June 30, 2019

Internal cracks emerge in GOP strategy to avoid shutdown

BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 06/30/19 06:00 AM EDT

Senate Republicans are struggling to unite behind a plan to fund the government after budget talks have ground to a halt.

Congress has until the end of September to prevent the second government closure of the year, but Republicans are struggling to overcome the first roadblock — agreeing to top-line defense and nondefense figures or deciding what comes next if they can’t.

The drama over how to fund the government and avoid deep budget cuts has played out in private, closed-door meetings and put a public spotlight on the high-profile split among Republicans as well as with the White House about the best path to avoid a shutdown.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) pitched his colleagues during a closed-door lunch about “deeming” top-line defense and nondefense spending levels once they return from the July Fourth recess, absent a budget deal.

The move would allow Senate Republicans to approximate what they think an eventual budget deal will be and write their funding bills based off that estimate in the meantime.

more
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/450973-cracks-emerge-in-gop-strategy-to-avoid-shutdown

June 30, 2019

Trump to Putin: Don't Meddle in the Election (Wink, Wink!)

While at the G-20, Donald Trump had a sit-down with Russian president Vladimir Putin, as expected. And during their press availability afterward, reporters asked Trump if he'd told Putin not to mess with the 2020 elections. The Donald laughed, wagged his finger, and—using his "not serious" voice—told Vlad, "Don't mess with the elections." As an added bonus, the President also joked about "getting rid of journalists." How delightful. Here's the video:



Later, Trump was asked to account for his apparently blasé attitude about warning Putin, and defended himself: "I did say it," making no allowance for the fact that tone and body language count here.

At this point, are any of these four statements in dispute?

* Russia worked to help Trump get elected in 2016
* Trump was aware of it, and—at best—did nothing to discourage it
* Russia plans to interfere with the 2020 elections
* Trump has made clear that he's open to assistance from them, and that he
has no intention of discouraging or punishing them

Is this conspiracy? Possibly. Is it treason? Maybe. Is it "high crimes and misdemeanors"? It almost has to be. For reasons that made a lot of sense, even in their time, the Founders were deeply concerned about possible foreign interference with their newly formed government. Many of them were lawyers, and may have argued that Trump's actions do not constitute treason, simply because there is no state of war between the U.S. and Russia. But if you had described the list of behaviors above to James Madison, or Benjamin Franklin, or Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and asked them if such behaviors ran afoul of the Constitution, they would absolutely have said "yes." And if treason does not apply, then "high crimes and misdemeanors" is what's left.

In fact, it's probably useful at this point to talk about what "high crimes" actually means. Most folks read it to mean something like "serious crimes" or "major crimes." In fact, what the Founders actually meant was "crimes of the sort committed by someone in high office." If the president was, instead, a king, then "high crimes" would be interchangeable with "royal crimes." That is to say, they were specifically concerned at the sort of bad acts that are not covered by written statutes (i.e., misdemeanors) because they can only be committed by a select number of important officeholders. And if encouraging foreign interference in an election does not meet that description, we don't know what does. (Z)

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https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Jun30.html#item-2

June 30, 2019

Ivanka Trump says stepping into North Korea was 'surreal'

Source: The Guardian



US president’s daughter comments after his meeting with Kim Jong-un at DMZ

Ben Quinn
@BenQuinn75

Sun 30 Jun 2019 07.18 EDT Last modified on Sun 30 Jun 2019 08.22 EDT

The descriptions – “legendary”, “historic” – of the US president’s latest encounter with Kim Jong-un were typically Trumpian, but it was the first daughter who gave the most candid assessment of their brief trip into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Surreal,” came the reply from Ivanka Trump after a journalist asked: “How was North Korea?” as she emerged from talks between her father and the North Korean leader inside the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone (DMZ) on Sunday.

Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who are both official advisers to the president, had joined him for a conversation inside a building straddling the line between the two Korean states.

She had earlier said she would cross the border into North Korea, if invited.

https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1145136410938105856

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/30/ivanka-trump-says-stepping-into-north-korea-surreal

June 30, 2019

Harris surges to third place in national poll after debate

By CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO 06/30/2019 08:39 AM EDT

The number of Democratic primary voters who pick Kamala Harris as their first choice for president doubled after the first Democratic debates, vaulting the California senator into a third-place tie in a new poll.

The latest Morning Consult survey found Harris increased her standing to 12% in the poll, which was taken after the debate ended through Friday, up 6 points over the last week. Harris’ upswing came after she confronted Joe Biden over his history opposing school busing for desegregation, a dramatic moment that dominated news coverage afterward.

Harris hadn’t moved much since entering the race on Martin Luther King Jr. Day — while two rival Democrats, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren passed Harris. After the debate, Harris pulled ahead of Buttigieg and into a tie with Warren.

Harris’ surge, which also netted her more than $2.5 million in donations as the second-quarter deadline approaches, came largely at Biden’s expense, the poll found. The former vice president, who maintains a large lead over the field at 33%, took the biggest post-debate hit, dropping 5 points after the Miami exchange over race and busing to end desegregation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders held steady in second at 19%, but the poll found he was the only major candidate to see a measurable drop in his favorability, which fell 7 points, to 67%, since the last Morning Consult survey.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/30/kamala-harris-democratic-debates-1390740

June 30, 2019

Graham Says Harris Would Be a Tough Candidate

June 30, 2019 at 7:33 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Face the Nation that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will be “a force to be reckoned with” following her strong performance in the first Democratic debate this week.

Said Graham: “One thing I’ll say about Kamala Harris, and I said this before, she’s got game. She is very talented, she’s very smart, and she’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2019/06/30/graham-says-harris-would-be-a-tough-candidate/

https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/114510485231549644

June 29, 2019

Trump Consultant Is Trolling Democrats With Biden Site That Isn't Biden's

By Matthew Rosenberg
June 29, 2019

AUSTIN, Tex. — For much of the last three months, the most popular Joseph R. Biden Jr. website has been a slick little piece of disinformation that is designed to look like the former vice president’s official campaign page, yet is most definitely not pro-Biden.

From top to bottom, the website, JoeBiden.info, breezily mocks the candidate in terms that would warm the heart of any Bernie Sanders supporter: There are GIFs of Mr. Biden touching women and girls, and blurbs about his less-than-liberal policy positions, including his opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1970s and his support for the Iraq war. Pull quotes highlight some of his more famous verbal gaffes, like his description of his future boss, Barack Obama, as “articulate and bright and clean.” The introductory text declares, “Uncle Joe is back and ready to take a hands-on approach to America’s problems!”

All the site says about its creator is buried in the fine print at the bottom of the page. The site, it says, is a political parody built and paid for “BY AN American citizen FOR American citizens,” and not the work of any campaign or political action committee.

There is indeed an American behind the website — that much is unambiguously true. But he is very much a political player, and a Republican one at that. His name is Patrick Mauldin, and he makes videos and other digital content for President’s Trump’s re-election campaign. Together with his brother Ryan, Mr. Mauldin also runs Vici Media Group, a Republican political consulting firm in Austin whose website opens with the line “We Kick” followed by the image of a donkey — the Democratic Party symbol often known by another, three-letter, name.

The Biden website was intended to help Democrats “face facts,” Mr. Mauldin said in an interview. He kept his name off it because “people tend to dismiss things that they don’t like, especially if it comes from the opposite side,” he said.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/us/politics/fake-joe-biden-website.html

June 29, 2019

Trump administration delays implementation of 'conscience protection' rule

Source: The Hill


BY TAL AXELROD - 06/29/19 11:28 AM EDT

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is delaying the implementation of its “conscience protection” rule until November to give the administration more time to deal with a lawsuit over the policy.

HHS announced in a court filing Saturday that the rule, which was originally scheduled to take effect July 22, would not be implemented until Nov. 22 at the earliest.

A coalition of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit against the administration in May saying the policy, which would allow health care providers to refuse to provide their services on the basis of their religious beliefs, is unconstitutional.

“The federal government is giving health care providers free license to openly discriminate and refuse care to patients — a gross misinterpretation of religious freedom that will have devastating consequences on communities throughout the country,” New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said in a statement after filing the suit.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/451007-trump-administration-delays-implementation-of-conscience-protection-rule

June 29, 2019

Joy Reid Troll Trump for turning his trip into a 'groveling' tour to meet with Putin and Kim Jong-un

June 29, 2019

Joy Reid drops a truth-bomb on Trump and exposes the damage he's done to the US

June 29, 2019

CNN's Acosta to Trump: 'What Is It With Your Coziness' With Dictators and Autocrats?

By Josh FeldmanJun 29th, 2019, 11:39 am

CNN’s Jim Acosta pressed President Donald Trump during his Japan press conference earlier today. Trump lightheartedly told Vladimir Putin not to interfere in the election.

“You did seem to be joking there with the Russian president. Are we taking that to be wrong?” Acosta asked. “And what is it with your coziness with some of these dictators and autocrats at these summits? With Mohammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, when you were asked about the case of Jamal Khashoggi, you did not respond to that question––were you afraid of offending him on that subject?”

“No, not at all. I don’t really care about offending people,” Trump said. “I sort of thought you’d know that.”

“You passed up an opportunity…” Acosta started.

“And, by the way, congratulations. I understand you have a book. Is it doing well?” Trump said.

After the brief exchange about Jim Acosta’s book, Trump said, “I get along with everybody, except you people, actually. I get along with a lot of people.”

He said in particular he gets along with MBS and Putin.

more + video
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/cnns-acosta-to-trump-what-is-it-with-your-coziness-with-dictators-and-autocrats/