babylonsister
babylonsister's JournalManchin eyes Senate exit
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/448287-manchin-eyes-senate-exitManchin eyes Senate exit
By Alexander Bolton - 06/13/19 06:00 AM EDT
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is eyeing a possible exit from the Senate, and his decision could be a significant factor in which party controls the majority in 2021.
In moments of frustration, the centrist senator has gone so far as to tell colleagues he may leave the upper chamber before the end of this Congress, or after the 2020 elections.
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) keeps a close watch on Manchin, and the senators have a good working relationship. While Schumer recognizes that his West Virginia colleague can get exasperated by dysfunction in the Senate, he believes Manchin is content and engaged in his job.
But Manchin says he’s deeply irritated with the lack of bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill, where passing bills has largely become an afterthought in the 116th Congress.
Manchin noted supporters in West Virginia are pressing him to run for governor next year, and he’s considering it.
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/448287-manchin-eyes-senate-exit
Putin Says Russian Relations With U.S. Are Getting 'Worse and Worse'
Now there's a relief. 
https://www.thedailybeast.com/putin-says-russian-relations-with-us-are-getting-worse-and-worse?ref=home
Putin Says Russian Relations With U.S. Are Getting ‘Worse and Worse’
Jamie Ross Reporter
Updated 06.13.19 6:24AM ET / Published 06.13.19 5:04AM ET
Trump Just Invited Impeachment Proceedings
https://politicalwire.com/2019/06/12/trump-just-invited-impeachment-proceedings/Trump Just Invited Impeachment Proceedings
June 12, 2019 at 10:14 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
“On Tuesday, Trump gave us direct evidence of his contempt toward the most foundational precept of our democracy — that no person, not even the president, is above the law. He filed a brief in the nation’s second-most-important court that takes the position that Congress cannot investigate the president, except possibly in impeachment proceedings. It’s a spectacularly anti-constitutional brief, and anyone who harbors such attitudes toward our Constitution’s architecture is not fit for office. Trump’s brief is nothing if not an invitation to commencing impeachment proceedings that, for reasons set out in the Mueller report, should have already commenced.”
Silently, Buttigieg joins protest at White House against Trump policies
Roll Call
Silently, Buttigieg joins protest at White House against Trump policies
stephanieakin@cqrollcall.com
5 hrs ago
It’s a rare thing for a presidential candidate to keep his mouth shut at a campaign appearance. But that’s what Pete Buttigieg did, resolutely, during a 45-minute stop at a Washington, D.C. march Wednesday.
Buttigieg was not planning to speak at the event, a rally in front of the White House held by a group called Repairers of the Breach, organizers said.
Instead he stared. He furrowed his brow. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. He clapped a few times, while a bevy of camera people recorded his every move and rally organizers pleaded with participants to focus, not on the array of presidential expressions fleeting across the candidate’s face, but on the people they had brought there to speak.
snip//
The event, a march on the White House in honor of “Moral Witness Wednesday,” was meant to “bring a warning to the Trump administration, to speak out against the policy violence that has been taking place,” said Rev. Stephen Roach Knight, one of the organizers. He did not answer questions about how Buttigieg came to be there and why he did not speak.
“The call went out across the country,” Knight said. “Mayor Buttigieg was one of the people who heard that call.”
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/silently-buttigieg-joins-protest-at-white-house-against-trump-policies/ar-AACMHNG?ocid=sf
Republicans Bet "Medicare for All" Hearings Would Divide Democrats. They Were Wrong.
Republicans Bet “Medicare for All” Hearings Would Divide Democrats. They Were Wrong.
Democrats may not agree on single payer, but they all know who’s undermining health care.
Kara Voght
Republican lawmakers had bet that hearings for the House’s “Medicare for All” bill would surface deep disagreements among Democrats over their vision for the country’s health care system. But on Wednesday the bill was debated in its highest-profile venue yet, and instead of initiating an intraparty pillow fight, Democrats made a show of solidarity. They discredited the GOP’s attacks with a reminder of that party’s attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
The hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee was called “Pathways to Universal Health Care.” It served as an opportunity for members of Congress to debate not only Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Wash.) Medicare for All Act, which would establish a single-payer health care system, but also a number of other bills that would create universal care, such as Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jan Schakowsky’s (D-Ill.) Medicare for America Act, which would create a federal insurance program but allow employer-provided plans to exist. As the 2020 field remains largely undecided on health care policy—save for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who authored the Senate’s single-payer bill—the hearing offered a forum for airing the particulars of the various plans touted by Democratic presidential hopefuls on the campaign trail.
And yet it was the GOP’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act that took center stage. Republicans have spent the better part of the decade since the ACA became law trying to repeal it; they came close to succeeding during the summer of 2017. And in Wednesday’s hearing, Democrats rushed to the defense of their landmark health care legislation, taking pains to note that their Republican colleagues lacked a clear vision of what they would replace the ACA with should it be toppled.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), who signed onto Jayapal’s bill late last month, chided his GOP colleagues for their criticism of Medicare for All, calling it one in a long line of Republican attacks on health care. “Today’s Republican condemnation of Medicare for All continues a great Republican tradition of opposing Medicare for anyone,” Doggett said, noting that GOP rhetoric about Jayapal’s bill made the proposal sound like “the worst thing to happen to the world since plagues struck Egypt.” When it comes to health care, he added, the Republican Party “is intellectually bankrupt and is offering only Nothing Care.”
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), who is not a sponsor of Medicare for All but supports a bill that would establish a Medicare buy-in option, echoed his rhetoric. “We heard all about ‘repeal and replace,'” he said to Grace-Marie Turner, the president of the right-leaning Galen Institute, who appeared on behalf of the Republicans. “What would you have replaced it with, and can you cite [for] us the Republican plan that they replaced the Affordable Care Act with?”
more...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/republicans-bet-medicare-for-all-hearings-would-divide-democrats-they-were-wrong/
Buttigieg Ends Quarter with Fundraising Blitz
https://politicalwire.com/2019/06/12/buttigieg-had-huge-fundraising-quarter/Buttigieg Ends Quarter with Fundraising Blitz
June 12, 2019 at 7:26 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
“But the quarter has been more successful than anticipated and the campaign is working to exceed its goal in the final 18 days.”
Dahlia Lithwick: The Nepotism Might Finally Be Too Much to Ignore
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-nepotism-too-obvious-to-ignore-elitism.htmlThe Nepotism Might Finally Be Too Much to Ignore
From Jared Kushner to Elaine Chao and Amy Chua, the elites have made their game a bit too obvious.
By Dahlia Lithwick
June 12, 20195:19 PM
Even in these tortured times, it is worth devoting a small sliver of outrage to the fact that Jared Kushner—whose only qualification to senior-advise the president on policy is that he is married to the president’s daughter—seems to have taken, per the Guardian, $90 million in foreign funding since 2017 from an “opaque offshore vehicle.” This influx comes via a stake he kept in a real estate company after assuming his government post, and given that the cash has come in via the Cayman Islands (via Goldman Sachs), we have no idea who is actually enriching this public official who is meant to be working for us. Wherever that lovely money is coming from, we would also do well to remember that Kushner was initially refused a security clearance by career White House staff vetting him for precisely these reasons. But never mind. We are meant to feel only gratitude to the unqualified family members who step in to serve. He has surely accomplished many, many things from his high perch, things that not one person alive can yet name.
Somehow nepotism seems to rankle more than grift alone. Steve Mnuchin’s jet-setting trip to view an eclipse from Fort Knox at taxpayer expense was exponentially more annoying because his wife hitched a ride. Elaine Chao would be front-page public corruption news in any moment other than this, for having brazenly directed resources overseen by her office, the Department of Transportation, to the state in which her husband, Mitch McConnell, holds office (perhaps this one isn’t making a bigger splash only because McConnell’s shamelessness knows no bounds). And then there’s the unfortunate news that Yale Law School’s Amy Chua, who insisted that Brett Kavanaugh will be great for feminism because he has been great to her daughter, has now secured for her daughter the selfsame clerkship for which this transaction was crafted. In America, it matters less that a justice campaigned for a spot at the court on the promise of ending legal abortion, and burdening a migrant teen’s legal right to abortion, than that he recognizes the sterling career promise in the children of other elites.
snip//
George Washington warned against nepotism in America, refusing to give his own family members plum jobs and commissions precisely because that represented everything the revolutionaries loathed about Europe. Even before taking office, he assured a friend that he would “discharge the duties of the office with that impartiality and zeal for the public good, which ought never to suffer connections of blood or friendship to intermingle.” He told another friend that he “would not be in the remotest degree influenced, in making nominations, by motives arising from the ties of amity or blood.” Even the Framers, all of whom were enmeshed and co-mingled and conflicted with other elite framers, understood that their children weren’t princelings and their families weren’t monarchs.
That’s a far cry from where we are now: in a place where every time a Trump family member sneezes, another Trump family member gets to put fresh hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. Americans tend to balk at dynasties—whether its Clintons following Clintons or Bushes on the heels of Bushes. Even as we understand that Kennedys get better tables and people have been buying their children into Ivies long before Lori Loughlin got caught doing it, we don’t comfortably accede to the idea that those children should rule over us. The Trump family took something American elites have done in stealth and discretion for decades and tried to turn it into a sales pitch: “Nobody does nepotism like we do nepotism.”
I wonder whether the public is sold. Because it’s probably not a coincidence that as the Trump children thrive and the McConnell-Chao partnership thrives and Bill Barr’s son-in-law at the White House counsel’s office thrives, the rest of America’s children are falling behind by virtually every measure. And it’s not just about who gets into the elite preschools and high school and universities, and who ends up running our institutions. It’s also about the fact that it’s too soon to talk about school shootings and too late to talk about teacher unions and too pointless to talk about the attempts to strip millions of children of their health care. It’s about the fact that while elites shape the world for their own children to thrive, seven migrant children died in government custody this year alone. If it is still true that the measure of any society is how it treats its children, we have arrived at the perfect resting place for the kakistocracy in which we now reside. The children of the elites will lead us while the children of the most vulnerable are unceremoniously advised to get out of the way.
The idea of American meritocracy was imperfect from the founding, but it’s never been as transparently laughable as it is today. It was, at least, a hope, even as huge swaths of the population were denied access to hope. But the idea that life could be better for all of our children has been the fundamental engine of American optimism forever. Perhaps voters who agreed to allow a pretend billionaire to lead them, and who remain unaffected by his petulance, his lies, and his childish insults, may actually be moved to wonder why it is that his children and grandchildren deserve a better life than theirs.
Cruz pitches Ocasio-Cortez on bill to make birth control available over the counter
Cruz pitches Ocasio-Cortez on bill to make birth control available over the counter
By Justin Wise - 06/12/19 01:46 PM EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is looking to join forces with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on legislation that would make over-the-counter birth control legal.
The GOP Texas senator on Monday offered to team up with her to create a "simple, clean bill making birth control available over the counter," a move that comes just weeks after he offered to take up lobbyist reform with her.
https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1138840867777712128
more...
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/448182-cruz-pitches-ocasio-cortez-on-bill-to-make-birth-control-available-over-the?fbclid=IwAR0vswxFDGOH9U9U0L1gjBCqJefL0hOcbC7c6b19ltQFB4PiHQYg9XdN4jA
House panel passes 9/11 victims fund bill a day after Jon Stewart's emotional testimony
House panel passes 9/11 victims fund bill a day after Jon Stewart's emotional testimony
By Grace Segers, Emily Tillett
Updated on: June 12, 2019 / 2:50 PM / CBS News
The House Judiciary Committee unanimously passed a bill which would permanently reauthorize the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Wednesday, the day after comedian Jon Stewart gave impassioned testimony in support of the bill in video that quickly went viral.
The bill will now go to the floor for a full vote in the House of Representatives, where it is likely to pass. It's unclear whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will take up the bill in the Senate, although Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Wednesday that he was "imploring, pleading, even begging" McConnell to bring the bill to the floor as soon as it passes in the House.
Stewart, the former host of "The Daily Show," gave emotional testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on Tuesday, at times broke down in tears and shouted at the lawmakers, calling them "shameful."
more...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-panel-passes-911-victims-fund-bill-a-day-after-jon-stewarts-emotional-testimony/?fbclid=IwAR0kBP3466PrLAfdNEEdvP6Z2pApERD4MOH6P-sL4KC7MSqF-0qB5lsc71U
Most Think a Sitting President Should Face Charges
Add me, add me!
https://politicalwire.com/2019/06/12/most-think-a-sitting-president-should-face-charges/
Most Think a Sitting President Should Face Charges
June 12, 2019 at 12:10 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
The poll finds a majority think President Trump committed crimes before he took office, 57% to 29%, but are divided 45% to 45% on whether he committed crimes while he has been in office.
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