New York , he infamously made calls to reporters pretending to be a spokesman . He personally called into the New York tabloid gossip pages as a source for years , and he even dialed cable news control rooms to suggest coverage after he became the presumptive Republican nominee in 2016 .
That hasn ’ t changed in the White House , where Trump continues to crave attention and approval from news media figures . Trump huddled in the Oval Office with Matt Drudge , the reclusive operator of the influential Drudge Report , to talk about his administration and the site . Drudge and Kushner have also begun to communicate frequently , said people familiar with the conversations . Drudge , whose visits to the White House haven ’ t previously been reported , didn ’ t respond to a request for comment .
Several senior administration aides said Trump loves nothing more than talking to reporters – no matter what he says about the “ failing ” New York Times or CNN – and he often seems personally stung by negative coverage , cursing and yelling at the TV . Kushner , too , sometimes calls TV personalities and executives , in particular MSNBC host Joe Scarborough , according to people close to the Trump son-in-law . ( It didn ’ t go unnoticed in the West Wing that , at the height of the Kushner-Bannon war , the Drudge Report and Scarborough ’ s Morning Joe had an anti-Bannon flair to their coverage . )
If the goal of most administrations has been to set the media agenda for the day , it ’ s often the reverse in Trump ’ s White House , where what the president hears on the cable morning gabfests on Fox News , MSNBC and CNN can redirect his attention , schedule and agenda . The three TVs in the chief-of-staff 's office sometimes dictate the 8 a.m. meeting – and are always turned on to cable news , West Wing officials say .
Behind the scenes , Trump – who beneath his confident veneer can be deeply sensitive to criticism – has been jolted when lawmakers took to TV to jab the president . If anyone had anything to say to the president , White House aides vented , they should do it with him personally – not from the camera . “ If you go on TV and blast him , it ’ s over , ” one senior administration official said .
Since taking office , Trump has 16 times tagged Fox and Friends , the network ’ s morning show , in his tweets , and countless other times weighed in on whatever they were talking about on air . After Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings went on Morning Joe and asked the president to call him , Trump did . After Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher defended Trump in an early Saturday morning Fox News hit , Trump called him moments later , inviting him to an Oval Office meeting . And after news segments , Trump will sometimes call his own advisers to discuss what he saw .
No slight is too small to ignore . West Wing staffers have even fumed about news coverage of the Easter Egg Roll . First , it was that Trump ’ s White House wouldn ’ t be smart enough to pull it off . Then , it was that no one would be there . And after the Easter Egg Roll went off without a hitch , “ no one wanted to give us any credit , ” said one senior administration official .
It is part of a siege mentality that has taken hold , from the president down , with Trump and his associates believing their coverage has stayed just as bad — or gotten worse — since the campaign ended in November . Senior administration officials said they ’ ve never seen Trump angrier than when the media focused its attention on the crowd size at his inauguration .
The darkest cloud shadowing the West Wing has been continuous questions about the Trump campaign ’ s connections to Russia .
The FBI director testified he is investigating Trump associates for possible collusion with a hostile foreign power , Trump ’ s first national security adviser , Michael Flynn , resigned over his interactions with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Attorney General Jeff Sessions ultimately had to recuse himself from his own department ’ s investigation after he failed to disclose his own conversations with Kislyak .
“ If we have a good day , then within 48 hours there ’ s a Russia story , ” said another senior administration official . “ That ’ s just how it works . ”
The news about Sessions ’ interaction with the Russian ambassador came the day after Trump ’ s widely praised speech to a joint session of Congress . And it stomped on any momentum the White House had , especially Trump ’ s trip to an aircraft carrier later that week . At the end of the week , after Sessions recused himself from the probe , Trump exploded at his aides about his frustrations .
Yet Trump was grinning in his office last week . He wanted to pose for pictures behind the cleaned-off Resolute desk and in front of his gold curtains . He has posed for hundreds of pictures there – sometimes with a grin , sometimes with a thumbs-up – and has guests stand behind him . He seemed a man of few worries -- even though his aides were back out pushing a high-stakes health care vote , the government was one week from shutting down and North Korea was continuing its provocations .
The fact that 100 days , as a marker , has no legal or actual significance outside the media has not seemed to matter to Trump . While he has publicly derided the deadline as “ ridiculous ” on Twitter , he has decidedly reshuffled his schedule , priorities and agenda in the last two weeks to notch political points , knowing the deadline would get inordinate media coverage .
He has repeatedly pressed aides to have a health care vote before Saturday . He surprised his own staff by promising a tax reform plan by this week and urged them to round out his list of accomplishments . He has maintained an aggressive calendar , wooing conservative outlets and traditional reporters alike .
He told aides this week needed to be a busy one — just as he told them after his inauguration .
In days 1 through 10 , it was executive orders on a federal hiring freeze , abortions abroad , withdrawing from an Asian trade deal and the explosive immigration order barring immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries . He got into a diplomatic row with Australia , one of America ’ s closest allies . The immigration order sparked international protests and was stopped in court . Trump later told advisers he regretted how it was handled .
In days 90 through 100 , it was a flurry of executive orders . He got into a diplomatic row with Canada , one of America ’ s closest allies , threatening a trade war . He moved toward unwinding NAFTA . “ There is no way we can do everything he wants to do this week , ” one senior official said .
“ Trump is a guy of action . He likes to move , ” said Chris Ruddy , a close friend . “ He doesn ’ t necessarily worry about all the collateral damage or the consequences . ”
White House officials say they now have a more deliberative process of decision-making . Issues don ’ t go to his desk until they ’ ve had a thorough vetting in at least three meetings . Aides have cautioned him to slow down and have told him everything is not possible in his time frame . Sometimes , administration officials say , he listens and takes the news well . Sometimes , he keeps the demands going .
Trump may be learning and adjusting . But he is still Trump . On Saturday , he ’ ll celebrate his 100th day in office by boycotting the traditional White House Correspondents ’ Dinner in favor of a rally in Harrisburg , Pennsylvania . The rallies , which remind him of the campaign trail , often improve his mood , several people close to him say . “ I will be holding a BIG rally in Pennsylvania , ” he tweeted by way of announcement . “ Look forward to it ! ”
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Trump's First 100 Days The education of Donald Trump The White House remains on a collision course between the president's fixed habits and the demands of his new job.
The 70-year-old leader of the free world sat behind his desk in the Oval Office last Friday afternoon, doing what he’s done for years: selling himself. His 100th day in office was approaching, and Trump was eager to reshape the hardening narrative of a White House veering off course.
So he took it upon himself to explain that his presidency was actually on track, inviting a pair of POLITICO reporters into the Oval Office for an impromptu meeting. He sat at the Resolute desk, with his daughter Ivanka across from him. One aide said the chat was off-the-record, but Trump insisted, over objections from nervous-looking staffers, that he be quoted.
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He addressed the idea that his senior aides weren’t getting along. He called out their names and, one by one, they walked in, each surprised to see reporters in the room—chief of staff Reince Priebus, then chief strategist Steve Bannon, and eventually senior adviser Jared Kushner. “The team gets along really, really well,” he said.
He turned to his relationships with world leaders. “I have a terrific relationship with Xi,” he said, referring to the Chinese president, who Trump recently invited for a weekend visit at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Finally, he rattled off the biggest hits of his first three months and promised more to come.
It was classic Trump: Confident, hyperbolic and insistent on asserting control.
But interviews with nearly two dozen aides, allies, and others close to the president paint a different picture – one of a White House on a collision course between Trump’s fixed habits and his growing realization that this job is harder than he imagined when he won the election on Nov. 8.
So far, Trump has led a White House gripped by paranoia and insecurity, paralyzed by internal jockeying for power. Mistrust between aides runs so deep that many now employ their own personal P.R. advisers — in part to ensure their own narratives get out. Trump himself has been deeply engaged with media figures, even huddling in the Oval Office with Matt Drudge.
Trump remains reliant as ever on his children and longtime friends for counsel. White House staff have learned to cater to the president’s image obsession by presenting decisions in terms of how they’ll play in the press. Among his first reads in the morning is still the New York Post. When Trump feels like playing golf, he does — at courses he owns. When Trump feels like eating out, he does — at hotels with his name on the outside.
As president, Trump has repeatedly reminded his audiences, both public and private, about his longshot electoral victory. That unexpected win gave him and his closest advisers the false sense that governing would be as easy to master as running a successful campaign turned out to be. It was a rookie mistake. From the indignity of judges halting multiple executive orders on immigration-related matters—most recently this week—to his responses to repeated episodes of North Korean belligerence, it’s all been more complicated than Trump had been prepared to believe.
“I think he’s much more aware how complicated the world is,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who serves as an informal administration adviser. “This will all be more uphill than he thought it would be because I think he had the old-fashioned American idea that you run for office, you win, then people behave as though you won.”
Trump has had some successes. He nominated and saw confirmed a new Supreme Court justice, rolled back Obama-era regulations, and oversaw dramatic military actions in Syria and Afghanistan. He has signed rafts of executive actions, unilateral decisions familiar to the former Trump Organization president.
Yet he approaches the 100-day mark with record-low approval ratings and no major legislative accomplishment to his credit. Nothing hit Trump harder, according to senior White House officials, than the congressional defeat of his first major legislative package—the bill to repeal Obamacare. As he sat in the Oval Office last week, Trump seemed to concede that even having risen to fame through real estate and entertainment, the presidency represented something very different.
“Making business decisions and buying buildings don’t involve heart,” he said. “This involves heart. These are heavy decisions.”
***
More than 200 of Trump’s campaign promises are scribbled in marker on a whiteboard in Steve Bannon’s West Wing office, which he calls his “war room.” Other pledges are printed and taped beneath a poster that says: “Make America Great Again.”
“Deport 2 million criminal illegal immigrants,” reads one pledge. Others call for all of President Obama’s executive orders to be reversed and for the U.S. to exit the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. A few have large check marks next to them. Another sign notes 11 have been delayed. It’s a visual encapsulation of how Bannon sees the presidency about keeping promises.
In Kushner’s office, just steps away, there’s no “Make America Great Again” memorabilia. Instead, the whiteboard lists deadlines for bipartisan projects in his newly-founded Office of American Innovation on infrastructure and veterans’ affairs. Kushner often talks about the presidency like it’s a business, describing it privately as “entrepreneurial” and in “beta mode.” He often doesn’t mind when Trump flip-flops, if it’s in the service of striking a deal.
The gap in worldview and temperament between the two has produced the most combustible, and consequential, conflict in the West Wing. In the first days following Trump’s inauguration, it was Bannon who pushed to speed through a blitz of executive orders, including the ill-fated travel ban. And it’s been Kushner, a 36-year-old real estate scion, who’s leaned the other way, encouraging his capricious father-in-law to espouse less divisive positions.
“It’s an ideas and ideology battle every day,” one senior administration official said.
Perhaps the defining and unanswered question of the Trump presidency is what he truly believes in. Is he the inflexible immigration hardliner who described undocumented Mexican immigrants as “rapists” in his June 2015 kickoff speech or the president who recently said those brought here illegally as children should “rest easy” because he doesn’t plan to deport them? Will he try to make deals with Democrats? Or will he devote himself to Bannon’s nationalist agenda? And, other than winning, what does Trump really want?
No single day was more telling about the ambiguity of Trumpism than April 12. It was that day that Trump not-so-quietly reversed himself on at least four of his campaign promises. He canceled a federal hiring freeze imposed in his first week. He flipped on labeling China a currency manipulator. He endorsed the Export-Import bank that he had called to eliminate. He declared NATO relevant, after trashing it repeatedly on the campaign trail.
“I said it was obsolete,” Trump said. “It is no longer obsolete.”
Trump’s critics and supporters alike are equally flummoxed about what this president stands for.
White House communications director Mike Dubke told staff in a recent meeting “there is no Trump doctrine” when it comes to foreign policy. The president was moved to send missiles into Syria in part based on gruesome images of dead Syrian children he saw on TV. But he’s maintained the same hardline that those suffering children should not be accepted into America as refugees. Trump has overseen the use of the largest bomb short of a nuclear weapon in Afghanistan and talks tough about obliterating the Islamic State. Yet in a recent chat in his West Wing office, Priebus backed away from the idea of greater troop engagement, saying the administration doesn’t want to engage in “long-term ground wars in the Middle East.”
“He is not a movement conservative. He is definitely not an establishment Republican,” said Ken Blackwell, who headed domestic policy during Trump’s transition. “He’s transactional and makes calls based on his gut. Those of us who are accustomed to an ideological framework — it takes getting used to.”
But Trump’s ideologically noncommittal approach has bumped up against the constraints of a hyperpartisan Washington where the letters on congressional vote cards — D or R — are paramount.
Some are whispering that Trump should work with Democrats on infrastructure. Others say he must forge ahead only with Republicans on health care. Maybe he should work with both on taxes. Trump, it seems, is just looking for success.
“I am flexible,” as Trump said recently in a Rose Garden appearance. “And I’m proud of that flexibility.”
***
When Donald Trump gets angry, he fumes. “You can’t make them happy,” he said. “These people want more and more.”
He was complaining to friends that he had negotiated for weeks with Freedom Caucus members and he couldn’t believe the group was still against the health care legislation. Trump and his advisers were buzzing about making an enemies list and wanted to force a vote. But it was Trump, a man who hates to show weakness, who had to blink. As support flagged, the bill was shelved.
“I kind of pooh-poohed the experience stuff when I first got here,” one White House official said of these early months. “But this shit is hard.”
Nowhere has Trump’s learning curve been steeper than Capitol Hill. According to people close to the president, Trump believed that in selecting Priebus as chief of staff he was getting a deeply connected Washington wise man, someone who could guide his agenda through Capitol Hill.
Between Priebus and Vice President Mike Pence, who once served in House leadership, Trump thought he had the experts he needed and wouldn’t have to worry about Congress that much. But Priebus is a political insider, not a congressional one. And Pence, who was governor of Indiana before joining Trump’s ticket, has been absent from the Hill during the rise of the House Freedom Caucus, the ideological hardliners who delivered Trump the most stinging defeat of his young presidency.
House Republicans’ rejection of his plan to repeal-and-replace Obamacare served as a wake-up call — and a clarifying moment when he realized he couldn’t leave Congress to others, even Speaker Paul Ryan.
Trump had campaigned in generalities — “repeal-and-replace with something terrific,” he’d promised — and after the election Trump and his team decided to let Ryan take the lead on health care. Trump just wanted to sign a bill. He didn’t necessarily care what it said.
But the Freedom Caucus did. They felt left out of the process—and they hated Ryan’s bill. They complained to the White House almost every day and made threats. They seized on the bill’s anemic public approval.
So Trump personally got involved, just as he had long negotiated with business partners, offering a mix of wooing and threats. He even dispatched his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, a former House GOP hardliner himself, to threaten a particularly outspoken critic, Rep. Mark Sanford.
It backfired. Freedom Caucus members weren’t afraid to say no. In an embarrassing setback, Trump called to pull the bill.
President Donald Trump’s critics and supporters alike are equally flummoxed about what this president stands for. | Getty
White House officials played down the loss in recent conversations -- even as Trump has put immense pressure on Pence and Priebus to resuscitate the bill. “The narrative that somehow or another a signature piece of legislation must be out of the House and Senate in 100 days is a ridiculous standard,” Priebus said.
Trump seemed, at first, not to even understand the scope of his health care failure. He called reporters and spoke about moving on. Top-level aides bragged about his good mood. “No bullshit, I think he’s actually pretty comfortable with the outcome,” a senior White House official crowed.
After the health care fight, Marc Short, the president’s legislative director, had a meeting with his team on “lessons learned,” people familiar with the meeting say. Several administration officials said Trump has told them not to leave the Congressional details to Ryan and others – and that he eventually grasped how damaging the health care defeat could be to the rest of his agenda.
“I don’t think they realized what a big issue this was for the grassroots,” said Jenny Beth Martin, head of Tea Party Patriots, who had met with Trump.
Trump’s team now has another chance to pass the law. They spent several weeks wooing conservatives – and secured the backing Wednesday of the Freedom Caucus, which blocked the first bill from passing. They brought members and outside groups – including those funded by the conservative billionaire donors Charles and David Koch – to the White House.
They successfully convinced the conservatives who don’t like Ryan to get on board. But now, moderates concerned about making health benefits worse for their constituents are balking. White House officials are hoping to have a vote Friday or Saturday, just in time for Trump’s 100-day mark.
The defeat represented an early inflection point for a president who is openly more transactional than ideological. More than anything, it reinforced the president’s conviction that he could only trust the tight circle of people closest to him.
Now, Trump is forging ahead alone on taxes, rolling out a dramatic package of tax cuts on Wednesday without input from Hill leaders. “We aren’t listening to anyone else on taxes,” said one senior administration official, referring to Ryan. “It’s our plan.”
***
As Trump is beginning to better understand the challenges—and the limits—of the presidency, his aides are understanding better how to manage perhaps the most improvisational and free-wheeling president in history. “If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”
Interviews with White House officials, friends of Trump, veterans of his campaign and lawmakers paint a picture of a White House that has been slow to adapt to the demands of the most powerful office on earth.
“Everyone is concerned that things are not running that well,” said one senior official. “There should be more structure in place so we know who is working on what and who is responsible for what, instead of everyone freelancing on everything.”
But they’re learning. One key development: White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy. Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.
“You don’t walk in with a traditional presentation, like a binder or a PowerPoint. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t consume information that way,” said one senior administration official. “You go in and tell him the pros and cons, and what the media coverage is going to be like.”
Downplaying the downside risk of a decision can win out in the short term. But the risk is a presidential dressing-down—delivered in a yell. “You don’t want to be the person who sold him on something that turned out to be a bad idea,” the person said.
Advisers have tried to curtail Trump’s idle hours, hoping to prevent him from watching cable news or calling old friends and then tweeting about it. That only works during the workday, though—Trump’s evenings and weekends have remained largely his own.
“It’s not like the White House doesn’t have a plan to fill his time productively but at the end of the day he’s in charge of his schedule,” said one person close to the White House. “He does not like being managed.”
He also doesn’t like managing—or, rather, doesn’t mind stoking competition among his staffers. While his predecessor was known as “no-drama Obama,” Trump has presided over a series of melodramas involving his top aides, including Priebus, Bannon, counselor Kellyanne Conway and economic adviser Gary Cohn.
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“He has always been a guy who loves the idea of being a royal surrounded by a court,” said Michael D’Antonio, one of Trump’s biographers.
Many of those aides spent the opening weeks of the presidency pushing their own agendas – and sparring with one another. Priebus brought into the White House his chief of staff, chief operating officer and chief strategist from the RNC; Bannon has his own P.R. person and two writers from Breitbart; Kushner brought allies from the business world, and recently recruited his own publicity adviser; Conway has her own chief of staff; now Ivanka Trump has a chief of staff, too.
For now, all sides seem to have forged a delicate détente. Kushner and Bannon met earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and agreed to work out their differences. Trump aides now downplay talk of a shakeup involving Bannon – talk that, until just a few days ago, had reached a fever pitch. There have been a few changes here and there – Katie Walsh is out as deputy chief of staff, and KT McFarland has been moved off the national security team – but don’t expect any big personnel changes anytime soon, they say.
Yet there is little question that the months of infighting have taken a toll on Trump’s aides. Many are unaccustomed to working for a man who can consult with 20 outside associates a day, change his mind in a minute and change his mood even quicker.
Of late, some Republican National Committee members have become deeply concerned about Priebus, who was party chairman before joining Trump’s team. Priebus, who is distrusted by some rival White House factions and lacks the control previous chiefs of staff have had, has privately complained about the profound frustrations of the job.
Priebus, who is married and has two young children, has vented about the long hours he’s had to spend away from his family. In March, he missed an RNC donor retreat in Florida because, he told friends at the time, he needed to be at home to celebrate one of his children’s birthdays.
Trump the businessman and presidential candidate loved pitting top aides against one another. The internal competition ensured that the best ideas would rise to the top, he believed. Plus, he liked telling people, it made his employees work even harder to impress him.
***
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has developed a ritual of sorts: Just before going onstage for his televised briefings, he usually walks down the hall to the Oval Office to ask Trump what he wants to hear on TV that day. Cable news only occasionally carried press briefings from Obama’s secretaries in the later years of his presidency, but Spicer’s almost-daily outings have become a regular, wall-to-wall fixture.
His sessions with Trump were described by people familiar with them as part pep talk and part talking-point seminar. In the early days, Trump criticized Spicer fiercely, prompting him to upgrade his delivery at the podium as well as his wardrobe of suits. Now, people close to the president say, Trump brags about Spicer’s ratings.
Yet Trump continues to see himself as the best guardian of his own image. In New York, he infamously made calls to reporters pretending to be a spokesman. He personally called into the New York tabloid gossip pages as a source for years, and he even dialed cable news control rooms to suggest coverage after he became the presumptive Republican nominee in 2016.
That hasn’t changed in the White House, where Trump continues to crave attention and approval from news media figures. Trump huddled in the Oval Office with Matt Drudge, the reclusive operator of the influential Drudge Report, to talk about his administration and the site. Drudge and Kushner have also begun to communicate frequently, said people familiar with the conversations. Drudge, whose visits to the White House haven’t previously been reported, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Several senior administration aides said Trump loves nothing more than talking to reporters – no matter what he says about the “failing” New York Times or CNN – and he often seems personally stung by negative coverage, cursing and yelling at the TV. Kushner, too, sometimes calls TV personalities and executives, in particular MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, according to people close to the Trump son-in-law. (It didn’t go unnoticed in the West Wing that, at the height of the Kushner-Bannon war, the Drudge Report and Scarborough’s Morning Joe had an anti-Bannon flair to their coverage.)
If the goal of most administrations has been to set the media agenda for the day, it’s often the reverse in Trump’s White House, where what the president hears on the cable morning gabfests on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN can redirect his attention, schedule and agenda. The three TVs in the chief-of-staff's office sometimes dictate the 8 a.m. meeting – and are always turned on to cable news, West Wing officials say.
Behind the scenes, Trump – who beneath his confident veneer can be deeply sensitive to criticism – has been jolted when lawmakers took to TV to jab the president. If anyone had anything to say to the president, White House aides vented, they should do it with him personally – not from the camera. “If you go on TV and blast him, it’s over,” one senior administration official said.
Since taking office, Trump has 16 times tagged Fox and Friends, the network’s morning show, in his tweets, and countless other times weighed in on whatever they were talking about on air. After Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings went on Morning Joe and asked the president to call him, Trump did. After Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher defended Trump in an early Saturday morning Fox News hit, Trump called him moments later, inviting him to an Oval Office meeting. And after news segments, Trump will sometimes call his own advisers to discuss what he saw.
No slight is too small to ignore. West Wing staffers have even fumed about news coverage of the Easter Egg Roll. First, it was that Trump’s White House wouldn’t be smart enough to pull it off. Then, it was that no one would be there. And after the Easter Egg Roll went off without a hitch, “no one wanted to give us any credit,” said one senior administration official.
It is part of a siege mentality that has taken hold, from the president down, with Trump and his associates believing their coverage has stayed just as bad — or gotten worse — since the campaign ended in November. Senior administration officials said they’ve never seen Trump angrier than when the media focused its attention on the crowd size at his inauguration.
The darkest cloud shadowing the West Wing has been continuous questions about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.
The FBI director testified he is investigating Trump associates for possible collusion with a hostile foreign power, Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned over his interactions with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Attorney General Jeff Sessions ultimately had to recuse himself from his own department’s investigation after he failed to disclose his own conversations with Kislyak.
“If we have a good day, then within 48 hours there’s a Russia story,” said another senior administration official. “That’s just how it works.”
The news about Sessions’ interaction with the Russian ambassador came the day after Trump’s widely praised speech to a joint session of Congress. And it stomped on any momentum the White House had, especially Trump’s trip to an aircraft carrier later that week. At the end of the week, after Sessions recused himself from the probe, Trump exploded at his aides about his frustrations.
***
Yet Trump was grinning in his office last week. He wanted to pose for pictures behind the cleaned-off Resolute desk and in front of his gold curtains. He has posed for hundreds of pictures there – sometimes with a grin, sometimes with a thumbs-up – and has guests stand behind him. He seemed a man of few worries -- even though his aides were back out pushing a high-stakes health care vote, the government was one week from shutting down and North Korea was continuing its provocations.
The fact that 100 days, as a marker, has no legal or actual significance outside the media has not seemed to matter to Trump. While he has publicly derided the deadline as “ridiculous” on Twitter, he has decidedly reshuffled his schedule, priorities and agenda in the last two weeks to notch political points, knowing the deadline would get inordinate media coverage.
He has repeatedly pressed aides to have a health care vote before Saturday. He surprised his own staff by promising a tax reform plan by this week and urged them to round out his list of accomplishments. He has maintained an aggressive calendar, wooing conservative outlets and traditional reporters alike.
He told aides this week needed to be a busy one — just as he told them after his inauguration.
In days 1 through 10, it was executive orders on a federal hiring freeze, abortions abroad, withdrawing from an Asian trade deal and the explosive immigration order barring immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries. He got into a diplomatic row with Australia, one of America’s closest allies. The immigration order sparked international protests and was stopped in court. Trump later told advisers he regretted how it was handled.
In days 90 through 100, it was a flurry of executive orders. He got into a diplomatic row with Canada, one of America’s closest allies, threatening a trade war. He moved toward unwinding NAFTA. “There is no way we can do everything he wants to do this week,” one senior official said.
“Trump is a guy of action. He likes to move,” said Chris Ruddy, a close friend. “He doesn’t necessarily worry about all the collateral damage or the consequences.”
White House officials say they now have a more deliberative process of decision-making. Issues don’t go to his desk until they’ve had a thorough vetting in at least three meetings. Aides have cautioned him to slow down and have told him everything is not possible in his time frame. Sometimes, administration officials say, he listens and takes the news well. Sometimes, he keeps the demands going.
Trump may be learning and adjusting. But he is still Trump. On Saturday, he’ll celebrate his 100th day in office by boycotting the traditional White House Correspondents’ Dinner in favor of a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The rallies, which remind him of the campaign trail, often improve his mood, several people close to him say. “I will be holding a BIG rally in Pennsylvania,” he tweeted by way of announcement. “Look forward to it!”
Ben White contributed to this report.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-censors-trump-tweet-for-glorifying-violence
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Twitter Conceals Trump and White House’s Threats to Minneapolis Protesters for ‘Glorifying Violence’
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2020-05-29
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Jamie Ross
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Twitter hid a tweet from President Trump early Friday that the social media site said broke its rules on “ glorifying violence , ” then concealed the same tweet again when it was later reposted from the official White House account .
The tweets in question directly threatened demonstrators after a chaotic third day of protests against the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis . Demonstrators are demanding action over the death of the 46-year-old unarmed black man after shocking video footage showed a white police officer kneeling on his neck .
Late Thursday , they took over the Minneapolis Police Department 's third precinct and set the building ablaze .
Shortly after midnight , the president threatened to “ start shooting ” in an incendiary string of tweets . Trump wrote : “ These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd , and I won ’ t let that happen . Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way . Any difficulty and we will assume control but , when the looting starts , the shooting starts . Thank you ! ”
The ‘ shooting ’ reference echoed an infamous quote by an aggressive Miami police chief in 1967 who declared war on criminals sowing unrest in black neighborhoods in Miami .
Now , instead of showing that tweet , the site displays a disclaimer that users have to click through to be able to see what the president wrote . It states : “ This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence . However , Twitter has determined that it may be in the public ’ s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible . ”
Predictably , when Trump woke up on Friday morning to find his tweet has been hidden overnight , he and his allies went ballistic . The text of the concealed tweet was posted by the official White House account early Friday , which was then slapped with the same warning .
After the White House tweet was hidden , the official account responded : “ This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence . However , Twitter has determined that it will allow terrorists , dictators , and foreign propagandists to abuse its platform. ” The tweet included a screenshot from the feed of Iran ’ s supreme leader , Ali Khamenei , calling for a violent jihad in Palestine .
It ’ s the first time one of the president ’ s tweets has been concealed by Twitter , and comes after a week in which Trump has waged war on the site . The president raged earlier this week when Twitter added a fact-check to one of his tweets , casting doubt on his inaccurate assertion that mail ballots would lead to widespread voting fraud .
Then , on Thursday , Trump signed an executive order aimed at removing some legal protections given to social media platforms . It urged federal regulators to crack down on companies like Twitter and to consider removing legal protections that exempt them from liability for what gets posted on their platforms .
Reacting to the decision to hide his tweet , Trump frothed on Friday morning : “ Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party . They have targeted Republicans , Conservatives & the President of the United States . ”
He then claimed later on Friday that he actually tweeted out of concern that looting could lead to further violence , which could harm protesters .
“ Looting leads to shooting , and that ’ s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night - or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot . I don ’ t want this to happen , and that ’ s what the expression put out last night means , ” he tweeted . “ It was spoken as a fact , not as a statement . ”
Brendan Carr , commissioner of supposedly independent government agency the Federal Communications Commission , wrote : “ Twitter has abandoned any attempt at a good faith application of its rules . No one should take comfort in that . Here it is punishing speakers based on whether it approves or disapproves of their politics . ”
White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino added : “ Twitter is targeting the President of the United States 24/7 , while turning their heads to protest organizers who are planning , plotting , and communicating their next moves daily on this very platform . Twitter is full of shit—more and more people are beginning to get it . ”
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Twitter hid a tweet from President Trump early Friday that the social media site said broke its rules on “glorifying violence,” then concealed the same tweet again when it was later reposted from the official White House account.
The tweets in question directly threatened demonstrators after a chaotic third day of protests against the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Demonstrators are demanding action over the death of the 46-year-old unarmed black man after shocking video footage showed a white police officer kneeling on his neck.
Late Thursday, they took over the Minneapolis Police Department's third precinct and set the building ablaze.
Shortly after midnight, the president threatened to “start shooting” in an incendiary string of tweets. Trump wrote: “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
The ‘shooting’ reference echoed an infamous quote by an aggressive Miami police chief in 1967 who declared war on criminals sowing unrest in black neighborhoods in Miami.
Now, instead of showing that tweet, the site displays a disclaimer that users have to click through to be able to see what the president wrote. It states: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
Predictably, when Trump woke up on Friday morning to find his tweet has been hidden overnight, he and his allies went ballistic. The text of the concealed tweet was posted by the official White House account early Friday, which was then slapped with the same warning.
After the White House tweet was hidden, the official account responded: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it will allow terrorists, dictators, and foreign propagandists to abuse its platform.” The tweet included a screenshot from the feed of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, calling for a violent jihad in Palestine.
It’s the first time one of the president’s tweets has been concealed by Twitter, and comes after a week in which Trump has waged war on the site. The president raged earlier this week when Twitter added a fact-check to one of his tweets, casting doubt on his inaccurate assertion that mail ballots would lead to widespread voting fraud.
Then, on Thursday, Trump signed an executive order aimed at removing some legal protections given to social media platforms. It urged federal regulators to crack down on companies like Twitter and to consider removing legal protections that exempt them from liability for what gets posted on their platforms.
Reacting to the decision to hide his tweet, Trump frothed on Friday morning: “Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party. They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States.”
He then claimed later on Friday that he actually tweeted out of concern that looting could lead to further violence, which could harm protesters.
“Looting leads to shooting, and that’s why a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday night - or look at what just happened in Louisville with 7 people shot. I don’t want this to happen, and that’s what the expression put out last night means,” he tweeted. “It was spoken as a fact, not as a statement.”
Brendan Carr, commissioner of supposedly independent government agency the Federal Communications Commission, wrote: “Twitter has abandoned any attempt at a good faith application of its rules. No one should take comfort in that. Here it is punishing speakers based on whether it approves or disapproves of their politics.”
White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino added: “Twitter is targeting the President of the United States 24/7, while turning their heads to protest organizers who are planning, plotting, and communicating their next moves daily on this very platform. Twitter is full of shit—more and more people are beginning to get it.”
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http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/15/politics/house-women/index.html?hpt=po_c1
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House Democratic women's numbers don't yet add up to power
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2012-11-15
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Halimah Abdullah
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Story highlights Democrats cheer gains of women , but experts say power is not yet among them
There are few women in either party who hold key roles on powerful House committees
True test will be increase in leadership roles , sponsoring legislation , political experts say
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced that she would seek to keep her leadership role she stood flanked by a cheering phalanx of her female colleagues .
Pelosi , who prior to the Democratic Party 's loss of the House in 2010 served as its first female speaker , sandwiched her announcement between pointed comments about the Democratic agenda and how she sees her party 's policies as helpful to women . Pelosi said she would vie to keep her leadership role `` in order to continue work on empowering women . ''
But as even Democrats exult an election which saw , for the first time in history , women and minorities net the majority of House seats on their side of the aisle and a record 16 Democratic seats in the Senate , political experts warn against premature celebration .
An increase in the number of women does not automatically translate into increased political power .
Democrats may have been able to woo female voters and throw tremendous support behind getting women elected to office , but that `` does n't mean that is how they govern , '' said Jennifer Lawless , director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University .
`` Moving forward in the direction that will improve women 's social , economic and political autonomy takes time , '' she said -- time and the type of power that House Democrats currently lack .
JUST WATCHED Murray : Diversity is better for nation Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Murray : Diversity is better for nation 01:01
JUST WATCHED Minorities , women helped Obama win Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Minorities , women helped Obama win 02:51
JUST WATCHED Boehner : GOP has 'some work to do ' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Boehner : GOP has 'some work to do ' 00:45
Democrats are the minority in the House and do not have control of that chamber 's most powerful committees . That means they have far less control over the types of legislation that comes out of those committees .
And even within the Democratic House caucus , women are far outnumbered and outranked on some of the most powerful committees .
`` The most traditional measure ( of political power ) would be leadership positions , not just ranking positions on key committees but any membership on these committees , '' Lawless said .
There is only one Democratic woman , Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada , on the powerful House Ways and Means committee , which oversees tax writing , revenue and entitlement programs . There are other male lawmakers ahead of her with seniority to serve as ranking member .
The ranking Democrats on the Appropriations , Budget , Education and the Workforce and Energy and Commerce committees are also all men . New York Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter , one of the longest-serving women in Congress , is the ranking member on the House Rules Committee .
While the Senate has a greater share of women in leadership positions , there are no Republican women in top leadership roles .
There are also other questions of whether women indeed have an equal place at the political table , Lawless said .
Lawless added that there are questions , like who is sponsoring significant pieces of legislation ? Who are the most outspoken members regarding women 's issues ? Are women leading the discussions on the fiscal cliff ?
Those questions will perhaps best be answered when the new Congress convenes in January .
However , with such dramatic demographic and ideological differences in the House — women and minorities make up the majority on the left , white men are the majority on the right — Congress is likely headed for more partisan gridlock , said David Wasserman , House editor for the Cook Political Report .
For example , `` It will be more difficult to pass a bill to address the debt , '' he said .
The two parties and their newly remade majorities also will likely be at loggerheads on such issues as entitlement spending , immigration and health care reform , political experts say .
In the upcoming policy debates , the Republican side of the aisle will find it tougher to utilize their dwindled female corps to reach out to their Democratic compatriots , political experts say .
`` For Republican women it was a bad night , '' Michele Swers , a Georgetown University professor of American government , said of Election Night .
In the House , a number of Republican women lost races including Saratoga Springs , Utah , Mayor Mia Love , a Mormon of Haitian descent and rising Republican Party star who was given a high-profile speaking role at the Republican National Convention in August . Others , such as tea party favorite and former presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann , R-Minnesota narrowly kept their seats .
The majority of the Republican-held House seats are occupied by white men .
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington , the GOP 's top woman in the House , was elected Republican Conference Chairman on Wednesday , despite the fact that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan , Mitt Romney 's running mate , threw his support behind Rep. Tom Price of Georgia .
`` They 're somewhat limited , '' Lawless said of the GOP leadership 's ability to put forth women on key issues . `` Only 10 % of the Republican Congress is women . To the extent they want to be inclusive , it 's not as if there 's dozens and dozens of women who can speak for them . The lack of numbers hurts . ''
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Story highlights Democrats cheer gains of women, but experts say power is not yet among them
There are few women in either party who hold key roles on powerful House committees
True test will be increase in leadership roles, sponsoring legislation, political experts say
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced that she would seek to keep her leadership role she stood flanked by a cheering phalanx of her female colleagues.
Pelosi, who prior to the Democratic Party's loss of the House in 2010 served as its first female speaker, sandwiched her announcement between pointed comments about the Democratic agenda and how she sees her party's policies as helpful to women. Pelosi said she would vie to keep her leadership role "in order to continue work on empowering women."
But as even Democrats exult an election which saw, for the first time in history, women and minorities net the majority of House seats on their side of the aisle and a record 16 Democratic seats in the Senate, political experts warn against premature celebration.
An increase in the number of women does not automatically translate into increased political power.
Democrats may have been able to woo female voters and throw tremendous support behind getting women elected to office, but that "doesn't mean that is how they govern," said Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University.
"Moving forward in the direction that will improve women's social, economic and political autonomy takes time," she said -- time and the type of power that House Democrats currently lack.
JUST WATCHED Murray: Diversity is better for nation Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Murray: Diversity is better for nation 01:01
JUST WATCHED Minorities, women helped Obama win Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Minorities, women helped Obama win 02:51
JUST WATCHED Boehner: GOP has 'some work to do' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Boehner: GOP has 'some work to do' 00:45
Democrats are the minority in the House and do not have control of that chamber's most powerful committees. That means they have far less control over the types of legislation that comes out of those committees.
And even within the Democratic House caucus, women are far outnumbered and outranked on some of the most powerful committees.
"The most traditional measure (of political power) would be leadership positions, not just ranking positions on key committees but any membership on these committees," Lawless said.
There is only one Democratic woman, Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada, on the powerful House Ways and Means committee, which oversees tax writing, revenue and entitlement programs. There are other male lawmakers ahead of her with seniority to serve as ranking member.
The ranking Democrats on the Appropriations, Budget, Education and the Workforce and Energy and Commerce committees are also all men. New York Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter, one of the longest-serving women in Congress, is the ranking member on the House Rules Committee.
While the Senate has a greater share of women in leadership positions, there are no Republican women in top leadership roles.
There are also other questions of whether women indeed have an equal place at the political table, Lawless said.
Lawless added that there are questions, like who is sponsoring significant pieces of legislation? Who are the most outspoken members regarding women's issues? Are women leading the discussions on the fiscal cliff?
Those questions will perhaps best be answered when the new Congress convenes in January.
However, with such dramatic demographic and ideological differences in the House — women and minorities make up the majority on the left, white men are the majority on the right — Congress is likely headed for more partisan gridlock, said David Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report.
For example, "It will be more difficult to pass a bill to address the debt," he said.
The two parties and their newly remade majorities also will likely be at loggerheads on such issues as entitlement spending, immigration and health care reform, political experts say.
In the upcoming policy debates, the Republican side of the aisle will find it tougher to utilize their dwindled female corps to reach out to their Democratic compatriots, political experts say.
"For Republican women it was a bad night," Michele Swers, a Georgetown University professor of American government, said of Election Night.
In the House, a number of Republican women lost races including Saratoga Springs, Utah, Mayor Mia Love, a Mormon of Haitian descent and rising Republican Party star who was given a high-profile speaking role at the Republican National Convention in August. Others, such as tea party favorite and former presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota narrowly kept their seats.
The majority of the Republican-held House seats are occupied by white men.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington, the GOP's top woman in the House, was elected Republican Conference Chairman on Wednesday, despite the fact that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate, threw his support behind Rep. Tom Price of Georgia.
"They're somewhat limited," Lawless said of the GOP leadership's ability to put forth women on key issues. "Only 10% of the Republican Congress is women. To the extent they want to be inclusive, it's not as if there's dozens and dozens of women who can speak for them. The lack of numbers hurts."
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/trump-says-u-s-states-safely-reopening-despite-warnings-of-virus-resurgence-idUSKCN2241XD
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Trump says U.S. states safely reopening despite warnings of virus resurgence
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2020-04-23
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Rich Mckay
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( ███ ) - More states in the U.S. South and Midwest signaled readiness on Wednesday to reopen their economies in hopes the worst of the coronavirus pandemic had passed , but California ’ s governor held firm to sweeping stay-at-home orders and business closures .
The patchwork of still-evolving orders across the 50 states meant some Americans were still confined indefinitely to their homes , unable to work , while others began to venture out for the first time in weeks .
“ I wish I could prescribe a specific date to say that we can turn on that light switch and go back to normalcy , ” California Governor Gavin Newsom , a Democrat , said in his daily remarks to the nation ’ s most-populous state on the coronavirus crisis .
“ We have tried to make it crystal clear that there is no light switch and that there is no date in terms of our capacity to provide the kind of clarity that I know so many of you demand and deserve , ” Newsom said .
The governor said that among the steps health officials would need to take before 40 million Californians could return to jobs , schools and stores would be ramping up testing for the virus to 25,000 patients a day .
Newsom said U.S. President Donald Trump , a Republican , had committed to sending 100,000 testing swabs next week and 250,000 the following week .
Health officials in Santa Clara County , California , said on Wednesday the virus appeared to have circulated there in January , weeks earlier than thought , and early deaths were likely mistaken for the flu . [ L2N2CA27E ]
Nationwide , U.S. deaths totaled 47,050 on Wednesday , up about 1,800 , with some states yet to report . The United States has the world ’ s largest number of cases at over 830,000 .
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer , a Democrat who has faced criticism from conservative activists over her strict stay-at-home policies , said she would announce more details on Friday on her planned reopening of the state ’ s economy .
Ohio officials said they would soon disclose their plans as well and governors of Midwest states have said they were working together to sketch out a plan for lifting the restrictions . Michigan and Ohio are key electoral swing states that Trump won in the 2016 election .
In Texas , Governor Greg Abbott said he would announce in detail next week preparations to reopen as many businesses as possible in the first week of May .
Georgia , South Carolina and several other Southern states have already begun reopening their economies , facing criticism from some health experts who warn that doing so too quickly could trigger a new surge in cases of COVID-19 , the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus .
Trump said , however , that Georgia ’ s plan to open businesses such as barber shops , nail salons and bowling alleys this week was too soon “ and I told the governor that , ” he told an evening White House briefing .
According to a model maintained by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington , which is used by the White House , South Carolina and Georgia should not open until June 5 and June 19 , respectively .
“ Current trajectories indicate that 12 states may need to wait until at least June 8 or beyond that time , ” before meeting the model ’ s criteria for opening up , it said .
Oklahoma National Guardsmen receive orders during a decontamination mission at a longterm care facility , amid the spread of the coronavirus disease ( COVID-19 ) , in McAlester , Oklahoma , U.S. April 22 , 2020 . ███/Nick Oxford
State and local governments previously issued “ stay-at-home ” or “ shelter-in-place ” orders affecting about 94 % of Americans to try to limit the number of new cases of the coronavirus .
The restrictions have battered the U.S. economy , with mandatory business closures leaving millions of Americans unemployed . Political leaders have engaged in an acrimonious debate over when and how to reopen the economy .
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo , a Democrat who met with Trump on Tuesday , said his state had 474 COVID-19 deaths in the past day , its lowest since April 1 , and was showing more signs that the worst was over , including a drop in hospitalizations .
But Cuomo warned of a potential “ second wave ” if restrictions were relaxed irresponsibly .
“ This is no time to act stupidly , ” said Cuomo , whose state has been the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic . “ More people are going to die if we are not smart . ”
Cuomo acknowledged that local officials were feeling political pressure to reopen businesses , but warned against making decisions based on such factors .
“ We make a bad move , it ’ s going to set us back , ” Cuomo said , adding that the pandemic was not going away anytime soon .
Federal officials said two cats in New York state had tested positive for the virus , marking the first confirmed cases in pets in the United States . The cats had mild cases and were expected to recover .
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said she favored reopening her city , a gambling hub , but wanted casinos and other private businesses to sort out safety measures for themselves . She said she believed competition within free enterprise would wipe out any business that contributed to the pathogen ’ s spread .
The pandemic ’ s impact on businesses was underscored by Tyson Foods Inc ’ s announcement it would indefinitely suspend operations at its largest U.S. pork plant , in Waterloo , Iowa , after employees tested positive for the virus and others stayed home out of fear of infection .
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(Reuters) - More states in the U.S. South and Midwest signaled readiness on Wednesday to reopen their economies in hopes the worst of the coronavirus pandemic had passed, but California’s governor held firm to sweeping stay-at-home orders and business closures.
The patchwork of still-evolving orders across the 50 states meant some Americans were still confined indefinitely to their homes, unable to work, while others began to venture out for the first time in weeks.
“I wish I could prescribe a specific date to say that we can turn on that light switch and go back to normalcy,” California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in his daily remarks to the nation’s most-populous state on the coronavirus crisis.
“We have tried to make it crystal clear that there is no light switch and that there is no date in terms of our capacity to provide the kind of clarity that I know so many of you demand and deserve,” Newsom said.
The governor said that among the steps health officials would need to take before 40 million Californians could return to jobs, schools and stores would be ramping up testing for the virus to 25,000 patients a day.
Newsom said U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, had committed to sending 100,000 testing swabs next week and 250,000 the following week.
Health officials in Santa Clara County, California, said on Wednesday the virus appeared to have circulated there in January, weeks earlier than thought, and early deaths were likely mistaken for the flu. [L2N2CA27E]
Nationwide, U.S. deaths totaled 47,050 on Wednesday, up about 1,800, with some states yet to report. The United States has the world’s largest number of cases at over 830,000.
MICHIGAN TO ANNOUNCE PLANS
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has faced criticism from conservative activists over her strict stay-at-home policies, said she would announce more details on Friday on her planned reopening of the state’s economy.
Ohio officials said they would soon disclose their plans as well and governors of Midwest states have said they were working together to sketch out a plan for lifting the restrictions. Michigan and Ohio are key electoral swing states that Trump won in the 2016 election.
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott said he would announce in detail next week preparations to reopen as many businesses as possible in the first week of May.
Georgia, South Carolina and several other Southern states have already begun reopening their economies, facing criticism from some health experts who warn that doing so too quickly could trigger a new surge in cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Trump said, however, that Georgia’s plan to open businesses such as barber shops, nail salons and bowling alleys this week was too soon “and I told the governor that,” he told an evening White House briefing.
According to a model maintained by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which is used by the White House, South Carolina and Georgia should not open until June 5 and June 19, respectively.
“Current trajectories indicate that 12 states may need to wait until at least June 8 or beyond that time,” before meeting the model’s criteria for opening up, it said.
Oklahoma National Guardsmen receive orders during a decontamination mission at a longterm care facility, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in McAlester, Oklahoma, U.S. April 22, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Oxford
State and local governments previously issued “stay-at-home” or “shelter-in-place” orders affecting about 94% of Americans to try to limit the number of new cases of the coronavirus.
The restrictions have battered the U.S. economy, with mandatory business closures leaving millions of Americans unemployed. Political leaders have engaged in an acrimonious debate over when and how to reopen the economy.
‘SECOND WAVE’
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who met with Trump on Tuesday, said his state had 474 COVID-19 deaths in the past day, its lowest since April 1, and was showing more signs that the worst was over, including a drop in hospitalizations.
But Cuomo warned of a potential “second wave” if restrictions were relaxed irresponsibly.
“This is no time to act stupidly,” said Cuomo, whose state has been the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic. “More people are going to die if we are not smart.”
Cuomo acknowledged that local officials were feeling political pressure to reopen businesses, but warned against making decisions based on such factors.
“We make a bad move, it’s going to set us back,” Cuomo said, adding that the pandemic was not going away anytime soon.
Federal officials said two cats in New York state had tested positive for the virus, marking the first confirmed cases in pets in the United States. The cats had mild cases and were expected to recover.
Slideshow (19 Images)
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said she favored reopening her city, a gambling hub, but wanted casinos and other private businesses to sort out safety measures for themselves. She said she believed competition within free enterprise would wipe out any business that contributed to the pathogen’s spread.
The pandemic’s impact on businesses was underscored by Tyson Foods Inc’s announcement it would indefinitely suspend operations at its largest U.S. pork plant, in Waterloo, Iowa, after employees tested positive for the virus and others stayed home out of fear of infection.
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www.reuters.com
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g1qKYTvwJ424D7sD
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culture
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The Guardian
| 00
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/18/womens-march-2019-controversy-antisemitism
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Women's March set to proceed under cloud of controversy
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2019-01-18
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Lucia Graves
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Saturday ’ s event set to be smaller after several major sponsors withdrew following allegations of antisemitism
Just two years after leading the largest recorded protest in US history , the third annual Women ’ s March on Saturday is set to proceed under a cloud of controversy .
Theater project lets women who accused Trump tell their stories Read more
This year ’ s march is shaping up to be smaller and more splintered than before , after several major sponsors withdrew and local chapters disaffiliated from the central organization which leads it , following allegations of antisemitism .
Leaders were slow to deny and condemn allegations they had made antisemitic comments , and recent reporting has revealed deep ties between top officials and the Nation of Islam , whose leader , Louis Farrakhan , is a notorious antisemite .
Major progressive groups which sponsored the first march in 2017 have quietly withdrawn , including leading unions , environmental groups and women ’ s organizations . Of the many Jewish groups listed as partners in previous years , only a few remain . The Democratic National Committee , which had previously appeared on a list of 2019 Women ’ s March sponsors , recently disappeared too .
It ’ s a major blow for the movement that marked the beginning of the “ resistance ” in the wake of Donald Trump ’ s 2016 presidential upset , when hundreds of thousands descended on the National Mall in Washington DC , a mass demonstration roughly three times the size of Trump ’ s own inauguration .
Experts called the 2017 Women ’ s March the largest single-day protest in recorded US history , with turnout around the country estimated in the millions , and top celebrities and politicians lending their star power to the event . It also presaged the coming of the powerful # MeToo movement which would reshape the culture around the treatment of women at work .
This year , however , the showing is expected to be fractured .
Following a protracted fight over the organization ’ s leadership , Vanessa Wruble , a Brooklyn-based activist who was pushed out of the organization in 2017 , went on to help found another organization called March On , which emphasizes supporting local activists and denouncing antisemitism .
The result is that there will be two major women ’ s marches taking place on the streets of New York and many other cities around the country on Saturday – the original one , which emphasizes leadership by women of color , and another – March On – formed in opposition to antisemitism .
“ Founded by the leaders of many of the marches across the country , March On is women-led , but open to all , and will employ a sophisticated political strategy to coordinate concrete actions at the federal , state , and local level through the joint efforts of millions of marchers , ” the March On website states .
Lee Weal , an activist based in New York City , told ███ that while she went to the second Women ’ s March and had been planning to go to the third this year , the group ’ s ties to Farrakhan put her off .
“ If we insist that Trump disavow people like David Duke , you can ’ t have a different rule for those on the left , ” she said , adding she thought leaders were “ hurting the movement ” by aligning with him .
Even without the infighting , turnout for the main Women ’ s March – which kicks off on Saturday on the National Mall in Washington DC – was expected to be lower than in previous years .
Crowds in 2017 came in part as a response to Trump ’ s presidential inauguration . But this year ’ s rally takes place on the heels of a successful midterm election for Democrats , and at a time when options for civic involvement extend well beyond donning a pussy hat .
Washington DC has turned into a veritable ghost town amid the longest government shutdown in US history , with shuttered museums and tourist attractions . Earlier this month the National Park Service clarified that the Women ’ s March would take place despite the setbacks .
Many of the biggest stars of the Democratic party , including those who are running for president and were prominently featured at the march in 2017 will not be making appearances this year . They include Senators Kamala Harris , Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand , who once called the women ’ s march the “ most inspiring and transformational moment I ’ ve ever witnessed in politics ” .
The developments come following claims , described at length in stories in the New York Times and Tablet magazine , that at a private meeting members of leadership said Jews bore some special collective responsibility for the oppression of people of color , according to multiple sources in attendance , allegations those leaders have denied .
The stories also highlight the leadership ’ s ties to the teachings of Farrakhan . While the Women ’ s March has issued multiple statements claiming it does not support Farrakhan ’ s comments and rejects antisemitism , the Women ’ s March co-president Tamika Mallory has continued to defend her connection to him.This week , in an interview on The View , she failed to explicitly denounce his defamatory statements about Jews .
Another member of leadership , Bob Bland , told ABC News the Women ’ s March “ unequivocally condemns antisemitism ” as well as “ any statements of hate ” .
The Tablet story also outlined other internal disputes , such as concerns around the organization ’ s financial transparency and a lack of LGBT representation on its board .
Top organizers , including Women ’ s March founder Teresa Shook , have called for Women ’ s March leadership to step down , arguing that the small cadre of women in charge have “ steered the movement away from its true course ” and become an unwelcome distraction .
Such calls have gone unheeded . In a November conference call , top Women ’ s March organizer Linda Sarsour sought to dismiss the tensions as idle scuttlebutt .
“ It just happens often with women , unfortunate gossip and rumors and it ’ s very hurtful to us as our families are watching these conversation online , ” she said , according to Tablet ’ s report .
Sarsour ’ s comment appears to cater to damaging stereotypes about women being catty . But there is a long history of destructive fragmentation within the women ’ s movement and social and progressive movements more generally .
Women ’ s suffrage leaders infamously excluded black women . And the Equal Rights Amendment introduced in 1923 went down to defeat , after the middle-class women who championed it were pitted against working-class women who feared the erosion of labor protections . When it re-emerged later in the 1970s , it was brought down by a group of staunchly conservative housewives led by Phyllis Schlafly .
From its earliest days the Women ’ s March has been fraught with racial tensions , with minority women concerned that white participants had ignored their needs . Some women feel the current fracas around antisemitism is just one more way for women to be divided from one another .
That ’ s why sponsors such as Planned Parenthood are sticking with the march , even as they “ unequivocally reaffirm that there is no place for antisemitism , racism , homophobia , transphobia or any kind of bigotry in our communities ” .
Planned Parenthood ’ s Angela Ferrell-Zabala wrote in a lengthy Medium post defending the decision : “ We know our work fighting for equity and justice for all people can not happen if we don ’ t face difficult conversations within our community head on . ”
The American Federation of Teachers – one of the largest unions in the country whose president , Randi Weingarten , is Jewish – is also sticking with the Women ’ s March .
“ I come down on the side of of course we must engage , ” she wrote on Facebook , “ and work together to create a country and a world that deeply believes and honors the inalienable rights of all . ”
|
Saturday’s event set to be smaller after several major sponsors withdrew following allegations of antisemitism
Just two years after leading the largest recorded protest in US history, the third annual Women’s March on Saturday is set to proceed under a cloud of controversy.
Theater project lets women who accused Trump tell their stories Read more
This year’s march is shaping up to be smaller and more splintered than before, after several major sponsors withdrew and local chapters disaffiliated from the central organization which leads it, following allegations of antisemitism.
Leaders were slow to deny and condemn allegations they had made antisemitic comments, and recent reporting has revealed deep ties between top officials and the Nation of Islam, whose leader, Louis Farrakhan, is a notorious antisemite.
Major progressive groups which sponsored the first march in 2017 have quietly withdrawn, including leading unions, environmental groups and women’s organizations. Of the many Jewish groups listed as partners in previous years, only a few remain. The Democratic National Committee, which had previously appeared on a list of 2019 Women’s March sponsors, recently disappeared too.
Sign up for the US morning briefing
It’s a major blow for the movement that marked the beginning of the “resistance” in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential upset, when hundreds of thousands descended on the National Mall in Washington DC, a mass demonstration roughly three times the size of Trump’s own inauguration.
Experts called the 2017 Women’s March the largest single-day protest in recorded US history, with turnout around the country estimated in the millions, and top celebrities and politicians lending their star power to the event. It also presaged the coming of the powerful #MeToo movement which would reshape the culture around the treatment of women at work.
This year, however, the showing is expected to be fractured.
Following a protracted fight over the organization’s leadership, Vanessa Wruble, a Brooklyn-based activist who was pushed out of the organization in 2017, went on to help found another organization called March On, which emphasizes supporting local activists and denouncing antisemitism.
The result is that there will be two major women’s marches taking place on the streets of New York and many other cities around the country on Saturday – the original one, which emphasizes leadership by women of color, and another – March On – formed in opposition to antisemitism.
“Founded by the leaders of many of the marches across the country, March On is women-led, but open to all, and will employ a sophisticated political strategy to coordinate concrete actions at the federal, state, and local level through the joint efforts of millions of marchers,” the March On website states.
Lee Weal, an activist based in New York City, told the Guardian that while she went to the second Women’s March and had been planning to go to the third this year, the group’s ties to Farrakhan put her off.
“If we insist that Trump disavow people like David Duke, you can’t have a different rule for those on the left,” she said, adding she thought leaders were “hurting the movement” by aligning with him.
Even without the infighting, turnout for the main Women’s March – which kicks off on Saturday on the National Mall in Washington DC – was expected to be lower than in previous years.
Crowds in 2017 came in part as a response to Trump’s presidential inauguration. But this year’s rally takes place on the heels of a successful midterm election for Democrats, and at a time when options for civic involvement extend well beyond donning a pussy hat.
Washington DC has turned into a veritable ghost town amid the longest government shutdown in US history, with shuttered museums and tourist attractions. Earlier this month the National Park Service clarified that the Women’s March would take place despite the setbacks.
Many of the biggest stars of the Democratic party, including those who are running for president and were prominently featured at the march in 2017 will not be making appearances this year. They include Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, who once called the women’s march the “most inspiring and transformational moment I’ve ever witnessed in politics”.
The developments come following claims, described at length in stories in the New York Times and Tablet magazine, that at a private meeting members of leadership said Jews bore some special collective responsibility for the oppression of people of color, according to multiple sources in attendance, allegations those leaders have denied.
The stories also highlight the leadership’s ties to the teachings of Farrakhan. While the Women’s March has issued multiple statements claiming it does not support Farrakhan’s comments and rejects antisemitism, the Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory has continued to defend her connection to him.This week, in an interview on The View, she failed to explicitly denounce his defamatory statements about Jews.
Another member of leadership, Bob Bland, told ABC News the Women’s March “unequivocally condemns antisemitism” as well as “any statements of hate”.
The Tablet story also outlined other internal disputes, such as concerns around the organization’s financial transparency and a lack of LGBT representation on its board.
Top organizers, including Women’s March founder Teresa Shook, have called for Women’s March leadership to step down, arguing that the small cadre of women in charge have “steered the movement away from its true course” and become an unwelcome distraction.
Such calls have gone unheeded. In a November conference call, top Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour sought to dismiss the tensions as idle scuttlebutt.
“It just happens often with women, unfortunate gossip and rumors and it’s very hurtful to us as our families are watching these conversation online,” she said, according to Tablet’s report.
Sarsour’s comment appears to cater to damaging stereotypes about women being catty. But there is a long history of destructive fragmentation within the women’s movement and social and progressive movements more generally.
Women’s suffrage leaders infamously excluded black women. And the Equal Rights Amendment introduced in 1923 went down to defeat, after the middle-class women who championed it were pitted against working-class women who feared the erosion of labor protections. When it re-emerged later in the 1970s, it was brought down by a group of staunchly conservative housewives led by Phyllis Schlafly.
From its earliest days the Women’s March has been fraught with racial tensions, with minority women concerned that white participants had ignored their needs. Some women feel the current fracas around antisemitism is just one more way for women to be divided from one another.
That’s why sponsors such as Planned Parenthood are sticking with the march, even as they “unequivocally reaffirm that there is no place for antisemitism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any kind of bigotry in our communities”.
Planned Parenthood’s Angela Ferrell-Zabala wrote in a lengthy Medium post defending the decision: “We know our work fighting for equity and justice for all people cannot happen if we don’t face difficult conversations within our community head on.”
The American Federation of Teachers – one of the largest unions in the country whose president, Randi Weingarten, is Jewish – is also sticking with the Women’s March.
“I come down on the side of of course we must engage,” she wrote on Facebook, “and work together to create a country and a world that deeply believes and honors the inalienable rights of all.”
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/3/17074824/west-virginia-teachers-strike-justice-union
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All of West Virginia’s teachers have been on strike for over a week
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2018-03-03
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Emily Stewart, Aaron Rupar, Alex Ward, Matthew Yglesias, Terry Nguyen, Tara Golshan
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Thousands of public school teachers across West Virginia have been on strike for more than a week in protest over their pay and benefits . And despite striking a deal with West Virginia Governor Jim Justice on Wednesday that would put the more than 277,000 students affected back in school , teachers still won ’ t return to work on Monday as the state ’ s legislature — specifically , the Senate — has rejected the agreement .
The strike began on Thursday , February 22 , the day after Governor Justice , a Republican , signed legislation providing teachers , school service personnel , and state police with a 2 percent salary increase starting in July and scheduling a 1 percent pay hike for teachers in 2020 and 2021 . Teachers ’ unions said the raises wouldn ’ t cover cost-of-living increases , and the bill didn ’ t address other concerns related to public employee insurance programs , health care costs , and payroll tax deduction options . Thousands of teachers , parents , and supporters descended on West Virginia ’ s Capitol in Charleston to protest . Schools will remain closed on Monday as the strike enters its eighth day .
The strike appeared as though it was poised to end on Wednesday , after Justice announced that teachers and other education-related employees would be getting a 5 percent pay raise in the first year — provided state lawmakers approve the new bill . The proposed pay hike passed West Virginia ’ s House of Delegates , but the Senate has resisted . It approved a bill Saturday evening for a 4 percent pay raise , and that was rejected by the House of Delegates . ( There was some confusion earlier in the evening when the Senate accidentally approved the 5 percent hike , but it then went back to 4 percent . )
WV ’ s Senate thought they passed a 4 % pay raise for teachers , which is less than what teachers wanted . Teachers vowed to continue strike . Turns out Senate accidentally passed 5 % . Parliamentary hijinks currently ensuing . — Jess Bidgood ( @ jessbidgood ) March 4 , 2018
“ This is a three-legged stool , right ? ” Kym Randolph , director of communications for the West Virginia Education Association ( WVEA ) , a teacher union , told the Washington Post . “ The governor , the House , and the Senate . And I think two legs are very solid . I think one is a little wobbly right now , and some statements have been made by members of the Senate that are causing some people to question whether or not the Senate is fully committed . ”
In a statement on Friday , West Virginia teachers unions said that their members are “ ready to get back to work ” but said there is one thing standing in their way : Senate President Mitch Carmichael . “ Senator Carmichael has made every effort to derail the agreement with the Governor and keep our public schools closed again next week , ” the unions said in a statement . “ His rhetoric , posturing , and actions has inflamed educators , state superintendents , parents , citizens as well as his fellow legislators . ”
Carmichael , a Republican , has publicly expressed doubts about the pay raise and the state ’ s ability to pay for it , instead suggesting that any extra revenue should go toward shoring up the Public Employee Insurance Agency , the state ’ s health insurance program .
” It ’ s easy to come in here and just vote for what people want , but that ’ s not what the general citizens expect of West Virginia , ” Carmichael told local news outlet WSAZ on Thursday . “ That ’ s what ’ s been done around here for too long . ”
Governor Justice in a statement on Saturday criticized the Senate ’ s vote and called for everyone to “ quit playing politics ” and get children back to school . “ This wrangling needs to stop right now , ” he said . “ For crying out loud , we are putting our children at risk . ”
According to the Washington Post , a joint legislative committee in West Virginia will address differences in the House of Delegates and Senate pay raise bills . It is not clear when the committee will meet .
It ’ s actually illegal for teachers to strike in West Virginia . They ’ re doing it anyway .
Steven Paine , West Virginia superintendent of schools , in a statement ahead of the strike said he fully recognizes and supports the work of teachers and that they “ deserve more , ” but “ the economic realities of our state may not allow everything teachers deserve to take place immediately. ” He also pointed out that work stoppages by public employees are “ not lawful ” in West Virginia . State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the strike was “ illegal . ”
Teachers have gone on strike anyway . West Virginia ’ s 680 public schools employ 19,488 classroom teachers and have enrolled 277,137 students . All 55 counties in West Virginia have closed schools for more than a week . In 2016 , the average salary for West Virginia teachers ranked 48th in the country , according to the National Education Association , ahead of only Oklahoma , Mississippi , and South Dakota .
In a moment in which public unions are under an increasingly heavy threat , West Virginia teachers have shown why they matter and what they can do . The Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a case , Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 , on whether employees can be required to pay dues to a union they don ’ t belong to .
According to the New York Times , West Virginia ’ s teachers were initially considering a “ rolling strike , ” in which teachers in a few counties would walk out each day . Donnie Ellis , the husband of English teacher Robin Ellis , said he told his wife if they wanted a change they ’ d really have to go for it . “ It ’ s got to be all-in or nothing , ” he said .
Update : Story updated with Saturday ’ s Senate vote , Monday ’ s school closure , and reactions .
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Thousands of public school teachers across West Virginia have been on strike for more than a week in protest over their pay and benefits. And despite striking a deal with West Virginia Governor Jim Justice on Wednesday that would put the more than 277,000 students affected back in school, teachers still won’t return to work on Monday as the state’s legislature — specifically, the Senate — has rejected the agreement.
The strike began on Thursday, February 22, the day after Governor Justice, a Republican, signed legislation providing teachers, school service personnel, and state police with a 2 percent salary increase starting in July and scheduling a 1 percent pay hike for teachers in 2020 and 2021. Teachers’ unions said the raises wouldn’t cover cost-of-living increases, and the bill didn’t address other concerns related to public employee insurance programs, health care costs, and payroll tax deduction options. Thousands of teachers, parents, and supporters descended on West Virginia’s Capitol in Charleston to protest. Schools will remain closed on Monday as the strike enters its eighth day.
The strike appeared as though it was poised to end on Wednesday, after Justice announced that teachers and other education-related employees would be getting a 5 percent pay raise in the first year — provided state lawmakers approve the new bill. The proposed pay hike passed West Virginia’s House of Delegates, but the Senate has resisted. It approved a bill Saturday evening for a 4 percent pay raise, and that was rejected by the House of Delegates. (There was some confusion earlier in the evening when the Senate accidentally approved the 5 percent hike, but it then went back to 4 percent.)
WV’s Senate thought they passed a 4% pay raise for teachers, which is less than what teachers wanted. Teachers vowed to continue strike. Turns out Senate accidentally passed 5%. Parliamentary hijinks currently ensuing. — Jess Bidgood (@jessbidgood) March 4, 2018
“This is a three-legged stool, right?” Kym Randolph, director of communications for the West Virginia Education Association (WVEA), a teacher union, told the Washington Post. “The governor, the House, and the Senate. And I think two legs are very solid. I think one is a little wobbly right now, and some statements have been made by members of the Senate that are causing some people to question whether or not the Senate is fully committed.”
In a statement on Friday, West Virginia teachers unions said that their members are “ready to get back to work” but said there is one thing standing in their way: Senate President Mitch Carmichael. “Senator Carmichael has made every effort to derail the agreement with the Governor and keep our public schools closed again next week,” the unions said in a statement. “His rhetoric, posturing, and actions has inflamed educators, state superintendents, parents, citizens as well as his fellow legislators.”
Carmichael, a Republican, has publicly expressed doubts about the pay raise and the state’s ability to pay for it, instead suggesting that any extra revenue should go toward shoring up the Public Employee Insurance Agency, the state’s health insurance program.
”It’s easy to come in here and just vote for what people want, but that’s not what the general citizens expect of West Virginia,” Carmichael told local news outlet WSAZ on Thursday. “That’s what’s been done around here for too long.”
Governor Justice in a statement on Saturday criticized the Senate’s vote and called for everyone to “quit playing politics” and get children back to school. “This wrangling needs to stop right now,” he said. “For crying out loud, we are putting our children at risk.”
According to the Washington Post, a joint legislative committee in West Virginia will address differences in the House of Delegates and Senate pay raise bills. It is not clear when the committee will meet.
It’s actually illegal for teachers to strike in West Virginia. They’re doing it anyway.
Steven Paine, West Virginia superintendent of schools, in a statement ahead of the strike said he fully recognizes and supports the work of teachers and that they “deserve more,” but “the economic realities of our state may not allow everything teachers deserve to take place immediately.” He also pointed out that work stoppages by public employees are “not lawful” in West Virginia. State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the strike was “illegal.”
Teachers have gone on strike anyway. West Virginia’s 680 public schools employ 19,488 classroom teachers and have enrolled 277,137 students. All 55 counties in West Virginia have closed schools for more than a week. In 2016, the average salary for West Virginia teachers ranked 48th in the country, according to the National Education Association, ahead of only Oklahoma, Mississippi, and South Dakota.
In a moment in which public unions are under an increasingly heavy threat, West Virginia teachers have shown why they matter and what they can do. The Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a case, Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, on whether employees can be required to pay dues to a union they don’t belong to.
According to the New York Times, West Virginia’s teachers were initially considering a “rolling strike,” in which teachers in a few counties would walk out each day. Donnie Ellis, the husband of English teacher Robin Ellis, said he told his wife if they wanted a change they’d really have to go for it. “It’s got to be all-in or nothing,” he said.
And so they continue to go all-in.
Update: Story updated with Saturday’s Senate vote, Monday’s school closure, and reactions.
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www.vox.com
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78Akx2nSokxbCMd0
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elections
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The Hill
| 11
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https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/434418-kirsten-gillibrand-officially-announces-white-house-run
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Kirsten Gillibrand officially announces White House run
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2019-03-17
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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Kirsten GillibrandTo win the federal paid family leave debate , allow states to lead the way DNC raises qualifying thresholds for fifth presidential debate ███ 's 12:30 Report : Trump defends call as Ukraine controversy deepens MORE ( D-N.Y. ) on Sunday officially announced she is running for president in 2020 .
The Democratic senator , who announced an exploratory committee for a potential run in January , takes aim at President Trump Donald John TrumpSessions says he still supports Trump despite ouster as AG House Republicans voice concerns about White House 's impeachment messaging Giuliani consulted with Manafort on Ukraine info : report MORE and highlights a number of progressive causes in a launch video that asks `` Will brave win ? ''
I ’ m running for president . Let ’ s prove that brave wins . Join me : https : //t.co/I1vp93LBUR pic.twitter.com/Giu4u4KEZQ — Kirsten Gillibrand ( @ SenGillibrand ) March 17 , 2019
`` Brave doesn ’ t spread hate , cloud truth , build a wall , '' Gillibrand says in the video . `` That ’ s what fear does . ''
Gillibrand also calls for universal health care , paid family leave , ending gun violence , a Green New Deal and getting money out of politics and points to activists such as striking public school teachers and Women 's March participants .
Gillibrand , 52 , joins a crowded and historically diverse pool of Democratic candidates vying to take on Trump in 2020 . She is one of six women who have announced runs so far .
The senator also announced a campaign kickoff rally in front of Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York next week .
`` We ’ re bringing the fight to Trump ’ s doorstep , '' the event 's page reads .
Gillibrand , who was first appointed to replace Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonGiuliani consulted with Manafort on Ukraine info : report California political donor indicted for 2 overdose deaths at his home Sanders heart procedures shines spotlight on age of top Democrats MORE in the Senate in 2009 , has enjoyed national attention in recent years , largely because of her activism in the # MeToo movement . She has long been an advocate for victims of sexual assault and harassment in the military , in the workplace and on Capitol Hill .
Gillibrand faced some criticism from other Democrats when she became the first Democratic senator to call for the resignation of then-Sen. Al Franken Alan ( Al ) Stuart FrankenTake Trump literally and seriously in Minnesota Ninth woman accuses Al Franken of inappropriate contact Al Franken to host SiriusXM radio show MORE ( D-Minn. ) over allegations of sexual misconduct . Her office also came under scrutiny this month because of a report that a former female staffer resigned over the alleged mishandling of her sexual harassment complaint .
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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Kirsten GillibrandTo win the federal paid family leave debate, allow states to lead the way DNC raises qualifying thresholds for fifth presidential debate The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump defends call as Ukraine controversy deepens MORE (D-N.Y.) on Sunday officially announced she is running for president in 2020.
The Democratic senator, who announced an exploratory committee for a potential run in January, takes aim at President Trump Donald John TrumpSessions says he still supports Trump despite ouster as AG House Republicans voice concerns about White House's impeachment messaging Giuliani consulted with Manafort on Ukraine info: report MORE and highlights a number of progressive causes in a launch video that asks "Will brave win?"
I’m running for president. Let’s prove that brave wins. Join me: https://t.co/I1vp93LBUR pic.twitter.com/Giu4u4KEZQ — Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) March 17, 2019
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"Brave doesn’t spread hate, cloud truth, build a wall," Gillibrand says in the video. "That’s what fear does."
Gillibrand also calls for universal health care, paid family leave, ending gun violence, a Green New Deal and getting money out of politics and points to activists such as striking public school teachers and Women's March participants.
Gillibrand, 52, joins a crowded and historically diverse pool of Democratic candidates vying to take on Trump in 2020. She is one of six women who have announced runs so far.
The senator also announced a campaign kickoff rally in front of Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York next week.
"We’re bringing the fight to Trump’s doorstep," the event's page reads.
Gillibrand, who was first appointed to replace Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonGiuliani consulted with Manafort on Ukraine info: report California political donor indicted for 2 overdose deaths at his home Sanders heart procedures shines spotlight on age of top Democrats MORE in the Senate in 2009, has enjoyed national attention in recent years, largely because of her activism in the #MeToo movement. She has long been an advocate for victims of sexual assault and harassment in the military, in the workplace and on Capitol Hill.
Gillibrand faced some criticism from other Democrats when she became the first Democratic senator to call for the resignation of then-Sen. Al Franken Alan (Al) Stuart FrankenTake Trump literally and seriously in Minnesota Ninth woman accuses Al Franken of inappropriate contact Al Franken to host SiriusXM radio show MORE (D-Minn.) over allegations of sexual misconduct. Her office also came under scrutiny this month because of a report that a former female staffer resigned over the alleged mishandling of her sexual harassment complaint.
This report was updated at 7:42 a.m.
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www.thehill.com
| 2center
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vvAgpKy0PL1h8990
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