GOP defends Donald Trump as John Bolton book adds pressure for witnesses
The revelation that Bolton authored a book on the topic clouded White House hopes for a swift end to the impeachment trial.
Democrats demand John Bolton testify at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial
A draft of a book from former national security adviser John Bolton appears to undercut a key argument for Donald Trump’s defense.
Defense resumes in key impeachment week; Dems seek witnesses
After a two-hour opening argument Saturday, Trump’s defense team will lay out its case in depth beginning Monday.
Buckle up: What to watch as impeachment trial takes off
Despite hopes for a speedy trial, things could last longer depending on Senate moderates.
Why we shouldn’t accept the absurdity of dehumanizing people based on their politics or job
In just the last several days, there have been several instances of intolerance, bullying and just plain meanness toward people in politics. More specifically in conservative politics. From Sarah Huckabee Sanders being kicked out of restaurant in Virginia, to Florida AG Pam Bondi being accosted at a movie theatre screening the new Mr. Rogers film — the irony of that should not be lost on anyone; bullying someone in a movie about the life of a man who dedicated his life to kindness and friendship. The thing that’s infuriating about this is that our politics, or even our jobs, don’t define us as individuals as people. As I’ve written before, civility is nonpartisan. Those of us who work in politics don’t check our humanity at the door when we walk into the office. Our compassion for others regardless of political ideology will always win out when there’s a chance to help someone in need. Who we work for can speak to our character but it can also be a testament to bigger things. I believe that some times people serve for the greater good. I believe there are people serving in President Donald Trump’s administration who are doing just that. Could you imagine if conservatives started targeting liberals for their policies? Let’s not forget, liberal Democrats are the Party that condones, if not celebrates the murder of the unborn. Let’s not forget that it’s liberal policies that keep teacher’s unions fat and administration costs bloated while our students fail across the country. It’s largely in Democratic communities like Detroit, Washington D.C., and yes even Birmingham that we see more and more poverty and crime while liberal elected officials rail against the rich and continue failed policies that have never worked and show no promise of ever working. What if conservatives, libertarians, or independents started refusing to serve liberals in restaurants and businesses based on any of those or other factors? The fact is that doesn’t happen because in a civilized society people are, wait for it, civil. We see past the political interests and votes of individuals and recognize that we are people. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and so much more than a vote or a candidate or issue we support. The fact is: we’re all human. We all have our own mistakes, our own histories, our own issues. But before everything else, we’re individuals who have families, and friends, and belief systems. Individuals who need to eat, and sleep, and occasionally go out recreationally and have fun. There should be no fear for politicians, or those within the political sphere, for simply living life. We live such stressed lives already. Most individuals, especially those in politics, live in high-stress environments filled with chaos. It’s sad when, as a community, rather than seeing the person, someone would choose to see their job. We need to do better.
Republican attorneys general support citizenship question on census
A Trump administration plan to ask people if they are U.S. citizens during the 2020 census has prompted a legal uproar from Democratic state attorneys general, who argue it could drive down participation and lead to an inaccurate count. Yet not a single Republican attorney general has sued — not even from states with large immigrant populations that stand to lose if a census undercount of immigrants affects the allotment of U.S. House seats and federal funding for states. In fact, many GOP attorneys general had urged Trump’s census team to add a citizenship question. “We always are better off having a more accurate count of citizens versus non-citizens. I see no downside in this,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, vice chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association. The diverging views of top Republican and Democratic state attorneys highlight how even the most basic data collection decisions can quickly split along partisan lines amid the intense debate about immigration policies. Concerns among immigrants have risen as President Donald Trump’s administration has cracked down on so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, increased arrests by federal immigration officers, called the National Guard to the border with Mexico and sought to limit travel to the U.S. from certain predominantly Muslim countries. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced last month that the 2020 census distributed to every U.S. household will include a citizenship question for the first time since 1950. He said the question was needed in part to help the government enforce the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law that was intended to protect the political representation of minority groups. He said it will provide a more accurate tally of voting-eligible residents than is currently available from a smaller sampling survey that includes the citizenship question. In a letter explaining his decision, Ross said the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that as many as 630,000 additional households might not respond if a citizenship question is included. Yet he acknowledged the administration did not know what the actual consequences might be because it hasn’t tested the change. The nation’s only dress rehearsal for the 2020 census, currently taking place in Providence, Rhode Island, does not include the citizenship question on the survey forwarded to residents. Nevertheless, Ross determined the benefits of including the question outweigh any concerns. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, filed a federal lawsuit immediately after Ross announced the question would be added. The nation’s most populous state also has the highest number of foreign-born residents, most of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens or hold some other legal status. Last week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman led a coalition of 17 Democratic attorneys general, the District of Columbia, six cities and the bipartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors in filing a second federal lawsuit. They contend the citizenship question will deter participation and illegally inhibit the Constitution’s requirement for an “actual enumeration” of residents. A third lawsuit was filed this past week by a group of seven Maryland and Arizona residents who say adding the question could lead to an undercount that could diminish federal funding and congressional representation for their states. The Constitution requires representation in the U.S. House to be based on a count of the total residents in each state, not just citizens. The census, undertaken every 10 years, also is used to determine how much money to distribute to local communities through various federal programs. “If we don’t count all the people who live in our city — all the residents we have — it could mean that our community doesn’t get our fair share of moneys or aid,” said Steve Adler, mayor of Austin, Texas, and a Democrat who is on the board of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “It could also mean that we don’t get the representation in government at all levels. The impacts could be huge.” The George Washington University Institute of Public Policy recently analyzed how a hypothetical 1 percent undercount beyond the figures reported in the 2010 census would have affected 2015 federal funding for Medicaid and several other social programs in each state, assuming the undercount occurred only in that state. The largest financial hits would have been to the Republican-led states of Texas, Florida and Ohio, the swing state of Pennsylvania and the traditionally Democratic state of Illinois, the report found. Democratic-led California and New York would not have been affected because their Medicaid reimbursement rates already are at minimum levels. Estimates of those living in the U.S. illegally range from 11 million to a little over 12 million people. Census data is not shared with immigration enforcement authorities. Yet immigrant advocates believe a citizenship question could discourage even some who are lawfully present from responding, partly because of fears the government could track down relatives living in the U.S. illegally. The U.S. has about 44 million residents who were not citizens at birth, comprising 13.5 percent of the total population, according to the most recent Census Bureau information. More than half of all immigrants live in California, Texas, New York or Florida. Last week, a Democratic state senator in Florida formally asked the state’s attorney general, Republican Pam Bondi, to join the New York lawsuit challenging the citizenship question. That’s unlikely because Bondi was among 11 Republican state attorneys general and two governors who signed a March 13 letter urging the Commerce Department to include a citizenship question. Minority Democrats in the Arizona Legislature also urged GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich to join the lawsuit. But his spokesman said that won’t happen, just as he refused to sign onto the Republican letter urging the question be included. “We have concerns this issue has been overly politicized,” Brnovich spokesman Ryan Anderson said in a statement. The letter from Republican state officials said a census citizenship question could help minority communities by allowing those drawing legislative districts to ensure there are enough voting-eligible citizens in a particular district for minorities to be able to elect a candidate of their choice under
Donald Trump signed improper charity check supporting Florida AG Pam Bondi
Donald Trump‘s signature, an unmistakable if nearly illegible series of bold vertical flourishes, was scrawled on the improper $25,000 check sent from his personal foundation to a political committee supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Charities are barred from engaging in political activities, and the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign has contended for weeks that the 2013 check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation was mistakenly issued following a series of clerical errors. Trump had intended to use personal funds to support Bondi’s re-election, his campaign said. So, why didn’t Trump catch the purported goof himself when he signed the foundation check? Trump lawyer Alan Garten offered new details about the transaction to The Associated Press on Thursday, after a copy of the Sept. 9, 2013, check was released by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Garten said the billionaire businessman personally signs hundreds of checks a week, and that he simply didn’t catch the error. “He traditionally signs a lot of checks,” said Garten, who serves as in-house counsel for various business interests at Trump Tower in New York City. “It’s a way for him to monitor and keep control over what’s going on in the company. It’s just his way. … I’ve personally been in his office numerous times and seen a big stack of checks on his desk for him to sign.” The 2013 donation to Bondi’s political group has garnered intense scrutiny because her office was at the time fielding media questions about whether she would follow the lead of Schneiderman, who had then filed a lawsuit against Trump University and Trump Institute. Scores of former students say they were scammed by Trump’s namesake get-rich-quick seminars in real estate. Bondi, whom the AP reported in June personally solicited the $25,000 check from Trump, took no action. Both Bondi and Trump say their conversation had nothing to do with the Trump University litigation, though neither has answered questions about what they did discuss or provided the exact date the conversation occurred. House Democrats called earlier this week for a federal criminal investigation into the donation, suggesting Trump was trying to bribe Bondi with the charity check. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said he was already investigating to determine whether Trump’s charity broke state laws. Garten said the series of errors began after Trump instructed his staff to cut a $25,000 check to the political committee supporting Bondi, called And Justice for All. Someone in Trump’s accounting department then consulted a master list of charitable organizations maintained by the IRS and saw a Utah charity by the same name that provides legal aid to the poor. According to Garten, that person, whom he declined to identify by name, then independently decided that the check should come from the Trump Foundation account rather than Trump’s personal funds. The check was then printed and returned for Trump’s signature. After it was signed, Garten said, Trump’s office staff mailed the check to its intended recipient in Florida, rather than to the charity in Utah. Emails released by Bondi’s office show her staff was first contacted at the end of August by a reporter for The Orlando Sentinel asking about the Trump University lawsuit in New York. Trump’s Sept. 9 check is dated four days before the newspaper printed a story quoting Bondi’s spokeswoman saying her office was reviewing Schneiderman’s suit, but four days before the pro-Bondi political committee reports receiving the check in the mail. Compounding the confusion, the following year on its 2013 tax forms the Trump Foundation reported making a donation to a Kansas charity called Justice for All. Garten said that was another accounting error, rather than an attempt to obscure the improper donation to the political group. In March, The Washington Post first revealed that that the donation to the pro-Bondi group had been misreported on the Trump Foundation’s 2013 tax forms. The following day, records show Trump signed an IRS form disclosing the error and paying a $2,500 fine. Bondi has endorsed Trump’s presidential bid and has campaigned with him this year. She has said the timing of Trump’s donation was coincidental and that she wasn’t personally aware of the consumer complaints her office had received about Trump University and the Trump Institute, a separate Florida business that paid Trump a licensing fee and a cut of the profits to use his name and curriculum. Neither company was still offering seminars by the time Bondi took office in 2011, though dissatisfied former customers were still seeking promised refunds. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Martin Dyckman: Supreme Court nominees no reason to elect Donald Trump
Some Republicans to whom Donald Trump is the skunk at their garden party would have you elect him president nevertheless. Mark Sanford is one. When last heard of, he was the governor of South Carolina, canoodling with a mistress in Argentina while his office pretended that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Now he’s a congressman, and he had an op-ed in The New York Times last week (Aug. 14) strongly criticizing Trump for refusing to release his tax returns. Trump’s obstinacy “will have consequences,” Sanford said. It “would hurt transparency in our democratic process, and particularly in how voters evaluate the men and women vying to be our leaders. “Whether he wins or loses, that is something our country cannot afford.” Hear, hear. But Sanford also hedged his bets. “I am a conservative Republican who, though I have no stomach for his personal style and his penchant for regularly demeaning others, intends to support my party’s nominee because of the importance of filling the existing vacancy on the Supreme Court, and others that might open in the next four years,” he wrote. There you have it. To Sanford, keeping Hillary Clinton from appointing new justices is worth letting everything else go to hell. The government, the country, maybe the world and certainly the court. Trump might even nominate his conspicuous Florida cheerleader Pam Bondi. Sanford isn’t the only Republican who has sold out for fear of a liberalized Supreme Court. That’s probably a factor with Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and John McCain too. Independents and die-hard Hillary-hating Democrats need to pay attention. If they don’t vote for her, they could have themselves to blame for making the Supreme Court a right-wing rat hole for another generation. Republicans want a court that would uphold their state-by-state voter suppression schemes, shut its eyes to maliciously partisan gerrymandering, and make it impossible rather than merely difficult to sue people like Trump for consumer fraud, environmental pollution and other white collar crimes. The Citizens United atrocity would continue to leave Congress in the grip of the Koch brothers and their allied oligarchs. Clinton vows to appoint justices who would repeal that monumentally bad Supreme Court decision. Trump doesn’t make that promise. He does, however, assure the religious right that his justices would repeal Roe v. Wade. Exacting such commitments from future judges is another of those developments the Founders didn’t anticipate. They had the idealistic, if naive, view that integrity and competence would govern who got appointed. But we have to take the world as it is, and there’s no shortage of capable lawyers who have declared that Citizens United was wrongly decided. Four of the justices at the time said so too. The court has a history of renouncing prior decisions as wrongly decided or simply no longer applicable. It trashed two precedents in Citizens United. Although Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion more or less rationalized that full disclosure would restrain corporate election spending, that hasn’t happened. Dark money by the billions is sinking the ship of state. And in South Dakota, the Kochtopus is fiercely fighting a ballot initiative that would require public disclosure of donors to advocacy campaigns, create a state ethics commission and provide public financing of political campaigns. Fortunately, there are Republicans who disagree that the court is reason enough to sacrifice everything else. John Yoo and Jeremy Rabkin, law professors in California, are two of them. Writing in the Los Angeles Times Aug. 14, they described the dangerous world we live in and warned that a Trump presidency “invites a cascade of global crises.” Moreover, they argued, conservatives should not take Trump’s word that he would appoint suitable justices or that the Senate would confirm them. “Even if Trump were to win in November, it is in the legislative and executive branches that conservatives will have to win their most important battles,” they wrote. “Does Trump look like the man to lead them?” Yoo’s opposition is really noteworthy. He was the deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration who wrote the notorious memos condoning extreme methods of interrogating terrorism suspects, including waterboarding. That’s a form of torture that Trump is salivating to resume. If even Yoo can’t stomach Trump, what does that tell us? ___ Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper now known as the Tampa Bay Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
Former rivals, military leaders, actors to take stage at RNC
Former presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio — the latter by video link — are among those set to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Military leaders, members of Congress, actors, faith leaders and family members of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump are also set to speak in what the Republican National Committee calls “an unconventional lineup” that will challenge the status quo and press for Trump’s agenda. Speaker highlights at the four-day convention, which begins Monday at the Quicken Loans Arena. MONDAY Theme: Make America Safe Again Headliners: Trump’s wife, Melania; Lt. Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn, U.S. Army; Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; and Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont. Others: Willie Robertson, star of “Duck Dynasty”; former Texas Gov. Rick Perry; Marcus Luttrell, retired U.S. Navy SEAL; Scott Baio, actor; Pat Smith, mother of Sean Smith, killed in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya; Mark “Oz” Geist, member of a security team that fought in Benghazi; John Tiegen, member of Benghazi security team and co-author of the book “13 Hours,” an account of the attacks; Kent Terry and Kelly Terry-Willis, siblings of Brian Terry, a Border Patrol agent whose shooting death revealed the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-smuggling operation; Antonio Sabato Jr., actor; Mary Ann Mendoza, Sabine Durden and Jamiel Shaw, immigration reform advocates; Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas; David Clarke, sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wis.; Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.; Rachel Campos-Duffy, LIBRE Initiative for Hispanic economic empowerment; Darryl Glenn, Senate candidate in Colorado; Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Karen Vaughn, mother of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan; Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; and Jason Beardsley of Concerned Veterans for America. ___ TUESDAY Theme: Make America Work Again Headliners: Tiffany Trump, candidate’s daughter; Kerry Woolard, general manager, Trump Winery in Virginia; Donald Trump Jr.; Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson; and actress Kimberlin Brown. Others: Sharon Day, co-chairwoman of Republican National Committee; Dana White, president, Ultimate Fighting Championship; Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson; Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge; former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey; Andy Wist, founder of Standard Waterproofing Co.; Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; Chris Cox, executive director, NRA Institute for Legislative Action; golfer Natalie Gulbis; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.; House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. ___ WEDNESDAY Theme: Make America First Again Headliners: Former presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio; Eric Trump, son of the candidate; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s pick to be vice president. Others: radio host Laura Ingraham; Phil Ruffin, businessman with interests in real estate, lodging, manufacturing and energy; Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi; retired astronaut Eileen Collins; Michelle Van Etten, small business owner; Kentucky state Sen. Ralph Alvarado Jr.; Darrell Scott, senior pastor and co-founder of New Spirit Revival Center Ministries, Cleveland; Harold Hamm, oil executive; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; Lynne Patton, vice president, Eric Trump Foundation; Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (by video); Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Callista Gingrich, wife of Newt Gingrich. ___ THURSDAY Theme: Make America One Again Headliners: Peter Thiel, co-founder PayPal; Tom Barrack, CEO of Colony Capital; Ivanka Trump, daughter of the candidate; and Donald Trump, GOP nominee for president. Others: Brock Mealer, motivational speaker; Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin; Dr. Lisa Shin, owner of Los Alamos Family Eyecare in New Mexico; RNC Chairman Reince Priebus; Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and evangelical leader. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
