Aide says Donald Trump’s critics should focus on problems back home
A top White House aide said Sunday that President Donald Trump, frustrated by the Democrats’ unrelenting investigations and talk of impeachment, swung hard at an influential black Democratic congressman and his Baltimore district because he believes such Capitol Hill critics are neglecting serious problems back home in their zeal to undermine his presidency. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney insisted in two national television interviews that that Trump was not making racist comments when he tweeted that the majority-black district of Rep. Elijah Cummings was a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Mulvaney, a former congressman himself, said he understood why some people could perceive Trump’s words as racist. Trump’s repeated weekend attacks on Cummings, the powerful chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, marked the latest rhetorical shot against a prominent lawmaker. Two weeks ago, Trump caused a nationwide uproar with racist tweets directed at four Democratic congresswomen of color as he looked to stoke racial divisions for political gain heading into the 2020 election. Mulvaney said Trump’s words were exaggerated for effect — “Does the president speak hyperbolically? Absolutely” — and meant to draw attention to Democratic-backed investigations of the Republican president and his team in Washington. “Instead of helping people back home, they’re focusing on scandal in Washington D.C., which is the exact opposite of what they said they would do when they ran for election in 2018,” Mulvaney said, pointing at Democrats who now control the House. He asserted that Trump’s barbs were a reaction to what the president considered to be inaccurate statements by Cummings about conditions in which children are being held in detention at the U.S.-Mexico border. At a hearing last week, Cummings accused a top administration official of wrongly calling reports of filthy, overcrowded border facilities “unsubstantiated.” “When the president hears lies like that, he’s going to fight back,” Mulvaney said.Trump’s tweets Saturday charged that Cummings’ district, which includes Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Social Security Administration and the national headquarters of the NAACP, is “considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.” Condemnation followed from Democrats over the weekend, including some of the party’s presidential candidates. Statements from a spokesman for Maryland’s Republican governor and from the lieutenant governor defended Cummings’ district and its people. Trump, unbowed, resumed the verbal volleying Sunday: “There is nothing racist in stating plainly what most people already know, that Elijah Cummings has done a terrible job for the people of his district, and of Baltimore itself. Dems always play the race card when they are unable to win with facts. Shame!” The president has tried to put racial polarization at the center of his appeal to his base of voters, tapping into anxieties about demographic and cultural changes in the nation in the belief that the divided country he leads will simply choose sides over issues such as race.Mulvaney argued that Trump would criticize any lawmaker, no matter the person’s race, in a similar way if Trump felt that individual spoke unfairly about the president’s policies. He volunteered that if Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the House Intelligence Committee, had made the same remarks as Cummings, Trump would have pushed back. “It has zero to do with the fact that Adam is Jewish and everything to do with Adam would just be wrong if he were saying that,” Mulvaney said. “This is what the president does. He fights and he’s not wrong to do so.” To Mulvaney, Trump was “right to raise” the challenges faced in Cummings’ district at the same time that Cummings and other Democrats are “chasing down” the Russia investigation undertaken by Robert Mueller and pursuing “this bizarre impeachment crusade.” Nonetheless, the chief of staff said he understood why some people view Trump’s comments as racist, “but that doesn’t mean that it is racist.” “The president is pushing back against what he sees is wrong,” he added. “It’s how he’s done it in the past and he’ll continue to do it in the future.” Cummings is leading multiple investigations of the president’s governmental dealings. In his direct response to Trump on Twitter, Cummings said: “Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.” Cummings has also drawn the president’s ire for investigations touching on his family members serving in the White House. His committee voted along party lines Thursday to authorize subpoenas for personal emails and texts used for official business by top White House aides, including Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro said Trump was engaging in “racial priming.” “Using this language and taking actions to try and get people to move into their camps by racial and ethnic identity. That’s how he thinks he won in 2016 and that’s how he thinks he’s going to win in 2020,” Castro said. Rarlier this month, Trump drew bipartisan condemnation following his call for Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to get out of the U.S. “right now.” He said that if the lawmakers “hate our country,” they can go back to their “broken and crime-infested” countries. All four lawmakers of color are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S. The House later voted largely along party lines to condemn his “racist comments.”Mulvaney claimed that if he had focused on investigations when he was in Congress rather than poverty and other issues, “I’d get fired.” More rural than Cummings’ district, Mulvaney’s former district in South Carolina has a lower per-capita income than the one targeted by Trump, and the poverty rates are roughly the same. Cummings’ district is about 55 percent black and includes a large portion of Baltimore. The city has struggled with
Richard Shelby: Border security talks ‘stalled’ as clock ticks
Bargainers clashed Sunday over whether to limit the number of migrants authorities can detain, tossing a new hurdle before negotiators hoping to strike a border security compromise for Congress to pass this coming week. The White House wouldn’t rule out a renewed partial government shutdown if an agreement isn’t reached. With the Friday deadline approaching, the two sides remained separated by hundreds of millions of dollars over how much to spend to construct President Donald Trump’s promised border wall. But rising to the fore was a related dispute over curbing Customs and Immigration Enforcement, or ICE, the federal agency that Republicans see as an emblem of tough immigration policies and Democrats accuse of often going too far. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, in appearances on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday,” said “you absolutely cannot” eliminate the possibility of another shutdown if a deal is not reached over the wall and other border matters. The White House had asked for $5.7 billion, a figure rejected by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, and the mood among bargainers has soured, according to people familiar with the negotiations not authorized to speak publicly about private talks. “You cannot take a shutdown off the table, and you cannot take $5.7 (billion) off the table,” Mulvaney told NBC, “but if you end up someplace in the middle, yeah, then what you probably see is the president say, ‘Yeah, OK, and I’ll go find the money someplace else.’” A congressional deal seemed to stall even after Mulvaney convened a bipartisan group of lawmakers at Camp David, the presidential retreat in northern Maryland. While the two sides seemed close to clinching a deal late last week, significant gaps remain and momentum appears to have slowed. Though congressional Democratic aides asserted that the dispute had caused the talks to break off, it was initially unclear how damaging the rift was. Both sides are eager to resolve the long-running battle and avert a fresh closure of dozens of federal agencies that would begin next weekend if Congress doesn’t act by Friday. “I think talks are stalled right now,” Sen. Richard Shelby, Republican-Ala., said Sunday on “Fox News Sunday.” ″I’m not confident we’re going to get there.” Sen. Jon Tester, Democrat-Mont., who appeared on the same program, agreed: “We are not to the point where we can announce a deal.” But Mulvaney did signal that the White House would prefer not to have a repeat of the last shutdown, which stretched more than a month, left more than 800,000 government workers without paychecks, forced a postponement of the State of the Union address and sent Trump’s poll numbers tumbling. As support in his own party began to splinter, Trump surrendered after the shutdown hit 35 days without getting money for the wall. This time, Mulvaney signaled that the White House may be willing to take whatever congressional money comes — even if less than Trump’s goal — and then supplement that with other government funds. “The president is going to build the wall. That’s our attitude at this point,” Mulvaney said on Fox. “We’ll take as much money as you can give us, and we’ll go find the money somewhere else, legally, and build that wall on the southern border, with or without Congress.” The president’s supporters have suggested that Trump could use executive powers to divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, though it was unclear if he would face challenges in Congress or the courts. One provision of the law lets the Defense Department provide support for counterdrug activities. But declaring a national emergency remained an option, Mulvaney said, even though many in the administration have cooled on the prospect. A number of powerful Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican-Ky., have also warned against the move, believing it usurps power from Congress and could set a precedent for a future Democratic president to declare an emergency for a liberal political cause. The fight over ICE detentions goes to the core of each party’s view on immigration. Republicans favor tough enforcement of immigration laws and have little interest in easing them if Democrats refuse to fund the Mexican border wall. Democrats despise the proposed wall and, in return for border security funds, want to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by ICE. People involved in the talks say Democrats have proposed limiting the number of immigrants here illegally who are caught inside the U.S. — not at the border — that the agency can detain. Republicans say they don’t want that cap to apply to immigrants caught committing crimes, but Democrats do. In a series of tweets about the issue, Trump used the dispute to cast Democrats as soft on criminals. He charged in one tweet: “The Border Committee Democrats are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally. Not only are they unwilling to give dollars for the obviously needed Wall (they overrode recommendations of Border Patrol experts), but they don’t even want to take muderers into custody! What’s going on?” Democrats say they proposed their cap to force ICE to concentrate its internal enforcement efforts on dangerous immigrants, not those who lack legal authority to be in the country but are productive and otherwise pose no threat. Democrats have proposed reducing the current number of beds ICE uses to detain immigrants here illegally from 40,520 to 35,520. But within that limit, they’ve also proposed limiting to 16,500 the number for immigrants here illegally caught within the U.S., including criminals. Republicans want no caps on the number of immigrants who’ve committed crimes who can be held by ICE. As most budget disputes go, differences over hundreds of millions of dollars are usually imperceptible and easily solved. But this battle more than most is driven by political symbolism — whether Trump will be able to claim he delivered on his long-running pledge to “build the wall” or newly empowered congressional Democrats’ ability to thwart him. Predictably each side blamed
Border security bargainers trade offers as deadline nears
Congressional bargainers traded offers and worked toward a border security compromise Friday that would avert a fresh federal shutdown and resolve a clash with President Donald Trump that has dominated the opening weeks of divided government. differences Both sides’ negotiators expressed optimism that an accord could be reached soon on a spending package for physical barriers along the Southwest border and other security measures. Participants said the agreement would all but certainly be well below the $5.7 billion Trump has demanded to build his proposed wall, and much closer to the $1.6 billion that was in a bipartisan Senate bill last year. “That’s what we’re working toward,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat-Calif., one of the bargainers. Besides the dollar figure, talks were focusing on the type and location of barriers, participants said. Also in play were the number of beds the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency could have for detained migrants, and how much aid for natural disaster relief would be included. Money for high-tech surveillance equipment and more personnel was also expected to be included. No one ruled out that last-minute problems could emerge, especially with Trump’s penchant for head-snapping turnabouts. But the momentum was clearly toward clinching an agreement that Congress could pass by next Friday. The next day, government agencies would have to close again for lack of money, if no deal is reached. Negotiator Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Republican-Tenn., said the latest Democratic offer was “much more reasonable.” And Democratic bargainer Rep. Pete Aguilar of California said, “Each time an offer and a counter is going back and forth the number of open items is reducing. That is progress.” Rep. Mark Meadows, Republican-N.C., who leads the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said he spoke Thursday night to Trump, who he said was in “wait and see” mode. Meadows said he expects an agreement to provide something closer to $1.6 billion. “I’m not optimistic it’ll be something the president can support,” Meadows said. A conservative House GOP aide said to back a deal, Freedom Caucus members wanted at least $2 billion for barriers and no restrictions on new construction, land acquisition or new types of barriers that could be built. The aide also said the agreement need not contain the term “wall” — a word that was a premier plank of Trump’s presidential campaign, and which Trump has lately alternated between embracing and abandoning. The person would talk only on condition of anonymity to describe private talks. Meadows’ assessment of Trump’s view clashed with one expressed Thursday by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the chief GOP bargainer. He described the emerging deal to Trump in the Oval Office and told reporters the session was “the most positive meeting I’ve had in a long time.” Shelby said that if the final agreement followed the outline currently under discussion, he believed Trump “would sign it.” Trump has modest leverage in the battle. Besides facing unified Democratic opposition, there is virtually no GOP support in Congress for another shutdown. When congressional talks began, Trump called them a “waste of time.” “They’ve got to come to a solution that actually does what they promised they would do, which is protect the American people,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Fox News. Trump faces an aggressive, Democratic-led House that is ramping up investigations into Russian involvement in his campaign and businesses and trying to get access to his income tax returns. But ending the border security fight would close one chapter that’s bruised him, including his surrender after a 35-day partial federal shutdown that he started by unsuccessfully demanding taxpayer money to build the border wall. Even with a deal, it was possible Trump might try using claims of executive powers to reach for more wall funding. That could spark votes by Congress to block him, which Trump could veto but would still inflict political damage. Sen. Lindsay Graham, Republican-S.C., said Thursday that an accord could be “a good down payment” and added, “There are other ways to do it and I expect the president to go it alone in some fashion.” Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Wednesday, “If Congress won’t participate or won’t go along, we’ll figure out a way to do it with executive authority.” Members of both parties have expressed opposition to Trump bypassing Congress by declaring a national emergency at the border, a move that would be certain to produce lawsuits that could block the money. Lawmakers have grown accustomed to expecting the unexpected from Trump. Before Christmas, both parties’ leaders believed he’d support a bipartisan deal that would have prevented the recently ended shutdown, only to reverse himself under criticism from conservative pundits and lawmakers. “There’s a small light at the end of the tunnel,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, Republican-Kan. “We just hope it’s not a train coming the other way.” Republished with permission from the Associated Press
Richard Shelby: Border security meeting with Donald Trump ‘the most positive I’ve had in a long time’
President Donald Trump appears to be taking a more positive view of Capitol Hill talks on border security, according to negotiators who struck a distinctly optimistic tone after a White House meeting with a top Republican on the broad parameters of a potential bipartisan agreement. Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama said Thursday’s session in the Oval Office was “the most positive meeting I’ve had in a long time” and that the president was “very reasonable.” Down Pennsylvania Avenue at the Capitol, the mood among negotiators was distinctly upbeat, with participants in the talks between the Democratic-controlled House and GOP-held Senate predicting a deal could come as early as this weekend. There’s a Feb. 15 deadline to enact the measure or a stopgap spending bill to avert another partial government shutdown, which neither side wants to reprise. Republicans are especially eager to avoid another shutdown after they got scalded by the last one. Trump had previously called the talks a “waste of time,” and he’s threatened to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. But Shelby said Trump during their meeting “urged me to get to yes” on an agreement. Publicly on Thursday Trump took a wait-and-see approach. “I certainly hear that they are working on something and both sides are moving along,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. We need border security. We have to have it, it’s not an option. Let’s see what happens.” The White House is committed to letting the negotiations play out, with some saying they are “cautiously optimistic” about getting a deal they could live with, said a senior administration official who lacked authorization to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity. The new openness comes after Trump delivered a well-received State of the Union speech in which he preached the value of bipartisanship. Despite the newfound optimism, Trump continues to threaten to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress if lawmakers fail to reach a deal he can stomach. Still, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Republican-S.C., a close ally of Trump, said Thursday that the deal could be a good starting place — suggesting Trump could take additional action if needed to secure more wall funding without congressional approval. “I would recommend that this will probably be a good down payment and what else is lacking, the delta between what you want and what you get, there are other ways to do it, and I expect the president to go it alone in some fashion,” Graham told reporters. Shelby said he and Trump didn’t discuss whether Trump still might use an emergency declaration even if there’s a deal, saying: “The president’s got constitutional powers. … I would think he wouldn’t, but I don’t know what the situation” will be. Beyond the border security negotiations, the measure is likely to contain seven appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign aid budget, as well as disaster aid for victims of last year’s hurricanes and western wildfires. “I’m hopeful,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “I do like the idea of getting all of last year’s work finished, and I hope that’s where it ends up.” Any move by Trump to fund a border barrier by executive fiat, however, would roil many Republicans on Capitol Hill, raising the likelihood that both House and Senate could pass legislation to reverse him. Trump could veto any such measure, but he’s also certain to face a challenge in the courts. “If Congress won’t participate or won’t go along, we’ll figure out a way to do it with executive authority,” Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Wednesday. Mulvaney said that the administration has identified well more than $5.7 billion to transfer to wall construction, saying they would try to avoid legal obstacles. “Find the money that we can spend with the lowest threat of litigation, and then move from that pot of money to the next pot that maybe brings a little bit more threat of litigation,” Mulvaney said. It’s clear that Trump won’t get anything close to the $5.7 billion he’s demanded for wall construction, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat-Calif., will have to depart from her view that there shouldn’t be any wall funding at all. Last year, a bipartisan Senate panel approved $1.6 billion for 65 miles of pedestrian fencing in Texas — in line with Trump’s official request. The negotiations aren’t likely to veer very far from that figure, aides involved in the talks said, and newly empowered House Democrats were looking to restrict use of the money. A key negotiator, Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat-Ill., said details on nettlesome border wall issues haven’t been worked out. Sen. Roy Blunt, Republican-Mo., another participant, said both sides are showing flexibility, including Democrats who insisted during the recently-ended 35-day shutdown on no wall funding at all. “They are not opposed to barriers,” Blunt said about Democrats. “And the president, I think, has embraced the idea that there may actually be something better than a concrete wall would have been anyway.” Pelosi told reporters Thursday that she was hopeful of an agreement that would “protect our borders as we protect our values.” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat-Calif., another negotiator, acknowledged that Democrats could possibly lose votes on any final deal and that it’s “unrealistic” to think there would be no funding at all for any physical barriers. “Like in any negotiation — if the Republicans and the White House are saying they need barriers, wall, whatever you want to call it, and that is an absolute objective, and we’re saying we want some other things — like in anything else, it’s a trade off,” she said. Among the things Democrats are battling against are higher levels of funding for detention beds to hold migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect the White House meeting was between Trump and Shelby, not between
Donald Trump fumes over NYT op-ed; top officials swiftly deny role
Pushing back against explosive reports his own administration is conspiring against him, President Donald Trump lashed out against the anonymous senior official who wrote a New York Times opinion piece claiming to be part of a “resistance” working “from within” to thwart his most dangerous impulses. Perhaps as striking as the essay was the recognition of the long list of administration officials who plausibly could have been its author. Many have privately shared some of the same concerns expressed about the president with colleagues, friends and reporters. Washington was consumed by a wild guessing game as to the identity of the writer, and swift denials of involvement in the op-ed came Thursday from top administration officials, including from Vice President Mike Pence’s office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, and other Cabinet members. Trump was furious, tweeting Thursday morning that “The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do.” The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do. The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption. Wow! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2018 On Wednesday night, Trump tweeted a demand that if “the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called on the “coward” who wrote the piece to “do the right thing and resign.” White House officials did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate on Trump’s call for the writer to be turned over to the government or the unsupported national security ground of his demand. To some observers, the ultimatum appeared to play into the very concerns about the president’s impulses raised by the essay’s author. Trump has demanded that aides identify the leaker, according to two people familiar with the matter, though it was unclear how they might go about doing so. The two were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. In a “House of Cards”-style plot twist in an already over-the-top administration, Trump allies and political insiders scrambled to unmask the writer. But the op-ed also brought to light questions that have been whispered in Washington for more than a year: Is Trump truly in charge? And could a divided executive branch pose a danger to the country? Former CIA Director John Brennan, a fierce Trump critic, called the op-ed “active insubordination … born out of loyalty to the country.” “This is not sustainable to have an executive branch where individuals are not following the orders of the chief executive,” Brennan told NBC’s “Today” show. “I do think things will get worse before they get better. I don’t know how Donald Trump is going to react to this. A wounded lion is a very dangerous animal, and I think Donald Trump is wounded.” The anonymous author, claiming to be part of the “resistance” to Trump “working diligently from within” his administration, said, “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.” “It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the author continued. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.” Trump raged about the piece in the White House, calling around to confidants to vent about the disloyalty of the author and fuming that the so-called Deep State within the federal government had conspired against him, according to a person familiar with the president’s views but not authorized to discuss them publicly. The text of the op-ed was pulled apart for clues: The writer is identified as an “administration official”; does that mean a person who works outside the White House? The references to Russia and the late Sen. John McCain — do they suggest someone working in national security? Does the writing style sound like someone who worked at a think tank? In a tweet, the Times used the pronoun “he” to refer to the writer; does that rule out all women? The newspaper later said the tweet referring to “he” had been “drafted by someone who is not aware of the author’s identity, including the gender, so the use of ‘he’ was an error.” The Beltway guessing game seeped into the White House, as current and former staffers alike traded calls and texts trying to figure out who could have written the piece, some turning to reporters and asking them for clues. For many in Trump’s orbit, it was stunning to realize just how many people could have been the op-ed’s author. And some of the most senior members of the Trump administration were forced to deny they were the author of the attack on their boss. Hotly debated on Twitter was the author’s use of the word “lodestar,” which pops up frequently in speeches by Pence. Could the anonymous figure be someone in Pence’s orbit? Others argued that the word “lodestar” could have been included to throw people off. In a rare step, Pence’s communications director Jarrod Agen tweeted early Thursday that “The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds. The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts.” Pompeo, who was in India, denied writing the anonymous opinion piece, saying, “It’s not mine.” He accused the media of trying to undermine the Trump administration and said he found that “incredibly disturbing.” Coats later issued his own denial, followed by Housing Secretary Ben Carson, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, budget director Mick
The end of an era? Tea party class of House Republicans fades
The Republican newcomers stunned Washington back in 2010 when they seized the House majority with bold promises to cut taxes and spending and to roll back what many viewed as Barack Obama’s presidential overreach. But don’t call them tea party Republicans any more. Eight years later, the House Tea Party Caucus is long gone. So, too, are almost half the 87 new House Republicans elected in the biggest GOP wave since the 1920s. Some, including current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, joined the executive branch. Others slipped back to private life. Several are senators. Now, with control of the House again at stake this fall and just three dozen of them seeking re-election, the tea party revolt shows the limits of riding a campaign wave into the reality of governing. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who was president of that freshman class, objects to the tea party brand that he says was slapped on the group by the media and the Obama administration. It’s a label some lawmakers now would rather forget. “We weren’t who you all said we were,” Scott said. He prefers to call it the class of “small-business owners” or those who wanted to “stop the growth of the federal government.” Despite all those yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and anti-Obama health law rallies, Scott said the new Republican lawmakers wanted to work with the president, if only Obama would have engaged them. “We didn’t come to take over the country,” he said. Yet change Washington they did, with a hard-charging, often unruly governing style that bucked convention, toppled GOP leaders and in many ways set the stage for the rise of Donald Trump. By some measures, the tea party Republicans have been successful. The “Pledge to America,” a 21-page manifesto drafted by House Republican leadership, outlined the promises. Among them: “stop out of control spending,” ″reform Congress” and “end economic uncertainty.” They forced Congress into making drastic spending cuts, in part by threatening to default on the nation’s debt, turning a once-routine vote to raise the U.S. borrowing limit into a cudgel during the annual budget fights. Republicans halted environmental, consumer and workplace protection rules, and that rollback continues today. Perhaps most notably, the GOP majority passed $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that Trump signed into law, delivering on the tea party slogan penned on so many protest signs: “Taxed Enough Already.” But former Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said the “most egregious failure” was the GOP’s inability to undo the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic achievement. Huelskamp said the class never really stuck together. When he arrived that first week in Washington in January 2011, he was stunned to find the leadership slate already set with then-Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as speaker-in-waiting, facing little resistance. “That was a sign: The establishment in Washington was happy to have our votes, but not to follow our agenda,” said Huelskamp, who lost a primary election in 2016 to a political newcomer and now runs the conservative Heartland Institute. It was “just a clear misunderstanding of what the people wanted.” Over time, budget deals were struck with Democrats, boosting spending back to almost what it was before the revolt. Combined with the tax package, the GOP-led Congress is on track to push annual deficits near $1 trillion next year, as high as during the early years of the Obama administration when the government struggled with a deep recession. Maya MacGuineas, president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said Republicans talked a good game promising to balance the budget, but with control of Congress — and now the White House — they failed to tackle the tough tax-and-spending challenges needed to get there. “That’s a whole lot of talk and zero follow through,” she said. Other proposals to improve transparency in government — a pledge to “read the bill” and post legislation three days before votes — remain works in progress. House bills are typically made public, but sometimes just before midnight to conform with the three-day rule. Frustrations within the ranks grew, and the new class splintered. Not all of them had been favorites of their local tea party groups. Some joined other conservatives to form the House Freedom Caucus, which nudged Boehner to early retirement in 2015. Former Florida Rep. Allen West, among the more prominent class members who lost re-election and is now a Fox News contributor living in Texas, said the challenge for House Republicans heading into the fall election is, “Who are they? What do they stand for?” House Republicans are wrestling with a midterm message at a pivotal moment for a party that Boehner says no longer exists. “There is no Republican Party. There’s Trump’s party,” Boehner said at a recent policy conference in Michigan. Boehner’s successor as speaker, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also is stepping aside. He was a conservative up-and-comer long before the tea party, but has run into many of the same challenges Boehner faced in managing a fractured majority. He will retire after this term. In fact, there are an unusually high number of House Republicans retiring this year, including nearly a dozen from the tea party class. Several are running to be governors or senators, though some have already lost in primaries. Others, including Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., another rising star, are simply moving on. Some resigned this year amid ethics scandals. Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, says every movement “goes through phases.” As the group looks to elect the next “Tea Party 100″ members of the House, it’s seeking “tested and proven” candidates beyond the “citizen legislators” who powered the early days. Another 2010 leader, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, now a senator, says he has no problem with the tea party label that’s now etched in history. But he reminds his colleagues as they campaign that to keep the majority they must also eventually govern and that “promises made should be promises kept.” Republished
Cabinet chaos: Trump’s team battles scandal, irrelevance
One Cabinet member was grilled by Congress about alleged misuse of taxpayer funds for private flights. Another faced an extraordinary revolt within his own department amid a swirling ethics scandal. A third has come under scrutiny for her failure to answer basic questions about her job in a nationally televised interview. And none of them was the one Trump fired. President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in recent weeks has been enveloped in a cloud of controversy, undermining the administration’s ability to advance its agenda and drawing the ire of a president increasingly willing to cast aside allies and go it alone. Trump’s ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday may have just been the first salvo in a shakeup of a Cabinet that, with few exceptions, has been a team of rivals for bad headlines and largely sidelined by the White House. “Donald Trump is a lone-wolf president who doesn’t want to co-govern with anybody and doesn’t want anyone else getting the credit,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University. “For his Cabinet, he brought in a bizarre strand of outsiders and right-wing ideologues. Many are famed conservative or wealthy business people, but that doesn’t mean you understand good governance.” The string of embarrassing headlines for Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s growing distance from them, stands in sharp contrast to how he portrayed the group last year. “There are those that are saying it’s one of the finest group of people ever assembled as a Cabinet,” Trump said then. On Tuesday, the president hinted after firing Tillerson that more changes may be forthcoming, saying an ideal Cabinet is in the making. “I’ve gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year,” Trump told reporters at the White House, “and I’m really at a point where we’re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want.” Even as Trump routinely convened Cabinet meetings in front of the cameras for “Dear Leader”-type tributes over the past year, his relationship with many of its members began to splinter. Last summer he began publicly bashing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former close adviser who was the first senator to back his campaign. Furious that the attorney general recused himself from the Russia probe that has loomed over the White House, Trump has privately mused about firing Sessions and taken to delivering unprecedented Twitter broadsides against him. Trump has used the words “beleaguered” and “disgraceful” to describe Sessions, who only recently stood up to the president and defended his recusal decision. Tillerson also frequently clashed with Trump, who never forgave the outgoing secretary of state for reportedly calling him “a moron” last summer after grumbling that the president had no grasp of foreign affairs. The pair never developed a particularly warm relationship. Last November, during a full day of meetings in Beijing, Trump and his senior staff were served plates of wilted Caesar salad as they gathered in a private room in the Great Hall of the People. None of the Americans moved to eat the unappetizing dish, but Trump prodded Tillerson to give it a try, according to a senior administration official. “Rex,” the president said, “eat the salad.” Tillerson declined, despite Trump’s urging. After repeatedly undermining and contradicting Tillerson, Trump at last fired his secretary of state in a tweet. Trump in recent days has told confidants that he feels emboldened. He’s proud of his unilateral decisions to impose sweeping tariffs on metal imports and to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and far less willing to put up with disloyalty around him, according to a person who has spoken to the president in recent days but was not authorized to discuss private conversations publicly. Trump’s esteem for the Cabinet has faded in recent months, according to two White House officials and two outside advisers. He also told confidants that he was in the midst of making changes to improve personnel and, according to one person who spoke with him, “get rid of the dead weight” — which could put a number of embattled Cabinet secretaries on notice. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke underwent questioning Tuesday by Senate Democrats, who accused him of spending tens of thousands of dollars on office renovations and private flights while proposing deep cuts to conservation programs. Zinke pushed back, saying he “never took a private jet anywhere” — because all three flights he had taken on private planes as secretary were on aircraft with propellers, not jet engines. Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin’s days on the job may be limited after a bruising internal report found ethics violations in connection with his trip to Europe with his wife last summer, according to senior administration officials. He also has faced a potential mutiny from his own staff: A political adviser installed by Trump at the Department of Veterans Affairs has openly mused to other VA staff about ousting the former Obama administration official. Trump has floated the notion of moving Energy Secretary Rick Perry to the VA to right the ship, believing Shulkin has become a distraction, according to two people familiar with White House discussions. They were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity. Others under the microscope: —White House aides deemed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ recent appearance on “60 Minutes” a disaster as she struggled to defend the administration’s school safety plan and could not answer basic questions about the nation’s education system. —Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson came under fire last month after reports his agency was spending $31,000 for a new dining set, a purchase HUD officials said was made without Carson’s knowledge. —Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has faced questions about $25,000 spent on a soundproof “privacy booth” inside his office to prevent eavesdropping on his phone calls and another $9,000 on biometric locks. —The first Cabinet member to
AG Steve Marshall joins coalition supporting Mick Mulvaney’s appointment to CFPB
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has joined with four other attorneys general in sending a letter to President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions declaring their confidence in the President’s authority to appoint his budget chief Mick Mulvaney as interim director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB, a controversial government agency, was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to “provide a single point of accountability for enforcing consumer financial laws and protecting consumers in the financial marketplace.” Over the weekend, Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee, resigned as director of the agency and attempted to name his deputy as the acting director, setting the stage for both a political and legal battle over the agency’s leadership. The attorneys general explain in their letter that the CFPB’s deputy director may step in to the director’s role in the absence of an appointed director, but the President clearly has the authority to appoint an acting director under federal law and the Constitution. “This illegal power grab by the last vestiges of the Obama administration must be stopped,” Marshall said of Cordray’s attempt to name his own successor. “The people of the United States voted for a President who would fight for the American people, roll back inefficient regulations, and create jobs. That President is Donald Trump, not the Obama-appointed outgoing director of the CFPB.” The attorneys general note that, “The need for efficient administration within the Executive Branch—particularly for an agency like the CFPB whose actions have significant, national consequences—strongly weighs in favor of [a statutory] interpretation that gives the President authority to designate a temporary Acting Director of the CFPB . . . . Indeed, the opposite result would allow an unelected outgoing agency director to choose a temporary successor who may be at odds with the Executive Branch’s understanding of the agency’s mission and statutory mandate—and thereby continue the CFPB’s practice of overreaching regulation that harms the interests of consumers and small financial institutions.” In addition to Marshall, the letter, which was spearheaded by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, was signed by attorneys general from Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Trump budget chiefs says no bailout for Puerto Rico debt
The White House’s budget director says Puerto Rico shouldn’t expect a federal bailout of its debt – even after President Donald Trump spoke of the need to “wipe out” that red ink as part of the island’s recovery after Hurricane Maria. Mick Mulvaney tells reporters that the administration plans to send Congress a disaster aid package that’ll include money for the U.S. territory. But Mulvaney says: “We are not going to be offering a bailout for Puerto Rico or for its current bondholders.” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that federal officials would have to look at Puerto Rico’s debt structure and “we’re going to have to wipe that out.” Before the hurricane, Puerto Rico’s government was negotiating with creditors to restructure a portion of its $73 billion in debt. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
White House: Donald Trump to decide soon on ending health payments
The White House is insisting that the Senate resume efforts to repeal and replace the nation’s health care law, signaling that President Donald Trump stands ready to end required payments to insurers this week to let “Obamacare implode” and force congressional action. “The president will not accept those who said it’s, quote, ‘Time to move on,’” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said. Those were the words used by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., after the stunning early Friday morning defeat of the GOP bill to repeal former President Barack Obama‘s signature legislative achievement. McConnell is already moving to other business, having scheduled Senate consideration later Monday on a judicial nomination. Conway said Trump was deciding whether to act on his threat to end cost-sharing reduction payments, which are aimed at trimming out-of-pocket costs for lower-income people. “He’s going to make that decision this week, and that’s a decision that only he can make,” Conway said. Trump vented his frustration on Twitter Monday. He said: “If ObamaCare is hurting people, & it is, why shouldn’t it hurt the insurance companies & why should Congress not be paying what public pays?” In fact, most members of Congress get their coverage through the Affordable Care Act like millions of other Americans. The 2010 law was specifically written to include lawmakers, and starting in 2014, members and their staffs had to use federal or state health care exchanges. Most members who use the coverage buy it off the health care exchange created by the District of Columbia. For seven years, Republicans have promised that once they took power, they would scrap Obama’s overhaul and pass a replacement. But that effort crashed most recently in the Senate on Friday. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate, where no Democrats voted for the GOP bill and three Republicans defected in the final vote Friday. One of the GOP defectors, Sen. John McCain, has since returned to Arizona for treatment for brain cancer. “Don’t give up Republican senators, the World is watching: Repeal & Replace,” Trump said in a tweet. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, when asked Sunday if no other legislative business should be taken up until the Senate acts again on health care, responded “yes.” While the House has begun a five-week recess, the Senate is scheduled to work two more weeks before a summer break. McConnell has said the unfinished business includes addressing a backlog of executive and judicial nominations, coming ahead of a busy agenda in September that involves passing a defense spending bill and raising the government’s borrowing limit. “In the White House’s view, they can’t move on in the Senate,” Mulvaney said, referring to health legislation. “They need to stay, they need to work, they need to pass something.” Trump warned over the weekend that he would end federal subsidies for health care insurance for Congress and the rest of the country if the Senate didn’t act soon. He was referring in part to a federal contribution for lawmakers and their staffs, who were moved onto Obamacare insurance exchanges as part of the 2010 law. “If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!” Trump tweeted. The subsidies, totaling about $7 billion a year, help reduce deductibles and copayments for consumers with modest incomes. The Obama administration used its rule-making authority to set direct payments to insurers to help offset these costs. Trump inherited the payment structure, but he also has the power to end them. The payments are the subject of a lawsuit brought by House Republicans over whether the health law specifically included a congressional appropriation for the money, as required under the Constitution. Trump has only guaranteed the payments through July, which ends Monday. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of the three Republican senators who voted against the GOP health bill on Friday, said she’s troubled by Trump’s claims that the insurance payments are a “bailout.” She said Trump’s threat to cut off payments would not change her opposition to the GOP health bill and stressed the cost-sharing reduction payments were critical to make insurance more affordable for low-income people. “The uncertainty about whether that subsidy is going to continue from month to month is clearly contributing to the destabilization of the insurance markets, and that’s one thing that Congress needs to end,” said Collins, who wants lawmakers to appropriate money for the payments. “I certainly hope the administration does not do anything in the meantime to hasten that collapse,” she added. Trump previously said the law that he and others call “Obamacare” would collapse immediately whenever those payments stop. He has indicated a desire to halt the subsidies but so far has allowed them to continue on a month-to-month basis. Conway spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Mulvaney appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and Collins was on CNN as well as NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Breaking down the results of the Georgia special election
The last month has been filled with media coverage of yesterday’s special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. One would think this was the most significant race in the history of Congress. Why has this race dominated the media, while another special election in neighboring South Carolina has received almost no attention? Both the Georgia and South Carolina districts feature resignations by Republicans Congressmen who took positions in the Donald Trump administration. In Georgia, Tom Price resigned to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, while in South Carolina, Mick Mulvaney gave up his seat to become Director of the Office of Management and Budget. One reason for the attention on the Georgia race may be that the seat was previously held by Newt Gingrich before Price took over, and it has been a Republican district since 1979. That hardly explains the attention on the Georgia district and the neglect of the South Carolina district. Many viewed the election as a referendum on the Trump administration. Mitt Romney won the district by 23 percent in 2012; Trump won by only 1.5 percent in 2016. Many saw this as an opportunity for Democrats and a sign of Republican dissatisfaction with Trump as party leader. The Democratic candidate in District 6 was Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old political activist who did not even live in the district. Although the Constitution does not require House candidates to live in the district where they run, not doing so is usually a fatal blow. Handel constantly reminded voters that Ossoff could not vote in the election because he did not reside there. Ossoff raised over $25 million for his campaign, and his Republican opponent, Karen Handel, raised a similar amount making this the most expensive House race in congressional history. Conspicuously lacking was any discussion, especially by Democrats, of the corrupting influence of money in congressional campaigns. The media focused great attention on Ossoff, but comparatively little focus on his Republican opponent Handel. We knew that Ossoff worked for a number of Democratic causes and candidates, and considered himself to be a progressive. Ossoff had the backing of the progressive establishment, including John Lewis, an icon in both congressional and civil rights history. The lack of focus on Handel may be due to the fact Ossoff received 48 percent of the vote in the blanket primary, compared to only 20 percent for Handel. It should be remembered that Republican candidates collectively received 51 percent of the primary vote. We also know that the Ossoff campaign had 12,000 volunteers, a number seldom reached by statewide candidates. He was clearly a political juggernaut, as his $25 million dollars in campaign funds demonstrated. During the campaign, one of the candidates posted on their website that the country needs to “cut the wasteful spending. Reduce the deficit so the economy can keep growing.” The site also suggested that the minimum wage be adjusted “at a pace that allows employers to adapt their business plans.” The above policy pronouncements sound like something from Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan or Handel. They were actually from Ossoff. Hardly progressive sentiments. Did Ossoff’s attempt to moderate his progressive views actually “turn off” progressive voters? Republican strategy was to tie Ossoff to Nancy Pelosi, a common strategy, but one that many felt was no longer effective. One ad asked voters to “Say ‘No’ to Pelosi’s ‘Yes Man.’” Another ad called Ossoff a “rubber stamp for Pelosi’s failed agenda.” Ossoff lead by as much as 7 points only a month ago and never trailed Handel until the day before the election when she led by a single point. The polls indicated that Ossoff’s support came from voters from 18 to 64, where he lead by 8 to 15 points; Handel led among voters over 65 by a margin of 62 to 36. Males supported Handel 52.6 to 45.7 percent while women supported Ossoff by almost exactly the same margin. White voters preferred Handel 55.8 to 43.2 percent while African-Americans favored Ossoff 88.7 to 9.4 percent for Handel. Why did Handel win and what does it mean? There are several reasons why Handel won and Ossoff lost. Perhaps most damaging was the outsider label, which effectively damaged the Ossoff campaign. Not being able to vote for yourself in such an important campaign put Ossoff in a difficult position. Carpetbaggers in politics have seldom fared well. Another part of the outsider problem was self-imposed by Ossoff. In an attempt to negate the outsider charge, Ossoff said he lived “a few blocks outside District 6. In fact, it was found that he lived 3.2 miles outside the district. A final part of the outsider charge related to campaign contributions. Although Ossoff raised over $25 million, most of the contributions came from outside the district. He received fewer than 1,000 donations from District 6 residents, but got over 7,200 contributions from California residents. It is too early to know for sure, but I am guessing senior voters turned out at very high rates, while younger voters supported Ossoff, but turned out at a far lower rate. We cannot forget that this was a Republican district and the results reflected typical voting patterns. Democrats are clearly going to be demoralized after expecting to win this seat almost from the beginning. Ossoff did lead almost the entire campaign, but momentum is everything in politics. A seven-point Ossoff advantage a month out from the election completely vanished by election day. Neither party should read too much into the election results. A Handel victory is no more an endorsement of Trump than an Ossoff victory would have meant that Trump and the Republicans were doomed.
White House, in gamble, demands make-or-break health vote
Abandoning negotiations, President Donald Trump demanded a make-or-break vote on health care legislation in the House, threatening to leave “Obamacare” in place and move on to other issues if Friday’s vote fails. The risky move, part gamble and part threat, was presented to GOP lawmakers behind closed doors Thursday night after a long and intense day that saw a planned vote on the health care bill scrapped as the legislation remained short of votes amid cascading negotiations among conservative lawmakers, moderates and others. At the end of it the president had had enough and was ready to vote and move on, whatever the result, Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers. “‘Negotiations are over, we’d like to vote tomorrow and let’s get this done for the American people.’ That was it,” Rep. Duncan Hunter of California said as he left the meeting, summarizing Mulvaney’s message to lawmakers. “Let’s vote,” White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said as he walked out. “For seven and a half years we have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law because it’s collapsing and it’s failing families, and tomorrow we’re proceeding,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, then walked off without answering as reporters demanded to know whether the bill had the votes to pass. The outcome of Friday’s vote was impossible to predict. Both conservative and moderate lawmakers had claimed the bill lacked votes after a long day of talks. But the White House appeared ready to gamble that the prospect of failing to repeal former President Barack Obama‘s health law, after seven years of promising to do exactly that, would force lawmakers into the “yes” column. “It’s done tomorrow. Or ‘Obamacare’ stays,” said Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., a top Trump ally in the House. Collins was among those predicting success Friday, but others didn’t hide their anxiety about the outcome. Asked whether Republicans would be unified on Friday’s vote, freshman Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida said, “I sure hope so, or we’ll have the opportunity to watch a unified Democratic caucus impeach Donald Trump in two years when we lose the majority.” Thursday’s maneuvers added up to high drama on Capitol Hill, but Friday promised even more suspense with the prospect of leadership putting a major bill on the floor uncertain about whether it would pass or fail. The Republican legislation would halt Obama’s tax penalties against people who don’t buy coverage and cut the federal-state Medicaid program for low earners, which the Obama statute had expanded. It would provide tax credits to help people pay medical bills, though generally skimpier than Obama’s statute provides. It also would allow insurers to charge older Americans more and repeal tax boosts the law imposed on high-income people and health industry companies. The measure would also block federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year, another stumbling block for GOP moderates. In a concession to the conservative House Freedom Caucus, many of whose members have withheld support, the legislation would repeal requirements for insurers to cover “essential health benefits” such as maternity care and substance abuse treatment. The drama unfolded seven years to the day after Obama signed his landmark law, an anniversary GOP leaders meant to celebrate with a vote to undo the divisive legislation. “Obamacare” gave birth to the tea party movement and helped Republicans win and keep control of Congress and then take the White House. Instead, as GOP leaders were forced to delay the vote Thursday, C-SPAN filled up the time playing footage of Obama signing the Affordable Care Act. “In the final analysis, this bill falls short,” GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state said in a statement Thursday as she became the latest rank-and-file Republican, normally loyal to leadership, to declare her opposition. “The difficulties this bill would create for millions of children were left unaddressed,” she said, citing the unraveling of Medicaid. In a danger sign for Republicans, a Quinnipiac University poll found that people disapprove of the GOP legislation by 56 percent to 17 percent, with 26 percent undecided. Trump’s handling of health care was viewed unfavorably by 6 in 10. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who as speaker was Obama’s crucial lieutenant in passing the Democratic bill in the first place, couldn’t resist a dig at the GOP disarray. “You may be a great negotiator,” she said of Trump. “Rookie’s error for bringing this up on a day when clearly you’re not ready.” Obama declared in a statement that “America is stronger” because of the current law and said Democrats must make sure “any changes will make our health care system better, not worse for hardworking Americans.” Trump tweeted to supporters, “Go with our plan! Call your Rep & let them know.” Unlike Obama and Pelosi when they passed Obamacare, the Republicans had failed to build an outside constituency or coalition to support their bill. Instead, medical professionals, doctors and hospitals — major employers in some districts — as well as the AARP and other influential consumer groups were nearly unanimously opposed. So were outside conservative groups who argued the bill didn’t go far enough. The Chamber of Commerce was in favor. Moderates were given pause by projections of 24 million Americans losing coverage in a decade and higher out-of-pocket costs for many low-income and older people, as predicted by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In an updated analysis Thursday, the CBO said late changes to the bill meant to win over reluctant lawmakers would cut beneficial deficit reduction in half, while failing to cover more people. And, House members were mindful that the bill, even if passed by the House, faces a tough climb in the Senate. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
